The Department of Injustice will not prosecute two Veterans Affairs officials for misleading the Congress

  It is being reported in this story that the Department of Injustice has decided not to prosecute two Veterans Affairs officials who have been accused of misleading the Congress about cost overruns. Here is more:

The Justice Department has declined to prosecute two Veterans Affairs Department executives after lawmakers accused them of misleading Congress about massive cost overruns at a Denver-area VA hospital.

The House Veterans Affairs Committee asked for a perjury investigation last fall, claiming the executives repeatedly gave false testimony that masked serious problems with the hospital construction project.

The Justice Department told lawmakers in a May 19 letter that there was insufficient evidence to prosecute. Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Coffman of Colorado released the letter to The Associated Press on Thursday.

The decision means no one has yet been fired or charged since the cost of the hospital ballooned to nearly $1.7 billion, almost triple earlier estimates.

The Veterans Affairs Inspector General had been seeking the charges and he disagrees with this decision:

The VA’s inspector general, an internal watchdog, said last year that Haggstrom knew the project was veering toward huge cost overruns but didn’t tell lawmakers when he testified before Congress in 2013 and 2014. That prompted lawmakers to call for the perjury investigation of Haggstrom and Fiotes.

Coffman said he was disappointed in the Justice Department’s decision.

“I think that there is clear evidence that they intentionally misled Congress,” he said.

And here is more:

Committee chairman Phil Roe, a Republican from Tennessee, also expressed disappointment.

“It cannot be disputed that VA’s handling of this construction project was thoroughly mismanaged, and VA officials at the time decided not to provide Congress with an accurate picture of their failures,” he said.

  This has shades of Eric Holder, Loretta Lynch, Lois Lerner, and Hillary Clinton but we had hoped that with a Republican President who vowed to “drain the swamp” it would be different this time around. However serious Donald Trump is about “draining the swamp” it is clear it is not going to happen because those who would have to “drain the swamp” are actually swamp creatures themselves.

malo periculosam libertatem quam quietum servitium