COMMITTEE SEEKS INTERVIEW WITH SECOND DEVOS AIDE: Rep. Elijah Cummings, the House Oversight chairman, said in a letter obtained by POLITICO on Friday that the interview is necessary because the Trump administration has failed to fully cooperate with his panel’s inquiry. He also renewed a request for documents that he said the Education Department had “unnecessarily” redacted or withheld from congressional investigators.
— Cummings said the committee wanted to conduct a transcribed interview with Eric Ventimiglia, a special assistant to DeVos, who “appears to have played a key role in trying to remove” the acting inspector general earlier this year.
— The committee’s investigation began after President Donald Trump in January appointed Phil Rosenfelt, the department’s deputy general counsel, to replace Sandra Bruce as acting inspector general. The White House backtracked on the appointment several days later after a swift backlash from Democrats, who said it was an attack on the independence of the inspector general. The attempted replacement came after Bruce resisted a request by Deputy Secretary of Education Mick Zais to “reconsider” an investigation into DeVos’ decision to reinstate a controversial accreditor of for-profit colleges.