After nearly one year of work, the U.S. Defense Dept.’s Inspector General can’t finish a congressionally-ordered probe of a $400-million U.S-Mexico border wall construction award last December to contractor Fisher Sand & Gravel because agency attorneys won't allow release of requested DOD and White House e-mails related to the contract, Acting Inspector General Sean O’Donnell said in a Nov. 30 report to Congress.
Rep. Bennie Thompson, (D-Miss.), House Homeland Security Committee chairman, requested the investigation shortly after the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers awarded the North Dakota-based contractor its first federal construction contract for 31 miles of wall construction in Yuma County, Ariz. The audit is set to determine if President Donald Trump and other administration officials may have improperly influenced the award to the firm. Fisher has subsequently won other contracts in Arizona and Texas for a total of more than $2 billion in federal border wall construction work