Washington, DC was the scene of growing controversy Wednesday evening over the firing of former Inspector General for the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS) Gerald Walpin. U.S. President Barack Obama, who ordered Walpin's termination last week, has been accused of doing so for dubious reasons. The chief of these is that Walpin had been aggressively pursuing an investigation into Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson's purported misuse of federal grants meant for a nonprofit education fund.
Johnson is one of Obama's good friends and supporters. Some journalists and pundits have speculated that this creates a conflict of interests and that Obama fired Walpin for damaging the reputation of one of his key allies. Making matters worse is that Walpin was reportedly given only one hour's notice prior to his termination. This is in direct violation of a law that Obama voted to enact while a U.S. Senator, in which an inspector general must be notified thirty days before being fired.
Declining to comment on the apparent illegality of the termination, Obama insisted that political favoritism played no part in the seventy-seven-year-old Walpin's firing. Whilst he gave no further reason himself, a letter written by White House staff members to Senate congressional leaders intended to allay their concerns over the firing stated that Walpin lost his job because he had acted "confused" and "disoriented" in a board meeting of the CNCS on May the 20th, 2009
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