Gruber Continues to Dodge Growing Number of Document Requests

Vermont State Auditor Doug Hoffer says Gov. Peter Shumlin’s administration has asked Professor Jonathan Gruber to provide the names, employment status, and contact information of the research assistants for whose work Gruber was personally paid $80,000 by the state of Vermont. So far, Hoffer tells Breitbart News, Gruber has not responded to the Shumlin administration’s request.

Hoffer says the Shumlin administration informed him by phone on December 19 that Gruber had yet to respond to the inquiry. On December 3, Hoffer requested the Shumlin administration provide Gruber’s contract information so he could speak with the research assistants directly and confirm whether or not Gruber had actually paid them the $80,000 he received from the state of Vermont for their services.

“I’ll make that decision when the time comes,” Hoffer told Breitbart News when asked what course of action he would take if Gruber fails to provide the Shumlin administration with the requested information.

Gruber’s stonewalling of Vermont comes on the heels of at least four other pending or potential investigations in which the professor has failed to provide documentation requested by authorities.

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee subpoenaed all of Gruber’s work product and billing documentation related to his 2009 federal contract with the Department of HHS, as well as all his many state contracts related to Obamacare earlier this month. To date, Gruber has failed to respond to this subpoena, which is set to expire in early January when the new Congress convenes.

Incoming Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) is expected to reissue this subpoena and also require Gruber’s testimony at new hearings of the committee. On December 9, Gruber testified before the committee under outgoing Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA). At those hearings Gruber “lawyered up” and refused to provide any work product or billing details to the committee.

Gruber also faces at least two additional potential investigations and one pending investigation.

Last week, Vermont House Minority Leader Donald Turner (R) sent a letter to the Inspector General of the Department of Health and Human Services, requesting an investigation to the expenditure of federal dollars into all Obamacare-related activities in the state of Vermont. If that investigation is undertaken, its scope would include the $280,000 personal services contract the state of Vermont signed with Gruber in July 2014 to perform economic projections of Governor Shumlin’s proposed single-payer plan.

On December 17, Governor Shumlin made a dramatic announcement that — at least for 2015 — he was abandoning any efforts to introduce single-payer in Vermont, citing high costs.

Elsewhere, an influential state legislator in Minnesota, Representative Greg Davids, will become the chairman of the powerful Taxes Committee in January. He has demanded that Gruber return the $329,000 he was paid by the state of Minnesota for what Davids called “beyond laughable” faulty economic projections for the state’s MNSure Obamacare health exchange. In addition, Davids has called on Minnesota’s Attorney General to investigate Gruber’s contract.

Minnesota’s Office of the Legislative Auditor, which will release a review of the state’s MNSure health exchange program in February, recently announced that the review will address Gruber’s contract with the state.