Government Accountability Project

PUBLIC HEALTH & CORPORATE/GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY Our Food Integrity Campaign (FIC) is a central component of our Public Health & Safety program. In 2022, we continued to be a leader in the efforts to expose deadly inspection modernization to the public and worked both independently and with coalitions to put pressure on the USDA to stop the proliferation of these rules. As a result, line speeds have been greatly curtailed. Working with partners and volunteer attorneys, we have successfully challenged both proposed AG-Gag laws and final statutes in numerous states. We have collaborated with partners and whistleblowers on a campaign to fight the use of CO2 gas chambers in animal slaughter facilities. In 2022, we launched our #FairShake for farmers campaign, to raise awareness and solidarity for farmers fighting against corporate retaliation for whistleblowing as well as the importance of anti-trust enforcement. We collaborated with the Center for Agriculture and Food Systems at Vermont Law School to research if the anti-retaliation protections in the Packers and Stockyards Act can be expanded through rulemaking as opposed to legislation. To this end, we also collaborated with the Vermont Law School Clinic, growers from Mississippi and Texas Sanderson farms, and the USDA. "We advocated for a comprehensive Federal Trade Commission whistleblower protection legislation to encourage low wage agricultural whistleblowers to come forward. The new public policy should allow for treble actual or compensatory damage claims against companies that retaliate and establish an awards program to pay whistleblowers based on fines or financial recoveries stemming from information provided by those whistleblowers. " FIC and Johns Hopkins University continued to strategically develop a joint effort in collaboration with the Johns Hopkins Toxicology Policy Program known as The Center for Law & Ethics in Animal Research, or CLEAR. For this effort, postdocs assisted us with our review of animal research guidance and the development of a Know Your Rights Campaign focused on potential whistleblowers. We also represented confidential clients through this program. In 2022, we launched the flagship case of this initiative, representing a scientist who blew the whistle on animal welfare compliance violations and waste of grant funds at a major research university. " We represented over 30 clients at Voice of America at the United States Agency for Global Media who blew the whistle on attempts by former administration appointees to turn the news service into a front for nationalist propaganda. The perpetrators wasted millions of dollars on an illegal investigation of our clients, conducted by a law firm through a no-bid contract. Our clients throughout the VOA had all experienced workplace retaliation, including firing in some cases, as a result of their whistleblowing. With our assistance, the wrongdoers were removed, and all of our clients were restored to their former positions or to higher ones. In 2022, our work on this matter included the filing of FOIAs for documents associated with the illegal investigation and efforts to recover the millions of government dollars spent on the law firm's efforts to smear our clients. " We represented whistleblowers on the politicization of the Department of Justice antitrust division under the Trump administration, which took the form of politically motivated antitrust investigations where there was no evidence to justify them. One such investigation targeted automobile manufacturers who voluntarily complied with California's environmental standards. Our work on this matter continued in 2022 with our cooperation with a new Office of Inspector General investigation.

INTERNATIONAL " In 2022, our staff engaged in investigative research and journalism into corruption threatening our national security as well as international stability. For example, in partnership with the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), a journalism consortium specializing in organized crime investigations, we published a feature investigation into national security, government, and US military contractor crimes in Afghanistan. The product of over two years of work, this article revealed a secret deal between SOS International and the former Afghan President, Ashraf Ghani. Ghani granted a unique and monopolistic mineral purchase license to a SOS International subsidiary. Secret documents revealed that the subsidiary was owned in part by his brother, Hashmat Ghani. " In 2022, we represented a whistleblower at the Asian Development Bank, who disclosed that hundreds of millions of dollars from ADB were used for military and other non-humanitarian purposes or simply stolen by government ministers in Pakistan. He experienced retaliation, but we settled this case successfully. " We participated in a USAID-funded project as a subcontractor in Malaysia. GAP worked with project partners including Combatting corruption and Cronyism (C4 Center), the National Union of Malaysian Islamic Students (PKPIM), National Oversight Whistleblowing (NOW), and Transparency International-Malaysia to provide international expertise on whistleblowing, to provide external perspectives on reforms, and to help them increase public engagement. " In 2022, we assisted in drafting proposed legislation in over a dozen countries, including Ghana, Serbia, Liberia, Canada, and Tunisia. " In 2022, we completed and circulated our co-publication with the International Bar Association, a report called Are Whistleblowing Laws Working? A Global Study of Whistleblower Protection Litigation, which tracked the records of whistleblower laws in 38 countries and provided an unprecedented effort to understand the successes and shortcomings of whistleblower protection legislation worldwide, following a proliferation of laws in recent decades. " We collaborated with Pitaljka, a whistleblowing platform based in Belgrade that combines journalism and legal expertise, to conduct a series of trainings for state and local government agencies in Serbia.

ENVIRONMENT, ENERGY & CLIMATE CHANGE We continued our campaign to push the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to update the National Contingency Plan for disaster response to call for the banning of dangerous dispersants such as Corexit, as part of our long-running campaign for justice in the wake of the 2010 BP Gulf oil spill. Our Environment, Energy, and Climate Change Program collaborated with our Food Integrity Campaign to promote greater understanding of the interdependence between climate change and energy, water, food, and public health systems. A core component of this effort is our work to expose the environmental and public health dangers inherent in the CAFO (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation) system and false solutions such as biogas. In 2022 we collaborated with partners in frontline communities to demand transparency and accountability in the agricultural industry. " We represented several whistleblowers at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission who blew the whistle on safety and quality assurance failures. We collaborated with the producers of the hit Netflix documentary series Meltdown to share the stories of our clients who blew the whistle on the Three Mile Island nuclear disaster cleanup operations in the 1980s. In 2022 we continued to represent a client who was fired from his position at the Environmental Protection Agency after blowing the whistle on the massive corruption of former EPA Director Scott Pruitt, including: his first-class air travel; the creation of an outrageously expensive soundproof booth in his office; and the use of an apartment in Washington, DC, which was largely underwritten by a firm doing significant business with the EPA. " In 2022 we successfully settled the case of a client who experienced retaliation after blowing the whistle at the Department of Interior about oil drilling safety and environmental issues.

Other miscellaneous projects