Following years of investigation by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and a call for President Biden to remove her from office, embattled Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) Inspector General Laura Wertheimer resigned today from office effective July 30. Grassley made the following comment on that news.
“It’s about time. Inspectors general do important work across government to hold bad actors accountable and combat waste, fraud and abuse. Ms. Wertheimer neither embraced those duties nor set an example of how a government office should be run. Whistleblower after whistleblower shared stories with my office about Ms. Wertheimer’s professional misconduct, personal ridicule of colleagues and ineffectual work practices. That’s not what our government needed, and it took longer than it should have for this change. Any others who engaged in misconduct must also go.
“I urge President Biden to quickly nominate a qualified individual to the post as soon as practical. The FHFA has been without a qualified IG for far too long already.”
In April, Grassley called on President Biden to remove Inspector General Wertheimer from office following a damning report from the Integrity Committee of the Council of Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency (CIGIE) on her conduct and performance. Grassley pressed for such a review by CIGIE and the Office of Special Counsel in 2017 after he received multiple whistleblower complaints about Wertheimer.
Grassley is a longtime advocate for inspectors general and government accountability, having authored numerous laws to bolster and protect inspector general offices. Over the course of multiple administrations, Grassley has sought to protect inspectors general from political interference or inappropriate removal.
Original source can be found here.
