WASHINGTON (AP) – A government watchdog says the Commerce Department is trying to block the findings of an investigation into the agency’s role in rebuking forecasters who contradicted President Donald Trump’s inaccurate claims about the path of the Hurricane Dorian last year.
The indictment comes from Peggy Gustafson, the Commerce Department inspector general, who wrote a memo expressing “deep concern” that the report’s publication was being blocked.
It is the latest twist in a saga that led the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to punish government forecasters who contradicted the president after he published inaccurate information about the hurricane’s path in the southern United States.
Trump later showed a forecast map altered by Sharpie in the Oval Office to defend his inaccurate tweet.
Gustafson, in a note to Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross released by his office Wednesday night, said the department was using “amorphous and widespread” claims to try to exclude publication of certain material in the report.
“The final release of our assessment has been delayed, frustrated, and effectively (stopped) by the Department’s refusal to identify specific areas of privilege,” wrote Gustafson, who was appointed by President Barack Obama.
Commerce Department officials wrote Thursday in a response obtained by The Associated Press that the department “does not prevent the Office of the Inspector General from publishing the report in any way the Office Inspector General deems appropriate.”
Lawyers for Commerce and NOAA said the report in its current form potentially affects future negotiations between the agencies and the inspector general’s office and that it contains inside information.
Gustafson’s memo said communications with Commerce and NOAA officials were collegial during the investigation, but changed after his office released the final report for privilege review.
“This change in tone appears to be directly related to the content of our report and the accountability findings of the high-level people involved,” Gustafson wrote. “I am concerned that the substance of our report and findings has resulted in this retaliatory stance.”
The full investigation would be made public next Monday. Gustafson said he gave Commerce and NOAA until Thursday to provide “precise and unambiguous markings of proposed wording for specific privileges.”
Senators Jerry Moran, Republican of Kansas, and Jeanne Shaheen, Democrat of New Hampshire, told Ross in a joint letter that they hope Commerce employees “fully cooperate and assist the OIG (Office of Inspector General) in all investigative matters “and” any Efforts to subvert or repress the OIG directly challenge the authorities granted to the Inspectors General by Congress. “
A brief summary of the investigation published last week included findings that Commerce led a “flawed process” that prompted NOAA to issue the statement that incorrectly rebuked forecasters of the National Weather Service in Birmingham, Alabama, by a tweet that read “Alabama You will NOT see any impact from #Dorian. ”
The investigation was fueled by a series of events that began when Trump offered comments on Twitter and in the Oval Office that were out of step with official government forecasts.
As the storm approached the United States, Trump tweeted that Alabama, along with the Carolinas and Georgia, “will likely be hit (much) harder than anticipated,” although the National Hurricane Center had indicated that Dorian would not hit to Alabama.
Twenty minutes after Trump’s tweet, meteorologists from the Birmingham National Weather Service office sent the tweet. NOAA subsequently issued a statement punishing the Birmingham meteorological office tweet.
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