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Washington Post
2 days ago
- Politics
- Washington Post
Kari Lake defends VOA cuts in court after warnings from Capitol Hill
Kari Lake, the Republican firebrand installed by President Donald Trump to reduce the Voice of America and its parent agency to what he called a 'minimum presence,' sought Wednesday to justify her hardball approach to a federal judge who has alleged that she is overstepping her statutory authority. Her legal challenges have expanded beyond the courtroom, however, with the Government Accountability Office launching an investigation into potential executive overreach at the U.S. Agency for Global Media after congressional staffers from both parties warned that Lake was breaking the law by improperly using appropriated funds. The GAO investigation, confirmed by the agency to The Washington Post, will take months to resolve. Lake's immediate legal focus lies with U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth, who has demanded answers about how she is running the once-vibrant international broadcasting agency with a shoestring staff while keeping hundreds on paid leave. Lake, an Arizonan who ran unsuccessfully for U.S. Senate last year and styles herself the acting CEO of USAGM, put most of the agency's 1,300 employees and contractors on administrative leave in March after Trump's executive order. VOA's sidelined director, Michael Abramowitz, and a group of VOA journalists sued her, arguing that the president lacks the authority to unilaterally dismantle the agency with a mandate and budget set by Congress. Since then, Lake has been running a ghost ship with about 200 active staffers while 600 remain on paid leave and another 500 contractors were fired. Lamberth ordered the government on July 30 to justify its actions, having earlier issued a preliminary injunction instructing the agency to abide by its statutory authority. A circuit court panel reversed a separate part of the injunction ordering staffers back to work. '[W]hen Congress appropriated $260 million to VOA for FY 2025, it did not anticipate that such a significant sum of taxpayer funds would be used to pay employees to sit at home for months on end,' wrote Lamberth, a Reagan appointee. 'The legal term for that is 'waste,' and it is precisely what federal appropriation law aims to avoid.' The judge asked the government to detail how USAGM is restoring VOA programming, whether it has told Congress about a 'significant reduction in broadcast hours,' how it's following federal appropriations, and its plan to conduct a reduction in force at the agency, after a previous RIF was rescinded due to improper data collection. In a declaration to the court filed Wednesday, Lake said Trump had 'expressed strong interest in … closing USAGM,' saying she intends to help him do so 'within the bounds of current and future federal law.' She denied acting outside Congress's intentions. 'Until such time as Congress deems it appropriate to pass legislation to either close or reform USAGM, USAGM has no present plans to wind down USAGM's operations,' she wrote. She added that the agency's previous broadcast offerings in more than 40 languages far exceeded its original mandate, justifying her reduction to services in just four, spoken mostly in China, Afghanistan and Iran. Lake said she wants to 'supplement content' with right-wing One America News programming through a deal struck in May and disclosed that the agency is 'engaged in ongoing discussions with Newsmax in pursuit of a similar agreement.' She also said she wants the agency to move out of its Washington headquarters building before the end of the year and to use artificial intelligence tools to produce graphics. VOA journalists Patsy Widakuswara, Jessica Jerreat and Kate Neeper, plaintiffs in one of the cases, said Lake's filing 'offers nothing new of substance' other than 'a plan to partner with another partisan media outlet, Newsmax. That is contrary to the law and VOA's mandate to serve as a reliable and authoritative source of news. We will continue to seek VOA's full restoration to its congressionally-mandated role.' Lake has also received messages from Capitol Hill urging her to follow the law. Congressional appropriations staffers for Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) and Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) warned Lake in June that she was breaking the law by improperly using congressionally appropriated funds to fire staffers at the government broadcaster. The bipartisan finger-wagging came in a series of emails from the Senate Appropriations Committee's State, Foreign Operations and Related Programs subcommittee to officials at the U.S. Agency for Global Media, obtained by The Washington Post through freedom of information requests to USAGM. On June 11, the Democratic subcommittee clerk Alex Carnes sent an email to Lake and then-acting CEO Victor Morales saying the RIF notices sent to Voice of America staffers violated the Anti-Deficiency Act, which holds officials to the congressional appropriations for their agencies. Carnes declined to comment. The law attributes personal liability and carries criminal penalties, thought it is unlikely Trump's Justice Department would indict Lake, Morales or any USAGM staffer carrying out the president's executive order. Paul Grove, the longtime Republican subcommittee clerk working for Graham, followed up with a stern message. 'Please respond to [Carnes's] suggestion,' he wrote. 'You have not followed legal requirements.' Grove did not respond to a request for comment. (While Freedom of Information Act personnel redacted names in some of the emails, multiple people who saw the original emails have confirmed the senders and recipients to The Post.) On June 13, Schatz, the subcommittee's ranking Democrat, sent Lake a letter — previously reported by The Post — saying she was breaking the law. 'According to email exchanges between my staff and you and your agency, you are not denying you have these legal obligations, you are simply choosing to ignore them,' he wrote. In response, Lake wrote, 'Your assertion and accusations are completely false and without merit, but I expect nothing less from a far-left Senator with an agenda who doesn't have a grasp of the law, the grave national security concerns or the realities of this agency.' Schatz sent a letter on June 26 to top GAO official Gene Dodaro, the comptroller of the United States. In the letter, obtained by The Post, Schatz said agencies had violated two provisions of last year's foreign operations spending bill, which Trump carried forward through a continuing resolution on March 15, that prohibit agency reorganizations without Congress's permission. Schatz asked the GAO to conduct an 'expedited review' of Anti-Deficiency Act violations at both USAGM and the U.S. Agency for International Development concerning their respective reorganizations. Sarah Kaczmarek, managing director of public affairs for the Government Accountability Office, the independent, nonpartisan body that audits the federal government, told The Post that the GAO accepted the request and that a review is underway but will take months to complete. 'The Government Accountability Office (GAO) and Democrats are angry that President Trump is rightsizing the bloated federal government, so they are teaming up to try to stop him,' Lake wrote in an email to The Washington Post. 'U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM) is an American-taxpayer-funded agency that is highly corrupt and wastes hundreds-of-millions of dollars broadcasting 90s-style news around the globe — often spreading an anti-American message. The President's March 14 Executive Order calls for reducing USAGM to what is statutorily required by law — nothing more; that is my mission at USAGM.' Charles Kieffer, a former longtime staff director for Democrats on the Senate Appropriations Committee, said 'there is no question' that Lake's actions violate the Anti-Deficiency Act. 'The RIF is just one manifestation of a reorganization and they're spending money to reorganize,' he said. But the GAO has limited enforcement power. 'There's never been anybody that's ever been convicted or indicted for violation of the act,' said G. William Hoagland, senior vice president of the Bipartisan Policy Center and a former director of the Senate Budget Committee. USAGM staffers put what hope they have for getting their jobs back in Lamberth's courtroom. The judge is expected to respond to the government's filing in the coming week, though the case will likely be appealed to a three-judge panel on the federal appeals court.
Telegraph
19-07-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
Data leak was inevitable after Afghan chaos, says whistleblower
The Afghan data leak was 'bound to happen' after ministers ignored warnings about the UK's chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, a Foreign Office whistleblower has said. Three years ago, in July 2022 Josie Stewart, 44, a career diplomat, lost her job after giving an anonymous interview to BBC Newsnight, raising the alarm over the government's handling of the crisis. But speaking to The Telegraph after one of the most damaging leaks in British history, she said the scenario was precisely one she had been trying to prevent. Ms Stewart, who was one of only two civil servants to go public with their concerns in 2021, said: 'To some extent it is an endorsement of the fact that we were right – the government's chaotic handling of the Afghanistan evacuation was risking lives. 'But it also brings the realisation that we did all of this in terms of speaking out – in different ways, we both lost our careers because of it – and it didn't change anything. The chaotic management continued, and the suppressed facts continued – and got worse. So much for accountability.' The other civil servant, Raphael Marshall, resigned after a week working on the Afghan Special Cases team, which was helping eligible Afghans at risk because of their UK ties to get evacuated from Kabul following the Taliban takeover. He claimed desperate emails went unread, junior staff with no regional expertise were assigned to complex cases, and the prime minister prioritised animals over people at the 'direct expense' of humans. Ms Stewart, who had volunteered to work on the UK's Afghan crisis response following the fall of Kabul, said she felt morally compelled to speak out. She knew that, as a senior official with 15 years of experience in the Foreign Office, she could corroborate Mr Marshall's account. Speaking about the Afghan data leak, Ms Stewart said: 'The biggest thing for me is just, 'how was it possible that data like this was still [...] being dumped into random spreadsheets and emailed around without proper controls?'. 'And I do know how, because it was a continuation of what I had witnessed first-hand in August and September. And the fact that, despite all the attention, nobody took seriously the need to fix it by February. And then – surprise, surprise – of course this happened.' In December 2021, she gave an anonymous interview to Newsnight supporting Mr Marshall's testimony. But her identity was exposed when a BBC reporter tweeted a photo of a leaked email addressed to Ms Stewart, which had been shared with the reporter for background only. Her security clearance was revoked and she was dismissed. In a landmark tribunal ruling in February, three judges unanimously found the Foreign Office had unfairly sacked her after she leaked information in the public interest. Speaking about her reaction to the story this week, she said: 'I thought, 'This is what happens in such chaos when you fail to take seriously the responsibility of managing vast amounts of the most sensitive personal data there could be.' It's exactly what we were saying was bound to happen, and it did.' 'The next reaction I had, later that evening, was absolute fury. Raphael [...] had gone to the [Foreign Affairs] select committee in September 2021, which was published in December and hit the news. This data leak happened the following February. 'So even though there'd been so much public and political focus by that point on the chaos, the damage and the risk, nothing was done for at least another two months to put proper systems in place that would have stopped this happening. The hubris of it just blows my mind.' In the evidence she gave to the select committee in March 2022, Ms Stewart said: 'I feel a strong sense of moral injury for having been part of something so badly managed, and so focused on managing reputational risk and political fallout rather than the actual crisis and associated human tragedy.' She told The Telegraph she was 'surprised' that more commentators have not drawn a link between the whistleblowers' warnings and this week's revelations that the Government imposed an unprecedented two-year 'contra mundum' super-injunction to suppress details of the breach. 'I'm surprised that so few people within commentary this week have made this link,' Ms Stewart said. 'It's a tricky one, because the risk element is real, I can see the line that this super-injunction was necessary in order to mitigate damage or risk. But it's also very convenient.' 'This is just my own personal view, I wouldn't be confident calling it either way, but in terms of what motivations were from the government's perspective, there are strong parallels. It could have been very convenient for them to have this in place.' Ms Stewart said that she has heard from Afghans who made it to the UK that others they know, who are 'for sure' eligible under the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (Arap) scheme, remain stuck abroad. 'I know Afghans who have not been able to get any kind of response in relation to their applications, they've not even been able to get an acknowledgement in 14 months.' 'I know of numerous Afghans who are for sure Arap-eligible, but have spent the last three years in Islamabad trying to get responses from the British government. They just haven't got a decision yet on their Arap application, and so they're still there.' When asked why the system was still failing, Ms Stewart blamed indifference at the top of Government. 'The first thing is that nobody cares enough, and so nobody's doing anything about it. The fact that you can't get an answer or even an update on an Arap application in 14 months, and you need to get an MP involved to get one after 14 months. I think there's no resource, there's no political pressure, nobody cares. It's last year's news.'
Yahoo
21-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
UNREAL DEAL: McBee mayor and councilman fined $2,300; admit ethics violations in town water vote
MCBEE, S.C. (QUEEN CITY NEWS) — It took an ethics complaint, three scribbled signatures, and exactly 796 days to close the ethics investigations into McBee Mayor Glenn Odom and his friend and employee, McBee Councilman James Linton. The investigations were related to decisions Odom and Linton made during a town council meeting on Feb. 11, 2023, within hours of the men taking office. With the stroke of a blue ink pen, S.C. Ethics Commission Vice Chairman Neal Truslow signed a consent order on April 17, the day Odom and Linton were supposed to show up for an evidentiary hearing on their ethics charges at the ethics commission's office in Columbia. The order required the men to admit to violating the ethics law. UNREAL DEAL: Vote that caught McBee mayor, councilman in ethics charge may be invalid The order amounts to a public reprimand of the pair. A week earlier, the McBee elected officials informed the commission through their attorney, John E. Parker, that they'd admit to the ethics violations and pay a $2,300 fine to avoid the public hearing and whatever disposition the commission, as a whole, decided to hand down. Both men initially faced a $4,300 fine and still do if they do not pay the $2,300 by Oct. 17, 2025. The commission confirmed, as of April 21, it had not yet received Odom or Linton's fine payment. UNREAL DEAL: State ethics investigators looking into SC mayor's first vote on first day in office 'Through this Consent Order, Respondent (Odom and Linton) acknowledges he violated the Ethics Act in this regard,' the order stated. 'The commission, as a matter of law, found Odom and Linton, each, committed two violations of the S.C. Ethics, Government Accountability, and Campaign Reform Act over a vote and closed-door discussion they participated in on their first 24 hours in office.' 04172025-CO_OdomDownload Both men, with financial ties to Alligator Rural Water and Sewer Company, participated in an executive session and then voted on a town council agenda item that awarded Alligator temporary control over the town's water system after the town's water operator, Joey Oliver's Oliver Environmental, submitted its resignation letter the day Odom, Linton and a new councilmember, Robbie Liles, took office. 'Was a joke.' SC reporter arrested after taping sign to front of town hall Essentially, instead of town taxpayers purchasing water from the town's water department, they now purchase water directly from Alligator. 04172025-CO_LintonDownload Odom is the owner, president, and sole officer of Odom & Associates, a South Carolina corporation incorporated in 1998, according to the ethics commission. On Nov. 19, 2002, Glenn Odom and Alligator Rural Water and Sewer Company entered into a contract where Alligator agreed to pay Odom's company a base sum of $720,000 to run the water company's day-to-day operations. Alligator is a non-profit entity and sells water to 85% of Chesterfield County, with the exception of the Town of Cheraw. When Odom took over as mayor in February 2023, the Town of McBee was operating its own water department, selling water to homes and businesses within the town limits. With Oliver's resignation on Feb. 10, Odom told the ethics investigator that the day Oliver resigned, an inspection of the town's 'water system and supplies were inspected,' but the ethics order does not state exactly who conducted the inspection. 'The chemicals found during the inspection were determined to be unusable and potentially unsafe due to age and deteriorating conditions,' according to the order. Odom called Paula Brown, a woman identified in the ethics filing as a Department of Health and Environmental Control staffer, telling her '…the Town did not have enough usable chemicals to continue to adequately treat the Town's water.' A footnote in the ethics filing shows that DHEC employees 'subsequently agreed that the chemicals should not be used,' however, the ethics document doesn't note whether the ethics commission investigator spoke with Brown or DHEC directly or whether the investigator took Odom's word for the state of the chemicals. Queen City News Chief Investigative Reporter Jody Barr asked the ethics commission for clarification on this point, but the commission has not yet answered that question. Part of the two-count ethics violation against Odom and Linton is for their participation in the Feb. 11, 2023, executive session and the formal vote the men cast to shutter the town's water department and to hand over the operation of the town's water system to Alligator until the town contracted with a permanent operator to run its system. Odom explained in an interview with Queen City News Chief Investigative Reporter Jody Barr in 2023 that he was not employed by Alligator, but earned a salary from Alligator by way of a management contract between his Odom and Associates company and the water utility.11192002-ARW-AND-ODOM-MANAGEMENT-CONTRACTDownload Here's a partial transcript of the Oct. 2023 interview of McBee Mayor Glenn Odom: BARR: 'What is Glen Odom's role with Alligator Water, and where you're drawing your salary from – Odom and Associates, what exactly is that you all do for Alligator, would put a lot of this to bed, probably.' ODOM: 'Odom and Associates operates and manages Alligator Rural Water 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days of the year. I also write the grants, loans again, about $100 million so far. I do all that. I meet with Rural Development. I meet with the tax people, I meet with DHEC, meet with a lot of different people. I couldn't tell you how many those are, but again, I'm the face of Alligator, I guess is what it amounts to.' BARR: 'Odom and Associates is obviously, as you hold this contract, that company is obviously making money or you're not operating at a loss.' ODOM: 'Nope.' BARR: 'But you're saying you don't draw a salary from that company?' ODOM: 'No, I didn't say that. I said Alligator doesn't pay me. I draw $10,000 a month from Odom and Associates, cuts me a check for $10,000 a month.' BARR: 'And you're saying that $10,000 a month is not – would not be defined as a financial benefit if you were to vote on an issue that benefited Alligator, thus benefiting Odom and Associates?' ODOM: 'It does not change. It doesn't go up or does not go down, especially when it's a loss to Alligator to sell the town of McBee water. So again, talking with the investigator from ethics, there's not – and it was easy to prove when I showed him the figures, there's not a $50 profit. He said, that's the threshold.' The consent order that convicted Odom and Linton of the ethics charges shows that because Odom and Linton held an 'economic interest' in the water agenda item, the law required the poiticians to 'prepare a written statement describing the matter requiring action or decisions and the nature of his potential conflict of interest with respect to the action or decision,' and to ensure that written statement is published in the minutes,' according to the ethics order. When QCN reviewed the town's meeting minutes published to the town's website in 2023, nothing about Odom or Linton's conflict of interest was noted in the Feb. 11, 2023, minutes. In fact, the town once had meeting minutes published to its website as late as the Fall of 2023, but the town has since erased all meeting minutes from the site. The law also prohibited Odom and Linton from voting on the agenda item or participating in any discussion or any 'other actions on the matter,' according to the order. Odom argued from the first time QCN questioned him about the vote and his conflict of interest that he and Linton had no choice but to act when they took office. In two separate interviews with Barr, the mayor appeared to mitigate his ethics violation, arguing McBee's water system posed a public safety threat when he took over in February 2023. 'Do you think that may have been a vote, looking back, that maybe should have bowed out of?' Barr asked Odom in August 2023. 'No, I don't. Because it dealt with the health of two schools, probably 6 or 700 students, number one, all kinds of DHEC complaints about the pots turning green at schools, and children's hair turning green, young babies or whatever, blistering in the water. No, I would stand on it, I would vote again every time for it,' Odom responded. 'You don't think, given your relationship to Alligator, that Alligator, obviously receiving a benefit, now that they're selling the town water, you don't see a conflict of interest in that at all?' Barr asked the mayor, 'No, because Alligator loses money on what they sell it to the town for. They're selling water to other wholesale customers higher than what they're operating the Town of McBee's water for,' Odom explained. The mayor and Councilman Linton used the same argument during the ethics investigation and in negotiating the consent order their attorney settled with the ethics commission. 'In mitigation, Respondent states that in and around Oliver's resignation, the Town discovered that the chemicals being used to disinfect the Town's water system were improperly stored. Respondent states that goven the lack of usable chemicals, utilizing AWS as an emergency water source was imperative and constitued a public health emergency. Respondent further states that based on the bid solicitations performed by the Town, he believed AWS to be the most cost-efficient solution for the Town at the time he participated in the aforementioned discussion and vote. Finally, Respondent states, and the Commission has confirmed, that his compensation as a compensated agent of AWS did not change as a result of AWS's temporary assumption of duties as the Town's water supplier and operator.' April 17, 2025, S.C. Ethics Commission Consent Order v. Glenn Odom and James Linton Aside from the 2002 management agreement we obtained between Alligator and Odom, the only other independent verification we could find to confirm payments made to Odom's company by Alligator is contained in the water utility's Internal Revenue Service 990 filings. As a non-profit, Alligator is required to annually file tax statements, which are published to the IRS tax-exempt organization's website. The 2022 IRS report also shows Alligator, a non-profit organization, loaned Odom and Associates $246,420 in two separate loans. The IRS form lists the purpose of the loans as 'Equipment,' with Odom and Associates owing a balance of $112,872. 2015-ALLIGATOR-IRS-990Download Alligator's 2015 990 form shows Alligator Rural Water and Sewer paid Odom and Associates $1,155,250 as an independent 'management company.' The figure does not show an accounting of what the seven figures paid for. By 2022, the last 990 filing we could find for Alligator, the utility reported paying Odom and Associates $1,029,781 for management services. 2022-ALLIGATOR-IRS-990-Alligator-Rural-Water-Company-Inc-FulDownload The 2002 management contract between Alligator and Odom expired in 2022, however, the ethics order shows the 2002 contract is still in effect today. The contract pays Odom and Associates a base sum of $60,000 per month to manage the water utility. 'This sum shall cover all costs incurred by Odom and Associates to operate the water and sewer facilities of the Water Company, except the cost of major repairs,' the contract states. The contract shows Odom and Associates' pay 'shall be adjusted based upon the volume of water and sewer handled by Odom and Associates above 600 million gallons per year in water sales and 40 million gallons per year of sewage.' The contract shows Alligator will increase Odom's 'base management fee' by 40% if water sales push beyond 600 million gallons a year and another 25% if Odom handles more than 40 million gallons in a year or if Odom and Associates 'increased sales revenues for the base amount of water and sewer which is generated by cost increases imposed by the Water Company on its customers.' McBee paid Alligator $6,666.50 a month to operate and maintain the town's water system following the Odom and Linton vote in February 2023. When the town council competitively bid the operation and maintenance of the town's water system in November 2023, Alligator was the lowest bid by $100,000, and the town awarded the utility the contract to operate the town's water system. Odom and Linton recused themselves from that November 2023 vote, which is noted in the ethics commission order. Despite the additional revenue from the town contract, Odom and Linton told the commission that their compensation 'as an AWS employee did not change.' Odom and Linton have until Oct. 17, 2025, to pay the ethics fines levied against them. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
