WASHINGTON -- Lawmakers threatened Thursday to subpoena all State Department documentation pertaining to its 2015 human trafficking report, which government experts have said was watered down to further the Obama administration’s trade agenda.
“If that is not forthcoming immediately my sense is the committee would take the very unusual step and subpoena that information,” Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chair Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) said at a hearing on Thursday morning. “This is possibly the most heartless, lacking of substance presentation I have ever seen about a serious topic. And I don’t see how anybody could believe that there was integrity in this process.”
The annual report, released July 27, ranks countries based on their human trafficking record, and publicly disgraces nations that fail to crack down on the sex trade. But this year, the State Department gave several countries more favorable ratings than its own on-the-ground experts in those countries said should have been given. Malaysia, a key player in the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade negotiations, was upgraded from its Tier 3 blacklist rating to a Tier 2, despite experts’ analysis that the country hadn’t actually improved.
“Malaysia got what they wanted, they got into Tier 2 which just happens to allow them to continue TPP negotiations and have preferential access into the United States market,” said Foreign Relations Committee Vice Chair Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) at a hearing Thursday.
Testifying before the committee, Undersecretary of State for Human Rights Sarah Sewall refused repeatedly to tell lawmakers whether discussions had occurred in the upper echelons of the State Department to overrule the analysis of their experts.
“I won’t comment on internal deliberations,” she told an incredulous panel.
Along with Malaysia, the politicos of the State Department reportedly overruled their in-country and human rights experts in 14 of 17 disputed cases. Cuba was also upgraded to the Tier 2 watch list, despite experts’ analysis that the country should remain on Tier 3. And although experts said the human trafficking situation had worsened in China, the country was not downgraded.
Secretary of State John Kerry said in Malaysia on Thursday that the rankings had nothing to do with the TPP talks, but that didn’t appear to placate congressional critics.
“That comment does nothing to allay my concerns,” Corker said. “Many of us believe that you sort of threw the trafficking piece under the bus.”