audit

Jan. 7 (Asia Today) — A coalition of South Korean civic groups that monitors the National Assembly’s annual audit process said Wednesday it gave the Lee Jae-myung administration’s first parliamentary audit an “F,” citing what it called a crisis in separation of powers and poor preparation.

The NGO Monitoring Group for National Audits, which said it has tracked the audit process for 27 years with participation from more than 1,000 experts and civic activists, said in a position paper that the audit “began” with controversy over Supreme Court Chief Justice Cho Hee-dae and “ended” with allegations of abuse of power involving Kim Hyeon-ji, the first deputy chief of staff at the presidential office.

The group listed reasons for the failing grade that included what it described as the worst crisis in separation of powers, inadequate preparation, extreme confrontation and an audit of Cho that it said only provoked backlash.

It also cited what it called structural problems during the audit, including committee chairs it said acted without restraint, a shortened audit period and the presence of seven senior ruling party lawmakers serving as ministers leading agencies subject to scrutiny.

The group said some committee chairs restricted lawmakers’ opportunities to question witnesses and, rather than acting as lawmakers, behaved like investigators, turning the audit into a confrontation-style interrogation.

– Reported by Asia Today; translated by UPI

© Asia Today. Unauthorized reproduction or redistribution prohibited.

WASHINGTON — Top officials in the White House learned in April that an investigation of the IRS would probably end up showing that the agency targeted conservative groups for special scrutiny, the White House spokesman conceded Monday, contrary to earlier Obama administration statements.

But White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said staffers didn’t tell President Obama the bombshell was coming and that the West Wing did nothing to interfere with the audit or the report before its release.

“The cardinal rule,” Carney said, “is that you do not intervene in an independent investigation, and you do not do anything that would give such an appearance. … And that’s the doctrine we followed.”

PHOTOS: President Obama’s rough week

Since an Inspector General’s report on the matter was released last week, Republicans have been trying to figure out how long the Obama administration has known about the allegations — and, in particular, whether the president was aware of the irregularities while running for reelection in 2012.

The leaders of the Senate Finance Committee sent a bipartisan letter to the IRS on Monday calling on the acting commissioner to disclose a raft of information on the matter, including any signs of communications between the IRS and the White House.

“Targeting applicants for tax-exempt status using political labels threatens to undermine the public’s trust in the IRS,” Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) wrote in a letter co-signed by Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), the committee’s ranking Republican. “Lack of candor in advising the Senate of this practice is equally troubling.”

Senators have been hearing complaints from nonprofit civic organizations for two years, Baucus wrote.

DOCUMENT: The Inspector General’s report on the IRS

White House aides had maintained for days that they knew nothing of the matter until the week of April 22, when the Treasury Department informed White House Counsel Kathy Ruemmler that a report was coming, and that they were not informed of what would be in the report.

Carney said last week that Ruemmler’s office was only told that the IG was finishing a review about matters involving the office in Cincinnati. “That’s all they were informed as a normal sort of heads-up,” he said.

Obama political advisor Dan Pfeiffer echoed the assertion during a CBS interview on Sunday, saying the White House was aware of the report but “not the details of what happened, not the results of the investigation, but that an independent investigation was about to conclude.”

Following a report to the contrary in Monday editions of the Wall Street Journal, Carney acknowledged that Ruemmler knew on April 24 that findings probably included evidence that the IRS had targeted conservative groups.

Ruemmler then informed Chief of Staff Denis McDonough and other members of the senior staff, Carney said. He said there were subsequent communications between Ruemmler’s and McDonough’s offices with their counterparts at Treasury to talk about the timing of the release and potential findings of the report.

It was Ruemmler who made the decision that the president didn’t need to know about the report in advance of its release, Carney said.

Her belief was that “this is not the kind of thing that you notify the president of, an investigation that’s not complete, because it wouldn’t be appropriate to do so,” Carney said.

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WASHINGTON — A dozen U.S. senators are calling on the Justice Department’s watchdog to examine the department’s failure to release all records pertaining to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein by last Friday’s congressionally mandated deadline, saying victims “deserve full disclosure” and the “peace of mind” of an independent audit.

Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska joined 11 Democrats in signing a letter Wednesday urging Acting Inspector General Don Berthiaume to audit the Justice Department’s compliance with the Epstein Files Transparency Act, the law enacted last month that requires the government to open its files on Epstein and his longtime confidant Ghislaine Maxwell.

“Given the [Trump] Administration’s historic hostility to releasing the files, politicization of the Epstein case more broadly, and failure to comply with the Epstein Files Transparency Act, a neutral assessment of its compliance with the statutory disclosure requirements is essential,” the senators wrote. Full transparency, they said, “is essential in identifying members of our society who enabled and participated in Epstein’s crimes.”

Murkowski and Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) led the letter-writing group. Others included Democratic Sens. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, Adam Schiff of California, Dick Durbin of Illinois, both Cory Booker and Andy Kim of New Jersey, Gary Peters of Michigan, Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, Mazie Hirono of Hawaii, and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island.

Meanwhile, Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, a co-sponsor of the transparency act, posted Wednesday on X: “DOJ did break the law by making illegal redactions and by missing the deadline.”

Despite the deadline, the Justice Department has said it plans to release records on a rolling basis. It blamed the delay on the time-consuming process of obscuring survivors’ names and other identifying information. More batches of records were posted over the weekend and on Tuesday. The department has not given any notice when more records might arrive.

“The reason why we are still reviewing documents and still continuing our process is simply that to protect victims,” Deputy Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday. “So the same individuals that are out there complaining about the lack of documents that were produced on Friday are the same individuals who apparently don’t want us to protect victims.”

Records that have been released, including photographs, interview transcripts, call logs, court records and other documents, were either already public or heavily blacked out, and many lacked necessary context. Records that hadn’t been seen before include transcripts of grand jury testimony from FBI agents who described interviews they had with several girls and young women who described being paid to perform sex acts for Epstein.

Other records made public in recent days include a note from a federal prosecutor from January 2020 that said Trump had flown on the financier’s private plane more often than had been previously known and emails between Maxwell and someone who signs off with the initial “A.” They contain other references that suggest the writer was Britain’s former Prince Andrew. In one, “A” writes: “How’s LA? Have you found me some new inappropriate friends?”

The senators’ call Wednesday for an inspector general audit comes days after Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) introduced a resolution that, if passed, would direct the Senate to file or join lawsuits aimed at forcing the Justice Department to comply with the disclosure and deadline requirements. In a statement, he called the staggered, heavily redacted release “a blatant cover-up.”

Sisak writes for the Associated Press.