President Donald Trump has an easy loophole to get rid of the corruption allegations against White House "border czar" Tom Homan, former Interior Department Inspector General Mark Grenblatt warned CNN's Erica Hill on Tuesday afternoon.
Homan, a former Immigration and Customs Enforcement official who has advised the White House on mass deportation policy and has become well known for going on TV and threatening Democratic lawmakers with arrest if they get in the way of the administration, was exposed in a New York Times report for having allegedly accepted $50,000 in cash from undercover FBI agents.
The White House has repeatedly tried to change the story on this scandal, but reports indicate Trump administration officials squashed a Justice Department investigation — and, Greenblatt said, the law kind of lets them do that.
"Mark ... both the FBI and the Justice Department say there's no credible evidence of any criminal wrongdoing," said Hill. "There could, though, be an independent watchdog, maybe the inspector general of the Justice Department, who could look into it to verify it. In your view, is that worth it at this point? What would that, what would that offer up?"
"Absolutely," said Greenblatt. "I think that would be — the great value that the inspector general can bring to this very type of allegation is, is that transparent, independent view. Here's the problem, though. Under the Inspector General Act, there's a special carve-out for these very types of matters that sends those not to the IG, but to the Office of Public Responsibility."
"Here's the problem with that," he continued. "That office reports to the attorney general. So then you have a situation in this case where the attorney general and her staff would be essentially investigating itself, as opposed to an independent body like the inspector general. That's the key problem here: there isn't that angle of transparency and independence that the inspector general can bring."