The Office of Inspector General (OIG) of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released last month a 99-page report of its investigation into allegations that Alejandro Mayorkas, former director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), a DHS component, engaged in influence peddling during his tenure at that agency.
The report is blandly named "Investigation into Employee Complaints about Management of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services' EB-5 Program". (The OIG concurrently released a number of documents relating to the inquiry, which can be found here.) Although there is an indirect, almost tippy-toe approach to the way the report has been laid out, the revelations are nonetheless damning to anyone who reads it with even a modicum of dispassion and logic. For this reason, I've been waiting for weeks now to see how it would affect Mayorkas's continued existence as DHS's deputy secretary. I'm still waiting, but not holding my breath.
The allegations leading to the investigation were made quite some time ago by a surprising number of both senior and rank-and-file officials at USCIS. Yet despite the seriousness of the allegations, and the surprising number of officials who felt obliged to come forward and report Mayorkas' activities, he was subsequently promoted and is now the number-two official at DHS.
The promotion is at variance with standard personnel practices involving allegations of substantive wrongdoing for most DHS officials; the norm is that they are passed over for promotion until such allegations are resolved. One can only presume he gets a pass on that because he is a political appointee with significant connections (one of the problems that led to the allegations of influence peddling to begin with). It is only one of the many deeply troubling things about the way the investigation has been handled.
Despite its milquetoast approach, the report states: "In three matters pending before USCIS, however, Mr. Mayorkas communicated with stakeholders on substantive issues, outside of the normal adjudicatory process, and intervened with the career USCIS staff in ways that benefited the stakeholders. In each of these three instances, but for Mr. Mayorkas' intervention, the matter would have been decided differently." It goes on to say: "We were unable to determine Mr. Mayorkas' motives for his actions."
As for myself, I'm unable to determine why his motives would be relevant.
Point one: Mayorkas is a lawyer, and in fact a former U.S. attorney for the Central District of California whose duties would have encompassed investigating and prosecuting crimes for influence peddling.
Point two: The Code of Ethics for Government Service includes a number of relevant provisions, most significantly the following:
Any person in Government service should:
...
5. Never discriminate unfairly by the dispensing of special favors or privileges to anyone, whether for remuneration or not.
6. Make no private promises of any kind binding upon the duties of office, since a Government employee has no private word which can be binding on public duty.
The Code of Ethics is a standard part of incoming orientation for virtually all federal employees, so it beggars belief that Mr. Mayorkas would be unaware of it.
Point three: Various federal regulations, court rules, and even the model code of the American Bar Association make clear that attorneys must avoid even the appearance of professional impropriety. (See, for instance, Canon 9 of that code.) There's nothing difficult to comprehend about that, and it would seem that Mayorkas exceeded those boundaries, if not more.
So why hasn't something been done? I'd bet dollars to doughnuts that during his various tenures as U.S. attorney, USCIS director, and DHS deputy secretary, Mayorkas has presided over the prosecution and/or administrative disciplining of other federal employees for infractions involving favoritism and impropriety.
It may be that the double standard has to do with his murky relationships with people like Anthony Rodham, brother to just-announced presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton. It's probably a fair bet that Democratic party stalwarts are leaping all over this grenade to be sure no shrapnel hits their front-runner, because disciplining or discharging Mayorkas would inevitably have spillover effects on her campaign, and harkens back to a disturbing pattern seen before (a la Whitewater and financier Marc Rich) when her husband was in the Oval Office.
Meanwhile, we'll just keep waiting for that other shoe to drop.