Congress Turns its Sights to DCAA Audit Backlog
Client Alert | 1 min read | 10.26.17
On October 20, 2017, Senator Claire McCaskill, Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, issued a letter to David Norquist, Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller)/Chief Financial Officer requesting “detailed information” about the Defense Contract Audit Agency’s audit backlog, in what appears to be a follow up to the September 2017 GAO Report (discussed here), which found that “DCAA failed to meet its original goal of eliminating the backlog of audits more than two years old” by the end of Fiscal Year 2016 – a goal that DCAA now believes “will be challenging to meet” by the end of Fiscal Year 2018. The letter asked DoD to provide a written response by November 10, 2017 regarding: (1) DCAA’s “current inventory of incurred cost audits”; (2) “the plans and expected timeline for reducing DCAA’s audit backlog to 18 months of inventory”; and (3) the current status and timeline for DoD to complete its “plans to assess and implement options for reducing the length of time to begin incurred cost audit work,” and “conduct a comprehensive analysis regarding the use and effect of multi-year audits by March 31, 2018.”
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Client Alert | 3 min read | 11.21.25
On November 7, 2025, in Thornton v. National Academy of Sciences, No. 25-cv-2155, 2025 WL 3123732 (D.D.C. Nov. 7, 2025), the District Court for the District of Columbia dismissed a False Claims Act (FCA) retaliation complaint on the basis that the plaintiff’s allegations that he was fired after blowing the whistle on purported illegally discriminatory use of federal funding was not sufficient to support his FCA claim. This case appears to be one of the first filed, and subsequently dismissed, following Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche’s announcement of the creation of the Civil Rights Fraud Initiative on May 19, 2025, which “strongly encourages” private individuals to file lawsuits under the FCA relating to purportedly discriminatory and illegal use of federal funding for diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives in violation of Executive Order 14173, Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity (Jan. 21, 2025). In this case, the court dismissed the FCA retaliation claim and rejected the argument that an organization could violate the FCA merely by “engaging in discriminatory conduct while conducting a federally funded study.” The analysis in Thornton could be a sign of how forthcoming arguments of retaliation based on reporting allegedly fraudulent DEI activity will be analyzed in the future.
Client Alert | 3 min read | 11.20.25
Client Alert | 3 min read | 11.20.25
Client Alert | 6 min read | 11.19.25
