A growing number of federal agencies are either refusing to provide the Government Accountability Office access to information or ignoring the congressional watchdog altogether.
Agencies have been stonewalling the GAO ever since President Donald Trump returned to office, to the point that GAO leadership told employees at a staff meeting in May that they’ve encountered “significant access issues” during the last year and a half, according to two sources familiar with the event and confirmed by GAO. Officials at that meeting cited the Office of Management and Budget, Housing and Urban Development, the Commerce Department, the Education Department and the Small Business Administration as particularly noncooperative.
None of those executive agencies responded to detailed questions this week about whether they are purposefully hindering oversight or the nature of their interactions with the legislative agency whose mission is to monitor government operations and identify waste, fraud and abuse.