Dana Bash asked Todd Blanche on CNN Sunday morning whether he would look into Calley Means' charge that Susie Wiles ran health policy for lobbyists. The attorney general: "Something that someone says on a podcast? No, I do not listen to that, absolutely not." In the next segment, Rep. Robert Garcia, D-Calif., who takes the House Oversight gavel in January, said he already was: "We're looking at this very case."
Wiles resigned Thursday night. By Sunday Wiles had two cases on her.
Means brought the first, over health money. He quit HHS last month. On Friday he told Joe Rogan that Wiles and her deputy James Blair pressed HHS to approve fruit-flavored vapes, that Wiles arranged Trump's May golf-course lunch with tobacco lobbyists, and that a sugar study died over sugar-industry donations. He told CBS her circle was "taking money from the industries we ran on fighting against." Wiles' spokesperson calls it "outrageous, defamatory, and provably false."
We published the second, Bosnia, on Saturday. Katie Wiles, Susie Wiles' daughter, is a partner at Continental Strategy. Milorad Dodik's Bosnian Serb entity, Republika Srpska, has paid the Washington lobbying firm $35,000 a month since February. Her partner Alex Garcia booked Dodik's envoy into Susie Wiles' West Wing office on Sept. 21. On tape, Katie Wiles tells colleagues to clear the metadata "because somebody will look for who made t
he edit." She appears on no filing.
Washington has not said out loud what that money bought.
