WASHINGTON – Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley has called on the United States Marshals Service (USMS) to hold employees accountable for misconduct and answer serious questions about costly, yet questionable contracts. Grassley’s questions follow reports that Marshals employees routinely direct subordinates to draft their personal applications for promotion. Reports also indicate that the Marshals Service agreed to pay an outside speechwriter up to than $1.3 million over nine years and is considering leasing a large twin engine airplane that it has no pilots to fly and that whistleblowers claim would be twice as expensive and less effective as other surveillance aircraft in the Marshals fleet.
In the first of two separate letters to USMS Acting Director David Harlow, Grassley outlines concerns about senior leaders’ widespread abuse of their public office for private gain by enlisting subordinates to draft their promotion applications. An Assistant Director of USMS was already disciplined for similar actions. An opinion by the Merit Systems Protection Board suggested that these ethics violations are commonplace in the USMS.
“Accountability for misconduct must be consistent across the agency for employees to have confidence in the agency’s leaders, and ethics rules must be enforced so that the taxpayers have confidence in their government,” Grassley said in his letter.
Grassley’s second letter addresses two costly and likely unnecessary contracts that raise potential conflict of interest concerns.
Since 2010, the USMS has paid an outside speechwriter and management consultant through two contracts. The initial five-year contract was worth over $500,000. The second and recently awarded four-year contract is worth over $825,000. The speechwriter has a desk in USMS headquarters in Virginia but actually works from home in Kansas.
Further, the USMS recently began the process of leasing an expensive and ineffective new aircraft that it has no pilots to fly, according to whistleblowers familiar with USMS air surveillance operations. USMS submitted a Request for Information, which begins the procurement process, for a lease on a Beechcraft King Air 350, which it claims will be used for surveillance operations. Whistleblowers allege the aircraft will interfere with such operations, cost twice as much as more effective planes, and require additional costs to train and certify USMS pilots
Grassley asked a series of questions about these contracts, their costs to taxpayers, how they were awarded and why.
Grassley’s letter about USMS employee accountability can be found here and Grassley’s letter about USMS contracts can be found here.
Grassley has been investigating multiple allegation of misuse of funds, improper hiring practices AND whistleblower retaliation at USMS since 2015. Last fall, Grassley released a report concluding that the USMS needs greater oversight of its hiring practices and calling on the agency to adopt a strong merit-based culture.
