Republicans pummel State Department with investigations

House Republicans have launched more than 30 investigations into the State Department since taking power in 2023, an unusually high number that is fueling partisan tensions, a POLITICO review of records and other information has found.

Republicans say the probes are meant to hold a wayward Biden administration accountable. Democrats call it politically motivated harassment.

A few of the investigations are well-known, such as the probe into how the department handled the 2021 U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. But others have gotten less attention, such as probes into a human rights grant partly aimed at helping atheists overseas, another into the State Department’s efforts to promote diversity and a grant that could have been used to fund drag shows in Ecuador.

Democratic lawmakers and State Department officials say this particular chapter of the growing partisan rancor on Capitol Hill is affecting U.S. foreign policy: It distracts U.S. diplomats from their jobs when they need to be focused on crises in places such as Ukraine and the Middle East.

“The department will continue to respond to congressional oversight, but the reality is global threats and foreign policy challenges do not cease when we are responding to document requests,” State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel said in a statement.

House Democrats argue several of the probes have nothing to do with serious national security matters or preventing waste, fraud and abuse. Instead, many seem designed to highlight policy differences.

Others, they say, are designed to stoke culture wars to rev up the Republican base ahead of November’s presidential election.

Those include investigations into the department’s human rights programming; the plans for a $20,000 grant aimed at supporting the LGBTQ+ community in Ecuador that may have included drag shows (those plans were altered); and examinations of the Global Engagement Center, the initiative whose efforts to fight foreign disinformation are viewed with skepticism by some on the right.

Among the Republicans most vocal about their frustrations with the State Department is Rep. Brian Mast (R-Fla.).

He argues that State is intentionally drawing out investigations with slow responses. “They believe in these [policies], but they know that they should not be taking place and so they don't want to answer for them when they get caught red-handed.”

Does he believe that the investigations are distracting from U.S. diplomacy? “They need to be distracted from the foreign policy that they're conducting,” Mast said. “If we do not distract them from doing bad foreign policy, then U.S. service members are going to pay the price.”

The exact number of House investigations into the State Department is unclear, with estimates ranging from 38 to 45 for this Congress, according to information shared by department officials and lawmakers in a little-noticed March 21 hearing .

It’s hard to make a historical comparison because there’s a lack of solid data, with one problem being that various committee and State Department leaders may define “investigation” differently.

Still, Democratic congressional aides, former U.S. diplomats and others with ties to Capitol Hill said that even the low-end figures appear well above normal for probes into the State Department. Like others in this story, many were granted anonymity to candidly discuss sensitive issues. It’s unclear how the number of congressional probes into State compare with other departments.

There’s no proof yet that the investigations have undermined any of State’s work, and department officials are careful not to publicly make such a claim.

But department employees say the time consumed by probes — from digging up and reviewing documents, to responding to questions, to time spent in interviews, to dealing with follow-up queries and more — takes a toll on their day jobs. It also affects morale among younger, low-level staffers who fear being attacked by high-profile lawmakers.

“We get the work done, but it has an impact on the day-to-day diplomacy,” one State Department official said.

During the March hearing, Republicans did not dispute the estimated number of investigations. But, in response to questions for this story, Olivia Late, spokesperson for the GOP side of the committee, said the State Department often conflates standard document requests or questions with investigations. (State Department officials have said their count of investigations is separate from routine information requests.)

The House Foreign Affairs Committee is the main flashpoint.

It has opened at least 19 of the probes, according to statistics laid out at the March hearing . At that point, State Department officials had spent some 50,000 staff hours responding to the HFAC probes, producing more than 24,000 pages of documents and more than 100 hours of testimony.

Not all of the probes are as complicated or active as others, but it is unclear how many have been formally completed.

Republicans have acknowledged the toil involved in responding to their queries, but they say the State Department is to blame because it fails to properly answer their requests, forcing them to keep asking.

Department officials frequently offer late, vague responses to questions, even in classified settings, Republicans say. When they do hand over documents, they are often heavily redacted and of little use, Republicans complained.

Democrats dismiss the accusation that the department is stalling and say Republicans just don’t like the answers they’re getting.

“A lot of these are policy disagreements, not violations or obstruction,” said Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.). “This administration has gone to incredible lengths to meet the substantial demands of the majority.”

The fact that several of the inquiries appear to have been leaked to conservative media raises Democrats’ suspicions that the investigations are more about politics than accountability.

“Congressional oversight and fact-finding about real problems are critical for our national security, but Republicans instead see their oversight authority as a tool for fringe MAGA fishing expeditions, spending taxpayer dollars to pursue politicized investigations that are as paper-thin as they are frivolous,” said Rep. Gregory Meeks of New York, the ranking Democrat on HFAC.

HFAC Chair Mike McCaul (R-Texas), however, insisted in a statement that “none of this is a ‘distraction.’ It’s about ensuring accountability and transparency into programming that State Department officials get away with because they are not straightforward with Congress and/or use rhetoric to disguise exactly how money is being used.”

In one case, new information is leading to a sense of vindication for McCaul and other Republicans.

The case involves a $500,000 grant that touched the sensitive topic of religion .

Republicans accused the department of giving the money to a group that promotes atheism and humanism, questioning if it was constitutional. The department says the grant was about helping atheists, humanists and others facing religious persecution, and that none of the money promoted a particular belief. The effort, the department said, is about protecting religious freedom , which includes the freedom to not believe.

In February, a congressional staff delegation looked into the grant while on a visit to Nepal and India that also included other agenda items. The fact that any trip time was devoted to the grant probe raised the ire of some Democrats, who said it was a waste of resources.

But Republicans noted that the delegation included Democratic staffers, with Late, the Republican spokesperson, saying that there was only a single, one-hour meeting on the atheism grant during the trip.

This week, the State Department notified HFAC leaders that it had recently learned that the grant recipient had shared with it the wrong training slides when earlier asked for its work materials. The department is seeking the correct slides to see if the group violated rules, according to a State Department letter obtained by POLITICO.

Late accused the State Department of not being truthful about the situation.

Democrats don’t deny that several of the Republican-led probes could yield important information. One, for instance, is about the department’s questionable handling of the suspension of Iran envoy Rob Malley’s security clearance .

And McCaul’s top priority appears to be the probe into the Afghanistan withdrawal. Democrats, generally speaking, are on board with looking into why that process was such a debacle.

But they’re unhappy with how McCaul’s team has been releasing its findings on Afghanistan. Crow said the Republican chair and his aides “cherry-pick their facts and their data.”