Watchdog Reopens Secret Service Probe as Chaffetz Tars Director

The Homeland Security Department’s inspector general on Monday announced that he has reopened a recently completed investigation that revealed that dozens of Secret Service employees had illegally accessed the personnel file of onetime job applicant Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah., chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

DHS watchdog John Roth said, “The investigation was reopened as a result of Secret Service Director Joseph Clancy announcing that he now has a different recollection of the events in question than that he conveyed to Office of Inspector General investigators during his interview on July 17, 2015.”

IG staff will now conduct additional interviews and issue a public addendum to the Sept. 25 report that put Chaffetz in the spotlight after it was revealed that Secret Service officials sought to embarrass him after he initiated hearings on the agency’s string of missteps in protection of the White House and agent misbehavior.

Clancy told the Washington Post that he had recently remembered hearing from a deputy about employees in March accessing Chaffetz’s file as a job applicant in 2003, but had dismissed it has a rumor.

Chaffetz, who just announced that he is running for House Speaker, told Fox News Sunday’s Chris Wallace that he is losing confidence in Clancy. From the transcript:

CHAFFETZ: The Secret Service is demonstrating why we started to investigate them and their shenanigans. I think the question is really for the Department of Justice. You had 45 Secret Service agents violate federal law according to the inspector general? What is the attorney general doing? Why isn't there a special prosecutor over there? It's kind of scary.  I fear that these people -- if they do this to me, I'm sure it's probably not the first time. I'm a sitting member of Congress. Nobody should have that done. It's a violation of federal law. 

WALLACE:  And do you still have confidence in Director Clancy?

CHAFFETZ:  I lose it every day.  Again, this is why almost two years ago we started investigating the Secret Service.  They've had a series of mishaps and they're entrusted with guns near the president.  This is -- and they're the most sensitive classified information.  I -- they've got a serious cultural problem.

Another critic of Secret Service management, journalist and author Ronald Kessler, penned an op-ed published Sunday in the Washington Times, saying, “Clancy had to know the Chaffetz information could only have been obtained by violating the Privacy Act. Mr. Clancy's failure to initiate an investigation into the matter alone is reason for him to step down as director.”