A public relations firm with close ties to the Republican Party is representing a former AmeriCorps inspector general who was fired last June by the Obama administration.
CRC Public Relations of Alexandria, VA, which helped orchestrate the Swift Boat Veterans campaign against Democrat John Kerry in 2004, is now handling the case of Gerald Walpin, a former inspector general for AmeriCorps, who claims he was wrongfully fired by the White House, the Los Angeles Times first reported.
The involvement of CRC, whose client roster includes the Republican National committee, conservative publishing house Regnery and Conservatives for Patients Rights, an anti-health-reform group, makes it all but inevitable the case will be a conservative cause célèbre. The firm, which is headed by Gregory R. Mueller, a former aide to Patrick Buchanan and to Steve Forbes, is famous for its incendiary, no-holds-barred approach.
Walpin, 78, a George W. Bush appointee, claims that he was fired by the White House in June for his aggressive probe of former NBA star-turned-Sacramento Mayor Larry M. Johnson, an outspoken supporter of Barack Obama’s during the presidential campaign.
In August, 2008, Walpin referred Johnson for criminal prosecution for allegedly misusing AmeriCorps funds at a private not-for-profit education group called St. Hope Academy, which Johnson had founded, as well as for inappropriate behavior with female students. Johnson was running for mayor at the time of the referral.
But the acting U.S. attorney for Sacramento, Lawrence Brown, also a Bush appointee, found insufficient evidence to press charges, as did the Sacramento police. Brown settled the case; Johnson and the academy agreed to repay half of $847,000 in grants it had received from AmeriCorps.
Brown then filed a complaint with an inspector general ethics panel, accusing Walpin of withholding exculpatory information and interfering in his investigation by speaking with the news media. That complaint was dismissed by the panel in October.
The White House denies any political motivation for the firing, saying that Walpin, a former federal prosecutor appointed in Bush in 2007, was fired because he had lost the confidence of the president and the board of the Corporation for National and Community Service (which runs AmeriCorps).
In a letter sent to lawmakers a week after the firing, the president’s special counsel, Norm Eisen, said the board has asked for a review of Walpin after a May board meeting in which he was “confused, disoriented, unable to answer questions, and exhibited other behavior that led the Board to question his capacity to serve.”
It is unusual for an administration to fire a federal inspector general because of the appearance of political interference. In fact, as a senator, Obama had been among the sponsors of a bill requiring the White House to give Congress 30 days notice before doing so and providing lawmakers with the rationale.
In Walpin’s case, the White House did not follow that protocol, releasing a letter detailing its rationale the week after the firing.
Republican lawmakers are hitting back – and the CRC’s fingerprints are all over their response.
“The claim that Gerald Walpin was removed for legitimate, nonpolitical reasons is unsupported and unpersuasive,” says a report on the firing, released late last month by Republicans Rep. Darrell Issa of Vista, Calif., and Sen. Charles E. Grassley of Iowa.
The case has already produced collateral damage. Michelle Rhee, a national education reformer who was on the board of St. Hope and is now DC Public Schools chancellor, is described in the GOP report as having tried to persuade Walpin to back off the case because Johnson was a “good guy,” according to the Los Angeles Times.
Rhee has since disclosed that she is engaged to marry Johnson.
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