OSC Deputy Counsel (and Former GAP Director) Mark Cohen: "We'll Look out for Robert MacLean, and Make Sure This Wrong is Righted

Fired and Disgraced Federal Air Marshal Robert MacLean, gave an interview to Mark Cohen, Director of the Government Accountability Project (GAP), who represented Mr. MacLean in the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB). MacLean subsequently lost his appeal with the MSPB.

The MSPB claimed in their final ruling, that Mr. MacLean was not a legitimate whistleblower by law, and that his testimony was NOT CREDIBLE, meaning that he most likely committed perjury in his deposition and testimony.

While defending MacLean, Mr. Cohen was appointed the Deputy Special Counsel of the Office of Special Counsel (OSC). Mr. Cohen subsequently used OSC resources to file brief's with the MSPB on MacLean's behalf, trying to convince the MSPB to reverse their decision.

Some have claimed that Mark Cohen's actions of openly supporting his former client Robert MacLean, while in his new position as Deputy Special Counsel for the OSC, is unethical, a conflict of interest, and possibly a violation of law. A lawyer currently serving as a public employee (such as Deputy Special Counsel), should not participate in any legal matter whatsoever, in which that lawyer participated personally while in private practice.

In December of 2006, long before Mark Cohen left GAP to become the new Deputy Special Counsel, the Office of Special Counsel investigated claims made by MacLean, and as written in their letter of declination, decided to close the case file based on their findings that there was no evidence to substantiate MacLean's claims of Prohibited Personnel Practices.

Yet five years later, immediately after Mark Cohen assumed his new position, OSC reopened MacLean's closed file, and is now supporting MacLean's claims by filing a Amicus Curiae brief to the MSPB, on MacLean's behalf, in an effort to get the MSPB to reverse its final decision based on a semantic technicality, rather than on the actual facts and testimony that was presented in the case. Does the OSC actually have the statutory authority to write brief's in support of a terminated federal employee, who has been officially adjudicated by the MSPB as not being a legitimate whistleblower by law?

The coincidence is staggering.

So is Mark Cohen and the Office of Special Counsel now going to go back and reopen other whistleblower files that were prematurely closed by former Special Counsel Scott Bloch, or is the "new and improved" OSC only going to reopen the investigative files of those so-called whistleblowers who are clients of the Government Accountability Project?

You may watch the complete interview at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Idd972tZcSA

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1. By: The Truth Chron...
2. Categories News & Events
3. Views 26
4. Added :28-Aug-11
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