Senior lawmakers in the United States Congress say the Department of State is withholding information on its failure to promote diversity based on legally dubious claims.
The Department said it did not have to provide information to its oversight committees that were “internal documents and non-publicly available”.
These claims raise questions about whether the Department will withhold other information to lawmakers who sit on committees with jurisdiction over the Government’s foreign policy.
It comes just after Democratic Party members in the House of Representatives and the Senate Democrats launched an inquiry into President Donald Trump’s abrupt decision to fire the State Department’s top watchdog — the fourth Inspector General he has dismissed in the past two months.
Sources said the decision came after the Inspector General, Steve Linick (pictured), opened an investigation into Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo’s misuse of staff for personal reasons.
In a letter to Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi Mr Trump said he had “lost confidence” in Mr Linick’s ability to do his job.
Chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Eliot Engel, and head of the committee’s body on oversight and investigations, Joaquin Castro rebuked the Department.
In a joint statement, they said the Department’s reasons for withholding information on the diversity issue were “not a legally-cognisable basis for withholding information from Congress”.
The two Democrats said the Department was constitutionally mandated to share information with the committee and had shared internal information regularly in the past.
The State Department did not respond to a request for comment.
Washington, 18 May 2020
