Ethics

Oversight Chairman Skipped Meeting With Official He Threatened

Written by SK Ashby

House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz threatened to subpoena Office of Government Ethics director Walter Shaub last week if Shaub did not agree to participate in an interview concerning despot-elect Donald Trump's conflicts of interest.

The idea that Shaub is in some way unwilling to speak to Chaffetz is clearly a misnomer, however, as evidenced by public records that show Chaffetz skipped a meeting with Shaub last month.

[It] was Chaffetz who missed a previously discussed meeting in early December, according to Office of Government Ethics emails The Huffington Post obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request. And the ethics office now says the congressman is trying to keep an upcoming meeting — proposed for Jan. 23 — closed to the public.

M.J. Henshaw, a spokeswoman for the House oversight committee, declined to comment on the emails and Chaffetz’s statements to reporters.

While Shaub wants his next meeting with Chaffetz to be public, Chaffetz wants to keep it private for reasons that should be obvious.

It's a lot easier to deceive and mislead the public by keeping interviews private. Darrel Issa, Jason Chaffetz, and the rest of the Benghazi Inquisition conducted the overwhelming majority of their interviews privately to avoid spilling the fact that they found nothing. Issa, Chaffetz, and Benghazi Committee chairman Trey Gowdy selectively leaked partial transcripts from their private interviews to give the impression that they found something worth investigating.

They never did.