(CNSNews.com) – Well before Gerald Walpin was fired as the inspector general of AmeriCorps, government documents show that he and the agency’s management did not get along, to say the least. 

President Barack Obama fired Walpin in June, just months after the Justice Department reached a settlement with Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson, a Democrat and founder of St. Hope Academy, which Walpin’s office found had misused AmeriCorps money.

Documents obtained by CNSNews.com through a Freedom of Information Act request, including e-mails, letters and memos, demonstrate a confrontational relationship between the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS), the agency that runs AmeriCorps, and its inspector general, whose ouster in June prompted questions from Congress.

A corporation board member wanted to “let the record reflect” what he says was Walpin’s confusion at a Mar. 20 board meeting, the member’s notes from that meeting show. Meanwhile, a memo to board members just before the meeting references Walpin and “concern about potential for damage being done. Bad timing.” 

According to one memo, the major issues of dispute between Walpin and the board revolved around the Sacramento charity, St. Hope Academy, education grants to the City University of New York, and the IG’s questions about agency expenditures. 

After members of Congress demanded the White House provide a reason for firing Walpin, Norman Eisen, the special counsel to the president for ethics and government reform, said in a much-publicized letter to the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee that the CNCS board wanted Walpin out because at the “May 20, 2009, board meeting Mr. Walpin was confused, disoriented, unable to answer questions and exhibited other behavior that led the board to question his capacity to serve.”

The Sacramento non-profit, St. Hope Academy, and its management were suspended from receiving federal funds in 2008 after Walpin’s office found that St. Hope misused some of the $847,673 in AmeriCorps funds it received from 2004 through 2007. In some cases, those funds were used to run personal errands for Johnson, according to Walpin’s probe.

In April of this year, the Justice Department, working with AmeriCorps, reached a civil settlement with St. Hope, requiring it to pay back more than $400,000, and lifting the ban on federal funds to St. Hope and Johnson, ensuring that the City of Sacramento would be eligible for federal money. That eligibility was in question at first because both St. Hope and Johnson’s name were on the government’s “excluded parties list.”

Walpin was not happy with the settlement and let both the corporation and the U.S. Attorney Lawrence Brown of the Eastern District of California know. He explained to both that he would be filing a report to Congress, specifically the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee that oversees AmeriCorps. 

But before that report was sent to Congress, Brown made a complaint of his own to the Counsel of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency, the oversight organization of inspectors general. The complaint accused Walpin of not including all the evidence in his report and talking to the press too much. 

“He sought to act as investigator, advocate, judge, jury and town-crier,” Brown wrote in the April 29 complaint. “Even before our office officially received this matter, we learned about it in April and June 2008 through articles in the Sacramento Bee newspaper.” 

Walpin called the complaint a pre-emptive retaliation, since Brown knew Walpin was making a report to Congress.

The Office of Inspector General (OIG) wrote in a response that the Brown complaint should be dismissed. Rejecting Brown’s assertion that an IG should be a passive observer, Walpin pointed to the Inspector General Act of 1978 that says the IG has the duty to “assume a leadership role in any and all activities which he deems useful to promote economy and efficiency in the administration of programs and operations to prevent and detect … waste in such programs and operations.”

The Office of Inspector General delivered a report to the CNCS management, namely the CEO Nicola Goren and the General Counsel Frank Trinity, giving them seven days to respond. The OIG also sent the report to Congress the same day.

Trinity believed that CNCS’s management should have had the opportunity to respond to the report before it went to Congress. On May 7 and May 8, he expressed his frustration on this point in e-mails he sent to the Office of Inspector General. 

“I want to be sure as to whether you are expecting or awaiting a response from Corporation management and, if so, the time frame,” Trinity wrote to John J. Park, part of the OIG staff.

“We advised both of you [Trinity and corporation CEO Nicola Goren] that the corporation’s response was due in seven days” and that the report had already been delivered to members of Congress, Park responded. 

“I gave it to them and gave them the right to respond,” Walpin told CNSNews.com in an interview. “But as congressmen call on me, as they did, knowing I was working on this to provide them with a copy, there is no reason for me to be anything other than transparent with what I’m doing.” 

Trinity responded in an e-mail exchange with the OIG: “Regarding your disclosure yesterday that your office has already distributed the report directly to congressional staff members, we believe that such distribution is contrary to the provisions of section 5(d).” He said the CNCS management should have been allowed to respond before the report went to Congress.
 
Walpin personally replied to this e-mail. Trinity, he said, was engaged in a “procedural detour” and “petty bickering.”

Trinity fired back to Walpin: “We believe it is implicit that the agency be given the opportunity to prepare its response before any congressional officers are notified, and that the agency be further given the opportunity to provide its response to congressional officers directly (without further reply from the OIG).”

The IG report to the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee said the lenient settlement allowing Johnson access to an even larger pot of federal money (as mayor of a city compared to head of a small non-profit) is “akin to deciding that while one should not put a fox in a small chicken coop, it is fine to do so in a large chicken coop.”

Two days before the CNCS May 20 board meeting where Walpin was reportedly confused, according to the board member’s notes, AmeriCorps General Counsel Frank Trinity sent a memo to CEO Nicola Goren complaining that Walpin had talked to the press about the St. Hope case. 

“The fact that the Inspector General was not fully involved in the final negotiations of this matter was the result of (1) the Inspector General’s questionable public commentary prior to the settlement and (2) the Inspector General’s selective disclosure of relevant material when management was considering settlement terms,” Trinity wrote, referring to the complaint made by the U.S. attorney’s office.

A memo, with no name or no date attached about a May 19-20 CNCS board retreat where the meeting between Walpin and the board took place, said: “IG--meeting tomorrow.”

“Concern about potential for damage being done. Bad timing,” the memo said. “… If Board is called by media, should refer questions to Ranit (agency spokeswoman Ranit Schmelzer). Thus far CNCS is not commenting.” 

The same memo referenced St. Hope: “IG not only displeased about substance of settlement, also has made accusations about CNCS mgmt [management] & OGC [office of general counsel].”

It went on to say: “IG also asked by authorizing committee to review how CNCS spent its money; this report is about to come out.” Finally, the memo mentioned “IG issues with CUNY audit.”

Walpin was then about to issue a report (it was released on June 4) scrutinizing $16 million in AmeriCorps money going to the Research Foundation of CUNY. The OIG report said CUNY kept inadequate records of personnel hired under the grants--not doing background checks and turning in incomplete time sheets.
 
In a handwritten note from that May 20 board meeting with Walpin, Board member Eric Tanenblatt wrote: “I wonder if we should shut down the discussion due to the IG’s obvious confusion and let the record reflect so.” The note is not addressed to anyone.
 
In an interview with CNSNews.com, Walpin said the notes from that May 20 meeting bolster his case.
 
“The board retreat notes make clear they were totally troubled by the three reports,” Walpin said. “It says there: ‘IG meeting tomorrow. Concern about potential for damage being done. Bad timing.’ That shows they thought their reputation may well have been damaged by our objective, correct reports.”
 
Walpin believes the Tanenblatt note was created as a pretext for removing him.
 
“It shows this was a planned action by the board to try to create a record that they thought might be grounds to get rid of me. ‘Shut the discussion down due to the IG’s obvious confusion and let the record reflect so,’” Walpin said. “If they really thought I was sick or there was something wrong with me, would they really say, let the record reflect the confusion? No, they would ask a question. Are you feeling okay? That was never done.”
 
Tanenblatt could not be reached for comment, and CNCS spokeswoman Ranit Schmelzer declined to make him available for an interview.
 
Walpin has sued in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to order his immediate reinstatement, asserting the president violated the law that requires prior notice to Congress and a reason when firing an inspector general. Members of Congress such as Sens. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) and Claire McCaskill (D-Missouri), have been critical of the White House process in the firing of Walpin.
 
CNCS General Counsel Frank Trinity, after the May 20 meeting, wrote, “Mr. Walpin expressed ‘discomfort’ at what is going on. He said there was an ‘anything goes’ attitude now with management.”
 
Trinity’s notes from the May 20 board meeting say that Walpin went on to voice his opposition to the settlement with St. Hope Academy.
 
In the final pages, Trinity wrote, “It did not appear that he [Walpin] was able to process the information on his notes for lengthy periods of time; he would flip the notes and then stop flipping without ever saying anything more from the notes. I was sitting right next to Mr. Walpin and I thought he might be experiencing some type of medical event, perhaps a mini-stroke or series of mini-strokes.”
 
Board member Tanenblatt later called John Park, one of Walpin’s deputies, after the meeting to inquire about the IG’s health, according to Trinity’s notes about the May 20 encounter. Park assured Tanenblatt “there were no grounds for concern.”
 
After CNSNews.com left repeated phone messages at Trinity’s office, the corporation spokeswoman Schmelzer contacted CNSNews.com to decline an interview on his behalf. “The corporation has said all we are going to say” about the May 20 meeting, she said.
 
Meanwhile, Walpin told CNSNews.com that he finds Trinity’s notes about the May 20 meeting are favorable to him as well.
 
“Everything I said was written down by Frank Trinity in a clear manner about the board in letting an anything-goes management attitude,” Walpin told CNSNews.com. “There’s no lack of clarity there whatsoever.”
 
On June 10, after Obama told Congress he had lost confidence in Walpin, CNCS CEO Nicola Goren sent an e-mail to the board to let them know. Board member Lysha Ward commented to other board members, “Great job by all quickly responding in a professional manner and protecting the CNCS brand and reputation.”
 
But later e-mails that day showed the board’s elation turning to concern.
 
“The press is on it, the note should go tonight right?” Goren asked.
 
“Not sure. When will it be announced?” Frank Trinity, the general counsel, responded in an e-mail.
 
Schmelzer chimed in, “In the interest of full disclosure, I told AP that Ken [Bach would replace Walpin as acting IG]. But she’s not writing until the morning--if at all.”
 
On the morning of June 12, Sandy Scott of the AmeriCorps press office sent Frank Trinity that morning’s and previous day’s headlines on the Walpin firing.
 
An Associated Press story said, “Obama removes AmeriCorps’s IG in spat with friend.” A Washington Examiner headline read, “What’s behind Obama’s sudden attempt to fire the AmeriCorps inspector general?” The Web site for the Sacramento TV station KCRA, where the story had local interest, said, “Inspector General in Mayor’s Probe to Lose Job.”
 
Rhoda Glickman, of the corporation’s legislative affairs office, asked General Counsel Trinity the next day, “Who is handling the questions from members regarding the IG--Lisa with Sen. Collins committee wants to know our stand.”
 
Trinity said, “If it came to you, you should forward to Josh Earnest at the WH [White House] legislative affairs.”
 
Glickman responded: “I told her I had forwarded her [Lisa’s] concern about the IG to the WH. She is very interested in hearing CNCS’s stand on this. (I told her I was new and hadn’t been involved.).”
 
“She is already working with the WH (Eisen) and has requested more information from him--reason for firing, etc., but she has made it clear that if they don’t get this information to their satisfaction, they will be sending a letter to the President TODAY saying he did not follow the law on this,” Glickman wrote. “Not sure it makes any difference if you call her. (I said you were out of the office) but if you think it helps to talk to her, she can be reached at ----.”
 
Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) was not the only member of Congress to show concern.
 
That same day, Grassley sent a letter to CNCS Board Chairman Alan Solomont asking for all documents related to Walpin, his removal, contacts with the White House and contacts with Kevin Johnson.
 
Five days later, Solomont wrote back to Grassley. “Over an extended period of time, we observed how Gerald Walpin’s effectiveness as Inspector General significantly diminished,” the letter said. “Without an IG who can focus time and energy on areas of great risk, we are hampered in effectively discharging our responsibility to you and your colleagues.”
 
On June 17, the same day the letter was sent to Grassley, Schmelzer and Scott on the press staff sought board members to talk to reporters about the May 20 meeting. A series of e-mails that day set up interviews with the Associated Press, The Washington Times and The American Spectator.
 
Goren, who was going to be interviewed on another matter the next day got advice from Schmelzer. “If she asks about IG (and assuming it is ok w/Frank) I’d go on background as a member of the CNCS leadership (or something like that; you’ll have to see what she agrees to) and tell her the truth,” wrote Schmelzer.
 
General Counsel Trinity responded, “If it comes up, shouldn’t your message be about moving forward rather than litigate?”