The Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee accused the State Department of stonewalling an investigation into the political manipulation of a key human rights report, and urged his colleagues to consider a response.
Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) claimed Tuesday that during a classified hearing last week with Deputy Secretary of State Tony Blinken, he requested three specific documents related to the decision-making process behind the department’s 2015 Trafficking in Persons report (TIP). He noted that the request has not been fulfilled.
“I do hope they will provide that, like, now,” Sen. Corker said during committee proceedings. “This shouldn’t take any time to get to us.”
He added that he “would like to talk to the committee about next steps to force that to happen,” claiming that most members were “very unsatisfied with the testimony that occurred last week.”
Senators were on hand Tuesday for the nomination hearing of Susan Coppedge, President Obama’s choice to be the next head of the State Department’s Office to Combat and Monitor Trafficking in Persons—the body that oversees the annual TIP report. During her opening remarks, Coppedge pointed to her record as an assistant US attorney in Georgia, indicting dozens of traffickers, and assisting nearly 100 victims.
Lawmakers, however, were more interested in discussing the ineffectiveness of the office Coppedge was picked to lead, which, they allege, caved to political appointees seeking last year, at an unprecedented rate, to rank nations based on the President’s foreign policy agenda.
At the forefront of their concerns, reportedly, were trade issues. According to Reuters, “senior American diplomats” overruled the office’s recommended designation of China as a Tier 3 human trafficker—the lowest rating. Ultimately, the TIP granted the largest exporter of commodities to the United States a Tier 2 designation.
Senators also alleged improper influence in regard to Malaysia. The party to Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations risked being barred from the trade pact if it had retained it’s Tier 3 status, due to language included in the Trade Promotion Authority bill passed earlier this year by Congress. Despite no discernible change in the status quo, the 2015 TIP report awarded Malaysia a Tier 2 designation.
“I hope you have an understanding of why many members of this committee have a concern about the 2015 TIP report as it relates to Malaysia,” Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) told Coppedge, adding that the “narrative of why a country was upgraded from a Tier 3 worst standard to a Tier 2 just doesn’t fit the upgrade.”
“I’ve been following all of your hearings on this matter and reading the articles as well,” Coppedge responded.
During an August hearing with the committee, Undersecretary of State for Civilian Security, Democracy and Human Rights Sarah Sewall pushed back against claims that the report had been compromised by politics, but denied Senators any insight into the department’s deliberative process.
Chairman Corker said during last month’s hearing that Sewell’s evasiveness could prompt the committee to “take the very unusual step of subpoenaing that information.”
The State Department then dispatched Tony Blinken to Capitol Hill last week to answer Senators’ questions, but only in a closed session.
Corker claimed Tuesday that the hearing was made closed to the public “for the benefit of the State Department so we that would not have media there and other things.”
