February 24, 2025
Dear President Trump:
The undersigned organizations from the Make it Safe Coalition (MISC) strongly recommend that you reconsider your decision to remove and end leadership by Special Counsel Hampton Dellinger at the U.S. Office of Special Counsel (OSC). MISC is a bi-partisan, trans-ideological coalition dedicated to strengthened rights for and impact from whistleblowers who share a commitment to fighting fraud, waste and abuse in government bureaucracies. We have backed a steady stream of whistleblowers against abuses of power by the Biden administration, just as we have had with prior administrations. Mr. Dellinger's continued leadership is essential to make serious progress towards that goal. In only a year, his commitment and record achieving that objective has been unsurpassed for any Special Counsel since 1978 when the Office was created. We are an extremely hard group to please, but Mr. Dellinger has earned our unqualified respect.
Mr. Dellinger has been strictly bipartisan in his decisions and stepped-up enforcement actions against the Biden administration. He significantly improved the OSC's disclosure channels. For the first time, he has made public initial OSC findings that whistleblowers are substantially correct, the prerequisite to order agency investigations of their concerns. He has imposed accountability for multi-year delays by agencies responding to OSC referrals of government breakdowns. He has required agency chiefs to take responsibility for the results of whistleblowing investigations, ending their practice of routinely passing the buck to lower-level managers. He has held regular stakeholder meetings with employees, managers, good government organizations to receive input on how the Office is performing. In short, this is an outstanding public servant whose actions have been obtaining the results you seek.
As an alternative, you have appointed Doug Collins, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Secretary, as Acting Special Counsel. Without disparaging Mr. Collins, this simply is not functional. Both reforming the VA and leading the OSC are demanding, full-time jobs. There is no luxury for either to be part-time endeavors. Further, there is an extreme institutional conflict of interest. The OSC's most high-profile duty is protecting and supporting whistleblowers. However, the VA has the executive branch's worst track record of whistleblower retaliation, with up to 40% of OSC reprisal complaints annually. With Mr. Collins at the helm, it would be impossible for whistleblowers to have confidence or try to fight government misconduct through the Office of Special Counsel. Our groups would have to warn whistleblowers against sharing their evidence or seeking help from the OSC, and instead go outside of official channels to attack the Administration's record when exposing fraud, waste and abuse.
We are available to further discuss these concerns with an Administration representative. We would like to be a resource in your administration's efforts against government misconduct. If your administration is open to working with us toward this mutual goal, please contact Tom Devine, at [email protected].
Respectfully submitted,
Acorn8
Government Accountability Project (GAP)
National Security Counsellors (NSC)
Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER)
Project on Government Oversight (POGO)
Whistleblowers of America (WOA)
