When it comes to investigating corruption, Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) told reporters that leaving the White House doesn’t mean any former Trump administration officials are off the hook.
Asked Tuesday about misconduct allegations surrounding former White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, Garcia told reporters the House Oversight Committee had already begun investigating and has a list of other departed officials to look into.
The morning after Wiles resigned last Thursday, Calley Means, a top aide to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, said Wiles and other top staffers used their positions to covertly advocate on behalf of pharmaceutical companies, vaping interests and other industries HSS was trying to crack down on.
Wiles, whose ouster was ostensibly the result of Republicans’ midterm defeats, denied Means’ claim that she helped tobacco industry lobbyists schedule face time with Trump in a statement to CBS News.
“We’ve already been looking at Susie Wiles,” Garcia said, though the ex-chief of staff wasn’t the only scandal-linked former White House staffer he put on notice.
“Just because you’re no longer in the administration, whether your name is Susie Wiles, whether it’s Kimberly Guilfoyle, whether it’s Corey Lewandowski, whether it is Kristi Noem, you are being investigated, and there needs to be accountability in that space,” the ranking member of the House Oversight Committee warned.
Guilfoyle left her post as ambassador to Greece last month after a Wall Street Journal investigation unearthed evidence she had directly asked a GOP donor for $100,000 to pay her American Express bill.
Noem lost her job as head of Homeland Security in March amid intense scrutiny over her role in Trump’s violent anti-immigrant agenda and was later linked to a number of shady, no-bid government contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
Lewandowski is alleged to have used his role as Noem’s top adviser to influence billions in government contracts and seek out backdoor deals with foreign officials, according to reports from The Wall Street Journal.