Sens. Ron Johnson (R-WI) and Rick Scott (R-FL) are warning that bureaucrats in the federal government may be targeting Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Inspector General Joseph Cuffari, appointed by former President Donald Trump, after he published a series of damaging reports exposing President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris’s policies at the United States-Mexico border.
A letter from Johnson and Scott, exclusively obtained by Breitbart News, details warnings from whistleblowers who are accusing the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency’s (CIGIE) Integrity Committee, chaired by Kimberly Howell, of a “politically motivated” targeting of Joseph Cuffari because of his reports that call out the Biden-Harris administration’s border policies.
These whistleblowers also claim that the Integrity Committee has been inappropriately targeting the DHS Office of Inspector General (OIG), potentially for political reasons,” the letter from Johnson and Scott, both of whom sit on the Senate Homeland Security Committee, states:
Whistleblowers also allege that the Integrity Committee’s examinations into the DHS OIG may be politically motivated. DHS Inspector General Joseph Cuffari is a Trump appointee who has helmed multiple inspections into vulnerabilities at the southern border. For example, in the last year, the DHS OIG published reports titled, “DHS Does Not Have Assurance That All Migrants Can be Located Once Released into the United States” and “CBP Released a Migrant on a Terrorist Watchlist, and ICE Faced Information Sharing Challenge Planning and Conducting the Arrest.” Additionally, the DHS OIG recently released a report that found problems with “the government’s parole processes surrounding the resettling of tens of thousands of Afghan evacuees after the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan.” In July, the DHS OIG released its report detailing the U.S. Secret Service’s (USSS) failures around January 6, 2021.4 During that review, the DHS OIG faced issues with obtaining and accessing USSS records, including text messages. DHS and its components are obstructing DHS OIG’s independent work. This is unacceptable and the Inspector General community along with Congress must stand with the DHS OIG.
[Emphasis added]
Indeed, Cuffari has opened an OIG probe into the Secret Service following the assassination attempt of Trump last month in Butler County, Pennsylvania.
Likewise, Cuffari detailed the changing role of Border Patrol agents under Biden and Harris, noting in a June 2023 OIG report that agents are now “providing care and welfare services” to newly arrived migrants before they are released into the U.S. interior.
In September 2022, Cuffari issued a bombshell report detailing how the Biden-Harris administration brought Afghans to American communities who were “not fully vetted” and could “pose a risk to national security” following the withdrawal of the U.S. Armed Forces from Afghanistan.
Also last year, Cuffari published an OIG report on a case where DHS under Biden and Harris allowed an illegal alien on the government’s “Terrorism Watch List” to board a domestic commercial flight after releasing him into the U.S. interior.
Most recently, Cuffari revealed that nearly 67,000 inadmissible travelers were identified at U.S. airports from October 2021 through May 2023. Almost 400 of these inadmissible travelers were released into the U.S. interior from just one undisclosed airport and nearly half did not return for their deportation flights.
The letter from Johnson and Scott that Cuffari’s “ongoing investigations could be perceived as a negative reflection of the Biden administration’s policies” and thus may be “an apparent attempt to protect” the Biden-Harris administration by hindering, delaying, and stopping “Cuffari’s efforts to expose the Biden administration’s policy failures, most notably the open border catastrophe.”
“To be clear, any effort to obstruct, delay, or silence the DHS OIG, particularly for political purposes, is completely unacceptable,” Johnson and Scott write. “Based on the DHS OIG’s public reports issued to date, it is evident that, despite the Integrity Committee’s ongoing inquiries, Dr. Cuffari and his staff are successfully fulfilling their oversight responsibilities.”
Johnson and Scott are asking Howell to provide them with a briefing on her investigation into Cuffari as well as a dollar amount of how much money has been spent on the investigation.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at
