Walpin-gate offender featured speaker at AmeriCorps conference

In November, I wrote about the hit job termination of career public servant and AmeriCorps Inspector General Gerald Walpin here and here.  Walpin's investigation of AmeriCorps found former NBA star and Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson had misused federal grant money for his personal benefit.  Additional allegations of sexual misconduct by Mr. Johnson surfaced during the investigation.  When the White House tried to sweep the whole thing under the rug, Walpin protested and was eventually fired.

Kevin Johnson is back in the news in an unbelievable editorial at The Washington Times:

Only in the Obama administration would a public official sanctioned for a form of malfeasance be honored as a speaker by the same organization that sanctioned him. It helps, of course, when he is a self-proclaimed Friend of the First Couple. It also doesn't hurt that the administration already found it politically convenient to fire the inspector general, Gerald Walpin, who blew the whistle on his misdeeds.

Still, the public should consider it a brazen affront for this administration to feature Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson as a key speaker at a major conference sponsored later this month by the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS). Common decency should disallow such a scandal.

On the grounds of image alone, Mr. Johnson sends the wrong message, considering that four different young women or teenage girls have accused Mr. Johnson of inappropriate sexual conduct. Three of the four were actually affiliated with the very institution, the St. Hope Academy, that was sponsored through CNCS grants. (CNCS is the parent body for the AmeriCorps national "volunteering" program.) In none of the cases were charges ever pressed, but one of the students said she was offered $1,000 per month in exchange for her silence, and two staff members resigned from St. Hope to protest how the academy tried (in the words of one of them) to "intimidate the student*." And in the first instance, in the summer of 1995, Mr. Johnson at one point agreed to pay the girl $230,000, according to the Sacramento Bee, after protesting that he "didn't recall us being a hundred percent naked" during the incident.

The sordid sex allegations weren't even what caused Mr. Johnson, a former National Basketball Association star, to be sanctioned. Instead, he was found responsible for multiple financial misdeeds and ordered personally to help St. Hope repay nearly half a million dollars to AmeriCorps. Specifically, investigators found that Mr. Johnson and St. Hope misused federal funds to assign political projects to AmeriCorps workers; to have them run personal errands for Mr. Johnson, wash his car and drive him to personal appointments; to pay staff salaries at St. Hope from funds meant for AmeriCorps grantees; and several other similar improprieties.

The Washington Examiner has more:

A spokeswoman for the Corporation for National and Community Service says CNCS had nothing to do with selecting Johnson and that the Sacramento mayor will appear at the request of a group called “Cities of Service.” “He was invited by Cities of Service, which is working to harness the power of volunteers in cities across America,” says CNCS press secretary Ashley Etienne. “He’s participating in a panel organized by Cities of Service, and we were not involved.”

“Cities of Service” is an organization founded last year by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg as part of President Obama’s “United We Serve” initiative. According to the White House website, Cities of Service was created “in partnership with CNCS.” Bloomberg heads the host committee for the CNCS conference and his group is a “local co-host” for the event.

The claim that Johnson was invited by Cities of Service, without any involvement by the national Corporation for National and Community Service, strikes Walpin as implausible. “This is a CNCS/AmeriCorps conference,” he says. “I can’t believe that CNCS doesn’t control who is invited and who speaks at a CNCS national conference.” And even if Bloomberg’s group wanted to include Johnson, Walpin says, what was CNCS’s reaction? “Assuming that the invitation was tendered to Johnson by Cities of Service (hard to believe without CNCS approval), when CNCS learned about it, what did it do?” asks Walpin. “Did it, as it clearly could, being the host, tell the supposed independent inviting entity that CNCS would not allow it?”

Johnson’s presence on the list of speakers answers that question. And so the man who spent hundreds of thousands of AmeriCorps dollars for his own personal purposes will speak to the very people whose grants he misused.

Give Gerald Walpin his job back!

Ed Morrissey at Hotair.com has done an excellent job of covering the firing of Inspector General Gerald Walpin by the White House here, here and here.  Today he has more:

In June, the White House fired Gerald Walpin as Inspector-General of the Corporation for National and Community Service after he objected to an unusually-favorable settlement of fraud charges against a Barack Obama ally in Sacramento. The Obama administration insisted that Walpin got fired for instability and strongly hinted that Walpin was senile, but a series of actions against IGs seemed to show that Obama had decided to attack their independence. Yesterday, the IGs struck back by clearing Walpin of the White House’s allegations through their professional board, and now Walpin wants his job back

Gerald Walpin, the AmeriCorps inspector general fired by the White House in July during his probe of Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson, has been cleared of a complaint by the acting U.S. attorney in Sacramento that he had acted improperly.

Now, he says, he wants his job back. …

Walpin filed suit in federal court in Washington, D.C., in July alleging that he was fired improperly while investigating whether Johnson had misused federal grant funds. The government is trying to have the case dismissed, but Walpin filed documents in court late Monday opposing that.

Among the documents was an Oct. 19 letter from the Integrity Committee of the Council of the Inspectors General for Integrity and Efficiency telling him that the probe against him had been closed.

“After carefully considering the allegations described in the complaint together with your response, the IC determined that the response sufficiently and satisfactorily addressed the matter and that further inquiry or an investigation regarding the matter was not warranted,” committee Chairman Kevin L. Perkins wrote.

Senators Grassley and Kyl are not happy with Department of Justice stonewalling of their requests for more information on the firing.  From Main Justice:

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) has garnered a new ally in his quest to get answers to questions he and other Senate Judiciary Committee members have asked the Justice Department over the past few years.

Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) joined his fellow panel Republican on the Senate floor yesterday to criticize DOJ’s handling of committee inquiries — including his own questions.

“I voted for Attorney General [Eric] Holder, and we had several conversations about being forthcoming in responding to our requests for information,” Kyl said on the Senate floor. “I thought at the time he would be able to work with us and provide those kinds of answers and support. Yet I have been disappointed, as Senator Grassley has been.” (snip)

Grassley said on the Senate floor yesterday that he received a DOJ response last Friday to questions he asked Holder in June. But he said it was “totally inadequate.”

“Instead of answering the 24 questions, the Department responded with a five-paragraph recitation of publicly available facts and information,” Grassley said. “The Department also said it would respond under separate cover to the document requests. I appreciate the Department’s comments that it intends to respond to my requests, but I am very concerned this is more of the same problem Chairman Leahy and I were trying to get at with our letter just 2 weeks ago.”

He added: “This is a prime example of what is wrong with the inadequate responses to all our questions. They avoid the question and filibuster with public facts.”

Morrissey believes the White House might want to get out from under this as quickly as possible.  He concludes

The IGs have not been fooled. In an administration that has czars bursting out of its seams, IGs represent a threat to their power. They have given the Obama administration a bloody nose, and Walpin that much more ammunition for a court case Obama would be well advised to settle at any cost now.

President Obama, do the right thing.  Reinstate this honorable public servant and watchdog for the people now.