WASHINGTON (Legal Newsline) - A federal watchdog has sued the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) accusing it of wrongfully withholding records related to the office of the administrator of the U.S. Digital Service (USDS).
Mina Hsiang is the first woman and first Asian American to be appointed to the position, which was created in 2014.
“She was given conflict of interest waivers and those were concerned with financial holdings she had that may have presented conflicts of interest,” said Michael Chamberlain, director of Protect the People's Trust (PPT). “There was another watchdog group, the Project on Government Oversight, that sent a letter to the White House urging them to rescind the waivers because they thought that these had really crossed the line.”
Protect the Public’s Trust filed the federal complaint against the OMB on April 28 in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia alleging violations of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
An engineer by trade, Hsiang was an early team member of the USDS under the Obama-Biden administration, according to a statement online.
“The scope of the waivers gave her three and a half years to sell the stake and the size of it is what is concerning,” Chamberlain told Legal Newsline. “She had significant holdings into the high six figures in one of the funds that are a subject of the waiver.”
Hsiang’s holdings include Alphabet, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon Web Services through trusts and hedge funds, according to PPT.
“She has a $950,000 investment in a hedge fund and that hedge fund is invested in several of these holdings that presented potential conflicts of interest to her,” Chamberlain said. “The value of the companies could potentially be affected by the decisions that she makes in her capacity.”
PPT submitted a FOIA inquiry requesting ethics documents from the OMB nearly a year ago.
“They've not produced any documents in response to the request and they haven't given us a timeline," Chamberlain said. "When we have asked about the status of the request, they've given us answers such as 'It's in progress.' We got a response in September saying it's continuing to be processed and we got a similar response in December saying the request is continuing to be processed.”
OMB is one of 19 agencies from which PPT has sought records of ethics waivers and decisions that exempt political appointees from obligations under the Biden Ethics Pledge and federal ethics obligations.
“This is information that the American public deserves to have," Chamberlain added. "The waivers reveal what activities their high-level appointees in the government are able to do and not do and they provide the American public with the scope so they are able to determine whether the officials are complying with their ethical and legal obligations."