Government Accountability Project GAP

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michael Pack, the Chief Executive Officer of the United States Agency for Global Media (USAGM), which oversees Voice of America, was recently found responsible for several instances of misconduct, according to a federal inquiry, Rolling Stone reports.

Per NPR, the former President Donald Trump appointed leader, in 2020, "met with a career employee to discuss which senior leaders at the agency and the Voice of America should be forced out due to their perceived political beliefs," and "firing someone over political affiliation is typically a violation of federal civil service law."

Rolling Stone reports:

The Office of Special Counsel found that 'during his less-than-eight-month tenure CEO [Michael] Pack was responsible for numerous improper activities,' including 'abuse of authority, gross mismanagement, a gross waste of funds, or a violation of law, rule, or regulation.' The OSC's report concluded that Pack 'abused his authority and retaliated against career USAGM executives who engaged in whistleblowing.'

Furthermore, according to Rolling Stone "the OSC found thatPack interfered with independent journalism at Voice of America and other outlets he oversaw; retaliated against executives who filed whistleblower complaints; and mismanaged and wasted funds by paying $1.6 million in a confidential, no-bid contract to a Virginia law firm to investigate USAGM executives. Pack also 'restricted employee communications with outside parties [and] failed to exempt legally protected disclosures.'"

Regarding what was said about employees' political beliefs, NPR reports an employee wrote "Hates Republicans" in a memo, while another said, "Openly despises Trump and Republicans."

David Seide, a lawyer "with the Government Accountability Project, a nonprofit public interest law firm which has represented more than 30 whistleblowers at USAGM, VOA and its sister networks since Pack took office," according to NPR, said, "This report is remarkable in its breadth and depth and detail of the wrongdoing that was underway at these agencies in the last six months of the Trump administration."

cNN Two federal employees are calling for an investigation into the hiring of a senior Justice Department official who had been interviewed by a manager who resigned shortly after -- and just days before President Joe Biden's inauguration.

The anonymous whistleblowers accuse Jeffrey Bossert Clark of conducting a bogus interview process for the assistant director of the Civil Division and appointing an inexperienced attorney days before his own departure. Clark had resigned on January 14 from his Trump-appointed position as the assistant attorney general of the Environment and Natural Resources Division and acting assistant attorney general of the Civil Division.

NPRfirst reported on the letter that was emailed to members of Congress and the Justice Department's inspector general.

According to the five-page letter, the employees claim Clark appointed an attorney who "volunteered and was part of the DOJ litigation team defending a controversial Trump administration policy ... that barred pregnant, unaccompanied minors in federal immigration custody from obtaining abortions." The policy was later declared unconstitutional.

Clark defended the appointment in an email to CNN on Wednesday.

"Civil Division managers sent me three candidates to interview, each of whom they rated well-qualified. I interviewed all three using the same process I had used for other positions. I think it's very unfortunate that the disappointed applicants would attack their own colleague's selection," he said. "That candidate had strong leadership qualities and was the best qualified. Pointing to that lawyer's work on the Garza litigation, with a D.C. Circuit decision that came out years before I joined the Civil Division, is just a baseless attempt to cast aspersions."

The whistleblowers, though, called Clark's involvement in the hiring process was "unusual."

"More notably, his interviews of the two unsuccessful finalists were perfunctory. Each was interviewed for a grand total of 15 minutes -- Mr. Clark used a timer and was not particularly engaged," wrote David Seide, a senior counsel at the Government Accountability Project, who represents the whistleblowers.

Seide told CNN on Wednesday that the call for the House and Senate to investigate isn't about the employee Clark hired. "It has more to do with an abuse of the process by Clark," he said.

The employee was not named in the letter.

Seide urged lawmakers to "take prompt action" by holding a hearing and called for the Justice Department to reopen the position and restart the interviewing process.

Dena Iverson, the principal deputy director for the Justice Department's Office of Public Affairs, declined to comment to CNN. Stephanie Logan, a spokeswoman for DOJ's Office of Inspector General, also declined to comment.

Days after Clark's resignation, The New York Times reported that he had discussed with former President Donald Trump removing then-acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, replacing him and using his powers to prevent Congress from certifying President Joe Biden win.

"Like other instances of misconduct by departing Trump administration officials, these abuses of authority are disturbing," Seide wrote in the letter. "Mr. Clark's last-minute politicization of the DOJ hiring process and issuance of policy memoranda -- capped by his willingness to participate in what was close to an attempted coup d'état -- demands immediate, close and transparent oversight and investigations."

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icn:

...The Royal Society of the United Kingdom, for centuries a renowned arbiter of science, harshly criticized Exxon in 2006 for publishing "very misleading" statements about the IPCC's Third Assessment Report. The IPCC found that most of the observed warming of the planet in the late 20th century was probably caused by humans.[CEI ebell ctr-slap?]

The Society's communications manager Bob Wardreminded Exxon pointedly that one of its own scientists had contributed to the IPCC chapter in question.

The Royal Society said it had no problem with Exxon funding scientific research, but "we do have concerns about ExxonMobil's funding of lobby groups that seek to misrepresent the scientific evidence relating to climate change."

Ward said Exxon was funding at least 39 organizations "featuring information on their websites that misrepresented the science on climate change, by outright denial of the evidence that greenhouse gases are driving climate change, or by overstating the amount and significance of uncertainty in knowledge."

appendix b]

exxon's uncertainty campaign was detailed in three exhaustive reports published in 2007 by the Union of Concerned Scientists and the Government Accountability Project.

At a Congressional hearing in 2007, Harvard scientist James McCarthy, who was a member of the UCS board and the newly elected president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, declared: "The Bush administration and a network of Exxon-funded, ExxonMobil funded organizations have sought to distort, manipulate and suppress climate science so as to confuse the American public about the urgency of the global warming problem, and thus, forestall a strong policy response."