Safavian's Wife's Recusal Policy

Click here for the letter (pdf) to the Office of Government Ethics from Representative Tom Davis (R-VA), chairman of the House Government Reform Committee.  This December 2003 letter outlines the recusal policy for Jennifer Safavian, the House Government Reform Committee's Chief Counsel for Oversight and Investigations, after her husband David Safavian was nominated to be the Administrator of the Office of Management and Budget's Office of Federal Procurement Policy (OFPP). 

The letter says that Jennfier Safavian should be recused from:

• "all matters where the conduct of officials and employees of the Office of Management and Budget is the central issue";
• "any oversight or investigation of the promulgation, dissemination, or enforcement by OFPP of federal procurement policy, including policies related to competitive sourcing or information technology";
• "oversight or investigation of any specific procurement matter a an agency or department other than OMB, unless I [Rep. Tom Davis] make a seperate and specific determination in writing."

MORE: Josh Marshall asks: What was the recusal policy for Jennifer when her husband David was at the General Services Administration helping his buddy Jack Abramoff obtain GSA land?

Comments

NBC's Viq reports that Nancy Pelosi yesterday seized upon the fact that the chief counsel on the House committee charged with investigating the government's response to Katrina is married to David Safavian, the just-resigned Administration official who was involved in Katrina procurement and who was arrested on Monday as part of the Abramoff probe. Weaving together Democrats' efforts to hit the White House on ethics and on competence, Pelosi asked whether Jennifer Safavian's position played a role in her husband's hiring, claiming that he was not qualified to begin with and comparing him in that regard to Michael Brown. "This culture of corruption in Washington, DC is being manifested so clearly in how they are dealing with Katrina," Pelosi said.

Jennifer Safavian was the lead staff investigator when House members took a delegation to the region last weekend. A spokesperson for Rep. Tom Davis (R), who will lead the House investigation and on whose committee she works, told Viqueira via e-mail, "[W]e've built a solid wall around her from the day he was nominated... She has not worked on ANY procurement issues, and did not work on any GSA issues while he was at that shop."

Tom Davis is pretty powerful. POGO you better protect your genitals if your going after one of his staffers.

Are you implying that she just makes a phone call here and there and puts people in touch with one another?

That depends on what your definition of the word "work" is.

So what did she work on?