Treasury inspector general to probe delay of Harriet Tubman $20 bills
The Treasury Department’s inspector general will review the Trump administration’s decision to delay production of a new $20 bill featuring Harriet Tubman.
Rich Delmar, the department’s acting IG, said in a letter to Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) that the office would include Schumer’s request for an investigation into a broader audit on currency design that is already underway.
{mosads}”It will specifically include review of the process with respect to the $20 bill. If, in the course of our audit work, we discover indications of employee misconduct or other matters that warrant a referral to our Office of Investigations, we will do so expeditiously,” Delmar wrote in the letter to Schumer, which was released on Monday.
He added that the probe will include interviews with “stakeholders involved in the new note design process,” including executives from the Treasury Department, Federal Reserve System and the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. The review, he estimated, would take roughly 10 months.
Schumer requested an investigation last week into the delay of the redesign, including whether “political considerations” had spilled over into the process.
Schumer said on Monday that he was “pleased” the Treasury Department IG would review the delay, saying it hadn’t been “credibly explained.”
“There are no women, there are no people of color on our paper currency today, even though they make up a significant majority of our population, and the previous administration’s plan to put New Yorker Harriet Tubman, on the $20 note was a long overdue way to recognize that disparity, and rectify it,” he added.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin announced last month that a redesign featuring Tubman, an abolitionist hero, will be delayed until 2028.
Obama-era Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew announced in 2016 that such a re-design would be released in 2020.
Earlier this month, a preliminary redesign created in late 2016 was leaked.
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