JEDI: Democrats Link IG’s Ouster To Investigation Of Trump

UPDATED with expert analysis WASHINGTON:  The top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee is wondering aloud whether President Trump fired the Pentagon’s semi-independent Inspector General last week because the IG had tried to investigate Trump’s role in the $10 billion JEDI cloud computing contract.

“This report is troubling and incomplete,” Sen. Jack Reed said in a statement. “It offers yet another example of the president’s efforts to inappropriately pressure federal agencies.  It also raises the specter that President Trump suddenly fired the independent DOD watchdog because of his willingness to ask tough questions.”

House Intelligence chairman Rep. Adam Schiff also denounced the president’s “corruption” in a tweet. But while Schiff’s committee led last year’s impeachment, it is Reed’s committee – chaired by Republican Jim Inhofe –that has jurisdiction over the Pentagon and its Inspector General.

Trump has publicly weighed in on the JEDI competition, repeatedly denouncing Amazon Web Services and its owner Jeff Bezos, who also owns the Washington Post — which the president frequently denounces. Amazon then lost the contract to rival Microsoft and swiftly filed suit against the government for what it calls a “highly questionable” award. Some of Amazon’s arguments have already gotten a positive response from the judge, and the Pentagon has asked the court’s permission to redo parts of the process.

The legal and public relations battle over JEDI was in a quiet phase last week when, on April 7, Trump dismissed the Defense Department’s acting Inspector General, Glenn Fine. Days before, Trump had declared his intention to oust the Intelligence Community’s IG. Michael Aktinson, who alerted Congress to the whistleblower complaint over aid to Ukraine that triggered Trump’s recent impeachment.

At the time, coverage of Fine’s firing focused on how he would no longer chair the congressionally-mandated panel overseeing the $2 trillion COVID-19 stimulus package. What the media didn’t know was that Fine’s office had also been quietly wrapping up their report on the JEDI investigation.

The release of that report yesterday morning puts Fine’s ouster in a new light. The Inspector General ruled that the Pentagon’s award process had been fair. But the IG report also laid out how the White House and Pentagon general counsels had imposed one restriction after another on any attempt to ask about White House interference.

“The White House’s assertion of some kind of ‘communications’ privilege is part of a pattern of refusing to answer questions and ethical lapses by a president who wants no independent oversight and is firing inspectors general left and right,” Reed’s statement said. “Mr. Fine’s removal now appears connected to his willingness to do his job and ask hard questions.”

Amazon promptly circulated links to Reed’s and Schiff’s remarks – as well as to Breaking Defense’s coverage, which raised the prospect of a congressional inquiry – and added its own dismissal of the report.

“It says nothing about the merits of the award, which we know are highly questionable based on the Judge’s recent statements and the government’s request to go back and take corrective action,” an Amazon spokesman said. “This report couldn’t assess political interference because several DoD witnesses were instructed by the White House not to answer the IG’s questions. The White House’s refusal to cooperate with the IG’s investigation is yet another blatant attempt to avoid a meaningful and transparent review of the JEDI contract award.”

Far from settling the matter, the IG report has only fanned the flames of the controversy in Congress – and, quite possibly, the courts. Meanwhile the much-needed computing capability that JEDI was supposed to build remains in limbo.

UPDATED The decision to fire the widely respected Fine — appointed to his Pentagon post by Obama but a veteran of both Republican and Democratic administrations —  had baffled acquisition expert Bill Greenwalt, a veteran of both the Pentagon and Capitol Hill.

If his ouster was indeed tied to the JEDI investigation, Greenwalt told me this afternoon, “that theory could explain a lot.”

“I could never understand why he was fired,” Greenwalt said. “To put someone else in that slot for the remainder of the administration is a pretty underwhelming reason considering there are just a few months left.”

“If the JEDI audit was his downfall, then he would have been fired for the audacity of doing his job,” Greenwalt told me. “I would expect Congress will spend more time on this because the IGs are a cornerstone of independent oversight.”

“The role of the IG is to be independent and ask hard questions and go wherever the evidence leads, but they are in a tough spot as they report to both the executive and legislative branches,” he said. “IGs’ tenures can last over several administrations, and incoming administrations don’t always trust those who were appointed in previous administrations, but they rarely if ever fire them. Of course, this is like no administration we have ever seen.”