Obama for America Ohio spokeswoman Jessica Kershaw told the Dayton Daily News Tuesday that “the GAO, an independent, nonpartisan investigative agency has determined that these decisions were not made by the Administration and … to politicize the situation at Delphi is insensitive.”
The same newspaper report noted that Treasury spokesman Matt Anderson cited the same GAO report in defense of his agency.
Anderson told TheDC that the Treasury Department does “not believe the emails are contrary to GAO’s findings.” He has not answered follow-up questions, and has failed to provide TheDC with anything other than the GAO report to back up the administration’s claim that the termination of non-union pensions at Delphi was not a political move driven by the Treasury Department.
The Obama re-election campaign has not responded to requests for comment from The Daily Caller.
On a Republican National Committee conference call with reporters Wednesday, Ohio Republican Rep. Mike Turner, the congressman leading investigations into the Delphi pension scandal, said he believes the Obama administration’s reliance on an incomplete GAO report is a sign of desperation, and perhaps of a coverup.
“It’s always funny when you deal with a response like this,” Turner said in response to a question from The Daily Caller. “When his administration turns to a document that clearly is insufficient, you know they’re hiding something. The GAO report is basically a good faith effort to look at the public information. They didn’t go into any emails. They didn’t interview any people.”
“The fact that the administration is relying on something they know is deficient, I think, certainly, begs the question as to what are they hiding?” Turner added.
Turner added that he agrees the internal PBGC emails published Tuesday by TheDC show the administration made the Delphi pension decision, not the PBGC itself.
“What we’ve found interesting is that they keep saying, ‘GM made the decision, PBGC made the decision, the Auto Task Force made the decision,’” Turner said of the Obama administration. “Well, they were each of those things. The emails show that they were acting as GM, that they were acting as PBGC, they were acting as the Auto Task Force. The administration usurped the authority of each of those bodies.”
