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Rising tensions are evident between the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and its inspector general, Joseph Cuffari, a Trump appointee. Cuffari is challenging agency leadership, accusing them of trying to hinder his investigative efforts.
Joseph Cuffari, who has experienced his own tumultuous period as the DHS inspector general, has found himself at odds with outgoing Secretary Kristi Noem. He informed lawmakers that at least 11 of his investigations, including a criminal inquiry, have faced “systematic obstruction” from her office.
President Trump dismissed Noem amid swirling controversy, partly due to concerns about a $220 million advertising contract that was awarded to her associates. Cuffari’s warnings also raised alarm among GOP lawmakers, prompting questions about her interference with his investigative duties.
The situation escalated when DHS decided to classify a report from Cuffari’s office last year. This report scrutinized Noem’s decision to change airport security procedures by ending the requirement for passengers to remove their shoes.
Interestingly, Cuffari himself is an unexpected figure to challenge the agency due to his own history of challenges and controversies.
“I’m pleasantly surprised to see that Joe Cuffari appears to be trying to conduct some oversight over these critical issues,” said Mark Greenblatt, a former inspector general who was both hired and fired by President Trump in a mass dismissal of inspectors general.
“The DHS story has been the albatross on the IG community for years.”
Rep. Bennie Thompson (Miss.), the top Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee who has previously called for Cuffari to resign, described the inspector general’s claims of stalling as serious.
“It is an anomaly when an IG complains about not being able to do their job,” Thompson said. However, he added, “This whole dust-up with Kristi Noem was highly unusual coming from the IG that we had come to know.”
“He’s been around since 2019 and has not really distinguished himself in the role of IG,” Thompson said.
Cuffari has made plenty of headlines since he was appointed to the role under the first Trump administration.
The independent Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency (CIGIE), the watchdog’s watchdog, called for Cuffari to be removed in 2024, investigating him following “a litany of complaints” — 24 in total.
Cuffari’s chief counsel later sued over the report, disputing CIGIE’s process and authority. But it came after an anonymous 2022 letter from his employees calling for Cuffari’s removal.
He’s taken surprising stances by declining to investigate major matters, such as the Secret Service’s role in clearing Lafayette Park of those protesting near the White House in the wake of George Floyd’s death.
He’s been in hot water for failing to alert Congress about missing Secret Service text messages from Jan. 6, 2021, pushing lawmakers at the time to ask him to hand off the investigation to someone else.
He later admitted to deleting his own text messages, an apparent violation of public records laws.
And CIGIE also concluded Cuffari “abused his authority” to retaliate against employees who had raised questions about his qualifications by spending nearly $1.4 million with a law firm to investigate his own employees.
One of the employees filed a civil suit over the matter, resulting in a $1.17 million whistleblower reprisal payment.
All those issues have given him something of a black eye in the inspector general community.
But it was dissatisfaction among Democrats with his performance under the second Trump administration that sparked his disclosure that he was being blocked from carrying out investigations.
Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) requested a meeting with Cuffari last month to demand answers about why he wasn’t investigating DHS’s immigration raid in Chicago. During that meeting, Cuffari indicated he was facing pushback at DHS, prompting Duckworth to fire off a letter to Noem accusing DHS of making “repeated tacit threats” to compromise inspector general independence.
Noem’s office, she learned, had pointed to an obscure provision of the Inspector General Act that allows Cabinet secretaries to kill investigations for national security reasons.
DHS general counsel James Percival, in a letter obtained by The Hill, confirmed he asked for a list of Cuffari’s active investigations, arguing that in order to weigh whether to use their authority, they would need to be privy to what investigations are ongoing.
To Duckworth’s office, Percival’s letter read as an admission of an intimidation campaign.
“I am frankly shocked that instead of simply denying that the Secretary is seeking to intimidate an independent government watchdog out of investigating potential crimes committed by DHS agents, it appears her brown-nosing General Counsel is proud of his efforts to sabotage IG independence,” Duckworth said last month.
Cuffari then sent a letter to key lawmakers outlining all the probes in which he is facing pushback from Noem’s team. That sparked an outburst from Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) when Noem appeared before lawmakers earlier this month.
“Does anybody have any idea how bad it has to be for the OIG in this agency to come out and do this publicly? That is stonewalling, that’s a failure of leadership, and that is why I’ve called for your resignation,” Tillis said as applause began to ring out in the hearing room.
In a hearing the next day, Noem said Cuffari was pushing the bounds of information requested by an inspector general, saying he wanted “unfettered access” and would need to provide scoping memos in order to access classified information — framing others disputed.
Noem’s office has been plagued by plenty of scandals, as well. Democrats on Monday accused her of lying to Congress about the ad campaign and other matters. And questions have dogged her tenure over whether she misused other DHS resources, spending big money on jets for travel, as well as various management decisions.
To Cuffari’s office, the fight is an institutional one.
A source familiar with the matter who was not authorized to speak publicly said the beef is not with Noem but rather sticking up for the guardrails that allow inspectors general to independently do their work.
Cuffari is also just one of a handful of inspectors general who remained in their role after Trump fired 17 of them at the start of his term.
“OIG remains committed to working cooperatively with the Department to conduct our statutory oversight of DHS programs and operations. OIG’s work is important, as it provides the Secretary and Congress with insight to improve DHS’ effectiveness and provides transparency for the American people,” a DHS Office of Inspector General spokesperson said in a statement.
When reached for comment, Noem’s office defended her tenure while attacking Cuffari’s.
“We are 100% confident no investigative probes will find any wrongdoing. She was the most successful DHS Secretary in history,” her office said in a statement, noting deportation levels.
“The Government Accountability Office, the Council of Inspectors General of Integrity and Efficiency, and members of Congress including Ranking Member Bennie Thompson have called for Mr. Cuffari’s removal. In fact, in 2024 Council of Inspectors General of Integrity and Efficiency recommended to then President Biden that ‘removal’ of Mr. Cuffari from Inspector General would be an ‘appropriate action’ because he ‘abused his authority’ and ‘engaged in substantial misconduct,’” a DHS spokesperson said.
DHS also repeated its assertion that Cuffari must provide a “scoping memo” if he wants to access databases with classified information.
“We stand ready to give the IG access as soon as he works with us on scope. If he won’t, we cannot give him access,” DHS said.
However, a January letter from Percival, the DHS general counsel, only recently shared with Congress by Cuffari also demanded details on the criminal investigation the inspector general is involved with. Percival argues Cuffari must also draft a scoping memo for criminal matters while writing that the Inspector General Act places such investigations “under the secretary’s authority, [direction], and control.”
John Roth, a former inspector general for the Department of Homeland Security, said Percival does not seem to understand what a scoping memo is.
“As far as I can tell, what I see that [Cuffari] has asked for is well within his purview,” Roth said, calling Percival’s letter “beyond the pale.”
“It’s a highly amateurish and inaccurate letter that really doesn’t reflect any kind of understanding of how an IG works, much less what his role would be in the IG system.”
Inspectors general routinely draft scoping memos detailing their work for audits and evaluations at the beginning of their process but would not do so for an investigative plan, which might be conducted without alerting the agency.
Roth said that when he had the role, he also had a high-level security clearance, and while information is given on a need-to-know basis, some information in question is compiled and maintained by other agencies.
“DHS has really no business prohibiting that because the owner of the information is already permitting it,” he said.
Complicating matters is DHS’s effort to conceal Cuffari’s report on airport screening after conducting covert testing at security lines following the shift in the shoe policy at airports across the country.
Senate Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said he’s pushed to get the report more widely shared among lawmakers but made little headway.
“Inspector General Cuffari has told my office several times that he’s been restricted by a DHS memo from speaking to certain congressional committees about a classified report,” Grassley said as Noem appeared before his panel earlier this month.
He said even the Government Accountability Office (GAO) has been unable to secure a copy, despite his demands that that office also do a review of the new Transportation Security Administration policy.
“Secretary Noem, if what my office has been told is accurate, these matters should’ve been ironed out long ago,” Grassley said.
Greenblatt said while he has confidence in career staff at DHS’s Office of Inspector General, Cuffari’s past dealings make it difficult to tease out where struggles with his office end and complications with Noem’s begin.
“I think, given the adversarial posture that he’s had with the IG community and the allegations of a lack of independence from the Trump administration in the past, it’s hard to assess the merits of his allegations against the agency,” Greenblatt said of Cuffari.
“Given his checkered past, it’s hard to assess where the truth lies.”