The White House is not cooperating with the Government Accountability Office


The White House is stonewalling information requests from the Government Accountability Office, GAO general counsel Thomas Armstrong said in a May 9 letter to White House counsel Don McGahn. Armstrong's complaints were made public after excerpts of his note were quoted by congressional Democrats in a separate letter asking House Oversight Committee chair Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) to hold a hearing on the Trump administration's informational obstruction.
Armstrong's quotes say the White House has ignored or declined GAO requests for information on "such diverse topics as the role of the [National Security Council] conflict prevention, mitigation, and stabilization efforts abroad; inspector general vacancies; and the cost of presidential travel and related security measures."
This is not the first time the GAO has reported noncooperation from the Trump White House. As the Democrats' letter mentions, the agency had trouble obtaining information for a September, 2017 report on the presidential transition the previous year.
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Gowdy's office has yet to comment on the hearing request.
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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.
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