Horowitz went to war against the Obama administration, and he won. Obama nominated Michael Horowitz in July of 2011 to fill a vacancy left open by the resignation of Glenn Fine. Horowitz was confirmed in March the following year, and sworn in on
April 16th, 2012. Horowitz inherited a position that was effectively neutered in 2011 by Eric Holder's interpretation of § 6 of
The Inspector General Act of 1978. (Authority of Inspector General)
Obama was incredibly fond of leaving vacancies in governmental bodies. You can't have a scandal if you have no oversight, and you can't have oversight if you completely hamstring their ability to investigate, after all. Holder and his legal team determined that the IG had to
request information, rather than just being allowed access to it. This allowed Holder--and other agency heads--to bog down IG requests in bureaucratic red tape, and in some cases
deny them outright. Who watches the watchmen? No one if you can just tell them to fuck off, apparently.
But what caused Holder to do that? What happened in 2011 that would cause an Attorney General to freak the fuck out, lock all the doors, and
force oversight committees to
request documents rather than allow them to simply access them? The ATF Gun-walking Scandal, a.k.a.
Fast and Furious.
Horowitz' department was a lame duck on day one, so what did he do? He methodically went to war. You could even call it a war of independence, because that is exactly what it was. On March 5th, 2013 The Inspectors General prepared a report for Congress titled
Open and Unimplemented IG Recommendations. This report drew attention to the stonewalling by focusing on the money being wasted, but it was much more than that. I don't have an archived version of the 2013 report, but
here's the 2019 report if you want an example of what these reports contain.
Horowitz laid the Obama Administration bare before Congress. These two charts from the report illustrated an administration that was wasting money at an
alarming rate because they were
ignoring the IG. Horowitz was laying the groundwork for an alliance with Congress, an alliance that would pay off in his quest for independence. He would supply them with information and appear at hearings to publicly make his case. Sort of an inside/outside approach.
For the remainder of 2013 the DOJ IG bid his time and did the best he could under the circumstances. But on April 3rd, 2014, at the end of the
DOJ budget hearing, Horowitz came back to be the ceaseless thorn in Holder's side. What ensued was a series of questions that were budgetary in nature with the exception of the line of questioning pursued by Senator Shelby. Shelby is in the minority as Obama has not yet lost the Senate. Shelby's time is limited, but watch how both he and Horowitz work together. The foreshadowing was when Horowitz and Shelby reveal the legislative end game around
1:54:18.
August 5th, 2014. In an
unprecedented letter to Congress, 47 IGs blasted the Obama administration for "serious limitations on access to records" that impedes their investigations, as other agencies were beginning to adopt Holder's position.
On September 4th Horowitz finally secured a Congressional oversight hearing for the Inspectors General, and then on September 10th, Horowitz released
Obstructing Oversight: Concerns from the Inspectors General, the legal document of record where Michael Horowitz lays out his case against the Obama administration.
Horowitz details the obstruction of Holder that began with his investigation into Fast and Furious, and attaches his fight for independence to the will of Congress being subverted. Less than two weeks later the inside game begins to pay off when Issa introduces H.R.5492 - Inspector General Empowerment Act of 2014 as the 113th Congress winds down. It was a
major victory for Mr. Horowitz in his war against the Obama Administration.
In November, Obama lost the Senate and the 114th Congress convened. Shortly thereafter on February 26th, 2015 Chuck Grassley introduced S.579 - Inspector General Empowerment Act of 2015. Hororowitz' alliance with both houses of Congress was now firmly cemented. On July 20th, 2015 the DOJ Office of Legal Counsel issued a ruling against the IG position. The OLC provided Holder and the Obama Administration with their initial legal argument. If you're in desperate need of a sleep aid,
here's all 68 pages of this ass-tastically boring legalese
horseshit.
On August 3rd, 2015 Michael Horowitz--who had
firmly cemented these "inside game" alliances by now--had about had enough of this shit and brought down the full weight of the Inspectors General into the fray, blowing out the 68 pages of garbage with just
2.5 pages of legal argument that can be summarized as "I win, eat my ass, I'm the Inspector General.
Bitch."
On August 12th, 2015 A confident Inspector General Horowitz
took to the airwaves to publicly discuss the OLC ruling. (The outside game) On December 7th 20165, Jason Chaffetz introduces H.R.6450 - Inspector General Empowerment Act of 2016. Democrats in both houses concede and the bill swiftly passes on voice votes forcing a defeated, lame duck President Obama to sign it into law on December 16th, 2015.
Inspector General Horowitz waged a war of attrition and independence against a corrupt, administration that was
refusing to be held accountable from
day one. He forged an alliance with Congress, and using an inside/outside game went from an empty hearing room at a budget meeting to complete freedom for his department, cleaving it away from the limitations of the Attorney General, and telling every single one of these department heads to shut up and fork over their documents for proper oversight.
Horowitz
won.
