CREW Requests Further Investigation of Ben Carsons HUD

[riversedge]

Link to tweet

CREW Requests Further Investigation of Ben Carson’s HUD


https://www.citizensforethics.org/press-release/crew-requests-investigation-ben-carsons-hud/

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE



February 28, 2018

CONTACT: Jordan Libowitz
202-408-5565 | [e-mail]

Washington—The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Inspector General should open an investigation into the department’s abuse of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) process and expand her investigation into potentially undue influence by Secretary Ben Carson’s family, according to a request for investigation sent today by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW).

According to reports, Carson has expended or attempted to expend funds that exceed the $5,000 congressional allotment for office decoration at the instigation of his wife, Candy Carson. At a time when HUD was suffering from a $10 million budget shortfall, an employee was urged to exceed the $5,000 spending limit congressionally appropriated for any redecoration and “to ‘find money’ for Mrs. Carson.” Secretary Carson also purportedly spent $31,000 in late 2017 for a new custom dining room set for his office suite.

On February 14th, CREW called on the HUD IG to launch a full investigation into Carson’s apparent violation of his ethics obligations by knowingly allowing his family to use his public office for private gain.

“At a time when services for the poor and homeless may be curtailed by budget cuts, it appears that the Carson family is inappropriately spending a great deal of money to make Secretary Carson’s office more comfortable,” CREW Executive Director Noah Bookbinder said. “This is egregious and should be investigated.”

The IG further needs to investigate HUD’s treatment of FOIA requests under Carson. There have been reports of inappropriate political pressure used to affect the processing of a FOIA request seeking information that may have placed the agency and high-level agency officials in a negative light. Also, HUD has processed two of CREW’s FOIA requests in a manner that suggests political pressure may have played a role.

“The Inspector General needs to get to the bottom of what’s going on at HUD,” Bookbinder said. “There needs to be transparency, whether it reflects well on Secretary Carson or not.”

Click here to read the request for investigation.



-30-

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) is a nonprofit legal watchdog group dedicated to holding public officials accountable for their actions. For more information, please visit www.citizensforethics.org or contact Jordan Libowitz at 202-408-5565 or [e-mail].


Top stories Ben Carson Tries to Cancel $31,000
Dining Furniture
Purchase for HUD Office
The New York Times
3 days ago


Read Ben Carson's
explanation for the
$31,000 dining set
CNN.com
3 days ago


Vanity Fair
Sign In







Ben Carson, Jared Kushner, and the New Rules of Corruption



https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/03/ben-carson-jared-kushner-and-the-new-rules-of-corruption


Corruption tends to come in two flavors: the sort that doesn’t take work and the sort that does. Flying first class is easy; circumventing the law to obtain a $31,000 dining-room set is hard. And then there is Jared Kushner.
by

T.A. Frank

March 2, 2018 4:00 pm


Most Americans follow the news only superficially, and for that they should be envied and, probably, imitated. They might miss a lot of stories that matter, but they also miss thousands of stories that don’t, like most in each week’s Trump-related flood. It’s hard to sort through all the noise. This week alone, we learned that HUD officials (seemingly under pressure) spent $31,000 on a new dining set for Ben Carson, that Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke keeps bending ethics rules on travel, that E.P.A. chief Scott Pruitt has been flying first class on the public’s dime and spending thousands of dollars in short periods of time, that H.R. McMaster is reportedly on his way out, that Trump is imposing major tariffs on imports of steel, that Trump supports gun restrictions or maybe doesn’t, that White House communications director Hope Hicks will be quitting (announced a day after testifying before Congress), that Jared Kushner lost his top-secret security clearance, that Trump wants John Kelly to push Ivanka and Jared out of the White House, and that Jared Kushner’s family business received major loans from lenders who’d been meeting regularly with Kushner at the White House. Is all this good or bad for the White House? What’s worth noticing in the big picture? Let us sigh and begin.

First: palace intrigue. There’s no reason to doubt reports that Trump has gone irrevocably south on Kushner and is looking to freeze him out, meaning also Ivanka, with John Kelly deployed as the bad guy. This is why Kushner loses his clearance. This is why we see anti-Kushner and anti-Ivanka stories sourced to F.B.I. players and others in the shadows. This is why Anthony Scaramucci, who’d been brought in by Jared and Ivanka, is furiously attacking Kelly as “General Jackass.” And this is why Hope Hicks, who owes her career to Ivanka, feels duty-bound to leave. (The Drudge Report, which seems to find in Kushner a good source, has dutifully tried to ignore all negative reports.)

Next, corruption. Broadly speaking, it comes in two sorts: the sort that doesn’t take work and the sort that does. The former is what you get when you’re being lax. It’s a staple of Washington life, because conflicts of interest abound. In the world of couples alone, journalists are married to civil servants; lobbyists are married to elected officials, etc. On the other hand, Ben Carson, to exceed the HUD decoration budget limit, had to put a little bit of muscle into it. Similarly, when Scott Pruitt was flying first class, he must have known he was pressing his luck. Ditto with Zinke. And, when Jared saw loans going to his family business—well, that’s in another league altogether. He had to know it was wildly unethical.
Watch Now: Tom Hanks Changes the Ribbon on a Typewriter

.................................................

Now let’s make some quick moral estimates. In terms of ethical degeneracy, the loans to Jared seem like Exhibit A, the most egregious of this week’s reports of sleaze. The rest—eh. Not good, but not catastrophic. Stuff like this happens a lot, to all White Houses. The Obama White House had some pretty eyebrow-raising episodes of its own, such as the Ecuadorians who’d been barred from the United Sates but who got admitted after giving big checks to Democrats. Eric Holder got grief for millions in travel expenses. Kathleen Sebelius got in trouble for violating the Hatch Act. All of this is forgotten.

Yes, it’s unseemly for Pruitt and Zinke to waste taxpayer money on travel, but it’s an easy mistake or temptation amid a workplace with a lot of high expenses for mundane things.

(Government officials are expensive to guard and move.) It’s also very tacky of Ben Carson to waste money on HUD, but he could be doing stuff that’s much worse, and maybe someday he will. HUD is a broken department set up for corruption, and some of those most eager to take an ax to the entire thing are those who have worked for it.

Now we go to political implications.......................................


Ben Carson, Jared
Kushner, and the
New Rules of
Corruption
Vanity Fair
1 day ago

[mahatmakanejeeves]

1. HUD official complained about effort to redecorate Carsons office

‘I do like 3 meetings a day on that’: HUD official complained about effort to redecorate Carson’s office

By Jack Gillum and Juliet Eilperin February 27 Email the author

A week before Ben Carson was confirmed as secretary of Housing and Urban Development, a career official at the agency complained to a colleague about the hours she had to spend curtailing plans to redecorate his office.

Helen Foster, then HUD’s chief administration officer, wrote in an email that she had to answer “endless questions about why I won’t fund more than the $5000 limit” for redecorating the office. “I do like 3 meetings a day on that,” she wrote on Feb. 22, 2017. “I hate this.”

Foster was transferred to a new position in July, and she later told a watchdog agency that she believed she was demoted in retaliation for concerns she expressed about office expenses and potential violations of open-records laws. Foster said she had been excluded from handling Freedom of Information Act requests filed by the Democratic National Committee — even though she oversaw department FOIA responses — because one of President Trump’s appointees believed she was a Democrat.

On Tuesday, HUD spokesman Raffi Williams denied that the department overspent to redecorate Carson’s office, saying that used chairs were brought up from a basement and that blinds were replaced at a cost of $3,400. Williams said he could not address the specific allegations in Foster’s complaint, including her charges that the redecorating effort was spurred by Carson’s wife, Candy, and that the Democrats’ FOIA requests received special treatment.
....

Jack Gillum is an investigative reporter for The Washington Post. He previously worked for the Associated Press, where he focused on national politics and data journalism projects. He also pursued investigations into standardized test cheating and college athletics for USA Today, and he began his career at the Arizona Daily Star in Tucson.
Follow @jackgillum
Juliet Eilperin is The Washington Post's senior national affairs correspondent, covering how the new administration is transforming a range of U.S. policies and the federal government itself. She is the author of two books — one on sharks and another on Congress, not to be confused with each other — and has worked for The Post since 1998.
Follow @eilperin

[riversedge]

2. The whole trump admin loves to punish people. demean them.