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Press Release Published: Feb 1, 2017

Oversight Leaders Encourage Trump Administration to Protect Whistleblowers

“Protecting whistleblowers is crucial to your success and the oversight process.”
 
WASHINGTON – Today, Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA), House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-UT), and Government Operations Subcommittee Chairman Mark Meadows (R-NC) sent a bicameral letter to White House General Counsel Don McGahn, urging the new administration to protect whistleblowers as a means of encouraging transparency throughout the federal government.
Excerpts from the letter below:
“Whistleblowers can be one of the incoming Administration’s most powerful allies to identify waste, fraud, abuse and mismanagement in the federal government and ‘drain the swamp’ in Washington, D.C.”
 
“Congress can assist in identifying areas ripe for change as President Trump takes the reins of government.”
 
“The White House is in a position to alleviate any potential confusion for federal employees regarding whether… recent memoranda implicate whistleblower protection laws. As the new Administration seeks to better understand what problems exist in this area, this is an appropriate time to remind employees about the value of protected disclosures to Congress and inspectors general in accordance with whistleblower protection laws.” 
 
Protecting whistleblowers is crucial to your success and the oversight process.  We stand ready to assist the Administration in its efforts to root out waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement in the federal government, and to protect the best tool for doing so-whistleblowers.”
Background
Senator Grassley co-authored the Whistleblower Protection Act of 1989 and was an original co-sponsor of the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act of 2012 (WPEA). He also founded the Senate Whistleblower Protection Caucus.
Grassley and Chaffetz introduced and successfully passed the FBI Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act, which was signed by the President in December 2016.
Chaffetz and Meadows are members of the House Whistleblower Protection Caucus.
Today, the Oversight Committee held a hearing examining provisions implemented in the WPEA and review provisions expiring in 2017.