Leading Democrats called on the top two officials at Homeland Security to step down after Congress’s watchdog ruled they were both illegally installed in their jobs, and called into question all the weighty decisions the two men have made in the months since they took office.
The Government Accountability Office said Friday that the Trump administration violated the legal chain of succession that should have kicked in after Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen was ousted last year.
Under the rules, the department’s director of cybersecurity should have taken over. Instead, President Trump installed Kevin McAleenan, who was at the time running the department’s border agency, as acting secretary.
Mr. McAleenan then created a new chain of succession, but, because he was not legally in the top job, that order was illegal. When he left the job, that meant Chad Wolf was elevated to acting secretary.
In the meantime, Ken Cuccinelli, who had no job in the department, had been installed as acting head of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, and has since been elevated to acting as deputy secretary.
All of those appointments were outside the law, the GAO said.
“Chad Wolf and Kenneth Cuccinelli must step down immediately,” said House Judiciary Committee Chair Jerrold Nadler, New York Democrat. “The administration must stop ignoring the Constitution and our laws, and appoint Senate confirmed nominees to lead DHS and USCIS.”
The GAO’s ruling came just hours after the Trump administration dropped an appeal of a court ruling that invalidated a Trump administration asylum policy because, the judge said, Mr. Cuccinelli was improperly serving as head of USCIS.
Government lawyers didn’t say why they dropped their appeal, but the timing alongside the GAO’s new ruling is a double-whammy for Mr. Trump and his team.
Other official actions Mr. Wolf and Mr. Cuccinelli took part in, and which now could be legally in jeopardy, include issuing waivers to speed construction of the border wall and curtailing asylum-seekers’ ability to obtain work permits.
GAO General Counsel Thomas H. Armstrong said the watchdog didn’t review those kinds of decisions, but had referred those matters to the Homeland Security inspector general.
A Homeland Security spokesman said Friday agency officials were working on a formal response, but said they “wholeheartedly disagree with the GAO’s baseless report.”
Immigrant-rights activists pointed out that Mr. Wolf and Mr. Cuccinelli have been part of Mr. Trump’s campaign-year push over “law and order,” amid protests against racial injustice that have sometimes turned into riots.
“It takes a certain kind of callous hypocrisy to profess to stand for law and order while unashamedly breaking it,” said Katie Adams, domestic policy advocate for the United Church of Christ, part of the Interfaith Immigration Coalition.
She said Congress should do more than complain — it should try to recall of Mr. Wolf and cut the department’s funding, en route to an entire dismantling of Homeland Security.
Democrats called the GAO ruling “damning,” but didn’t say what their next steps might be.
GAO said the Vacancies Reform Act and Homeland Security rules set out chains of succession, and the Trump administration repeatedly went around that.
Questions over Homeland Security are the latest in a long line of difficulties Mr. Trump has faced on the personnel side of things. Nearly half of the top jobs at the department and its major agencies are either vacant or being held by someone in an acting capacity.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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