GOP lawmakers raise concerns over DHS report redactions, OIG cooperation 

Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Rep. Barry Loudermilk, R-Ga., are looking for answers about why they, as members of Congress, are receiving redacted inspector general’s reports concerning the Homeland Security Department.

The ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee and the Subcommittee on House Administration chairman penned a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Tuesday, raising concerns about the amount of information, or lack thereof, the department is allowing its OIG to disclose in its reports to Congress. 

The pair said that while DHS officials have cited “sensitivity reviews [on OIG reports] prevent the public release of information that could harm the national security or law enforcement missions of the department,” they have also noted that those reviews don’t extend to Congressional committees.

“These statements from the Department, in conjunction with redactions placed on multiple reports, illustrate our primary concern—that the Department is creating a chilling effect regarding information the DHS OIG wishes to share with Congress and is imposing improper access restrictions,” the pair said “Simply put, absent a legitimate assertion of Executive Privilege, there is no category of information that Congress cannot receive.”

Those concerns are coupled with ongoing complaints raised by DHS Inspector General Joseph Cuffari about department officials delaying or denying information requests made by the OIG. 

Grassley and Loudermilk pointed to an Aug. 2 letter from Cuffari, where the inspector general — updating Grassley on the OIG’s investigations into the July assassination attempt against former President Trump — said his office has documented “DHS’s delays in fulfilling, and outright denials of, OIG’s requests for records and information” for the office’s semiannual reports to Congress dating back to September 2021. 

“Despite our continued reporting of these issues, we have yet to see satisfactory resolution,” Cuffari said. “These continued delays and denials have significantly impacted the timeliness of our audits and inspections and have hampered our ability to obtain and proactively analyze data that would assist in identifying DHS risks.”

Grassley and Loudermilk went on to note that while SARs since September 2021 have featured some level of access issues for the OIG, SARs between October 2016 and March 2021 did not have the same of restrictions, placing blame on the Biden administration. 

“Let us remind you that federal law requires that IG’s ‘have timely access to all records’ so that the IG community can perform full and complete reviews for the purpose of fully informing Congress,” they said. 

Cuffari, a Trump appointee, has also been the subject of no shortage of controversy within the DHS OIG, including a $1.17 million settlement paid to former deputy inspector general Jennifer Costello after he fired her and commissioned a $1.4 million third-party investigation into Costello and two of her colleagues. 

The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia also dismissed a suit brought by Cuffari in November 2023, where he alleged that he had “been endlessly harassed and had his office’s resources drained by a series of baseless inquiries,” due to an investigation by the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency’s Integrity Committee.

Grassley and Loudermilk called for DHS to provide written justification for each redaction the DHS and Secret Service requested in the OIG’s Aug. 1 report on the response to Jan. 6, written confirmation of the steps that DHS officials have taken to provide the OIG with “all access required to perform all reviews, including the assassination attempt against former President Trump” and written confirmation that DHS will not instruct or request the OIG not to disclose any information to Congress “with respect to any review related to the Secret Service or Department law enforcement functions,” including regarding the Trump assassination attempt.

DHS officials have until 5 p.m. on Aug. 27 to respond to the letter.