Education Department is stonewalling inspector general investigation into staff cuts, Democrats allege

Senior congressional Democrats on Tuesday requested that the Education Department fully comply with a watchdog investigation into President Donald Trump’s workforce reductions that have resulted in cuts to half of the agency’s staff, as it is being targeted for elimination. 

“The laws that establish and authorize our Inspectors General do not permit Departments to stonewall their Inspectors General,” wrote the ranking members of the House and Senate education, oversight and appropriations committees. 

Their letter was prompted by a May 23 notification to Congress from acting Education IG René L. Rocque that her office “has experienced unreasonable denials and repeated delays from the Department in providing the OIG access to documents, staff, and information.”

The previous Education IG was fired by Trump in January as part of the mass removal of the agency watchdogs. 

Specifically, Rocque wrote that the department asserted the requested information cannot be provided because it is “deliberative…and the subject of ongoing administrative and court litigation.” She said that is not a legally valid reason for withholding documents from an IG. 

Rocque also reported that officials are requiring a representative from the department’s Office of General Counsel to be present during IG interviews with staff, which she said contradicts longstanding practice.

While the IG has received some information from the department, Rocque said it was only after "significant delay” and that, as a result, her office would not be able to begin issuing their report this summer as planned. 

“The Department has not demonstrated its commitment to fully cooperating with the OIG and is interfering with the OIG’s ability to conduct an independent and timely review,” she wrote. 

Congressional Democrats in their letter to Education Secretary Linda McMahon pointed to media reports of department programs and services that have experienced slowdowns since the staffing cuts. 

“These examples and the many others like them call into question your promise that the delivery of statutory programs would continue unabated after the reduction in force actions,” they wrote. “Congress and the public need to understand the full extent and impact of the Administration’s actions on the Department and the students, families, and educational communities it may no longer be able to serve. The OIG must be allowed to do its job.”

Likewise, in a May 22 preliminary district court order for the Education Department to bring back the staff it had previously laid off, the judge concluded that the RIFs made it “effectively impossible” for the department to perform its legally mandated duties and that they amounted to “dismantl[ing] the department without an authorizing statute.” 

The lawmakers requested that the department, by Friday, provide a date by which the IG will receive the materials in question, ensure investigative interviews with Education staff will happen without an OGC representative and justify any rationales for noncompliance. 

The Education Department did not respond to a request for comment.