Trump is muzzling country’s watchdogs
Ousting 5 IGs sends message: Pursue probes critical of administration at risk of removal.
The day Ronald Reagan was sworn in as president in 1981, he sent a letter to inspectors general throughout the federal government, dismissing them all.
Lawmakers from both parties balked, pointing out that while Reagan had the authority to fire the powerful watchdogs, the 1978 law creating the posts never meant for them to be political appointees who could be switched out with each incoming administration.
They were intended as long-overdue safeguards against ordinary waste and fraud within the executive branch and against the kinds of abuses uncovered in the 1970s by the Watergate investigations and the Church Committee’s review of American intelligence activities in Vietnam and elsewhere.
Reagan immediately denied partisan motivations and he rehired some of the ousted auditors, most of whom had been career federal employees working under both Democratic and Republican administrations. In the nearly 40 years since, no president has attempted to so brazenly treat the inspectors as political appointees, and most have stomached even the most critical reports as necessary checks against the growing reach of executive branch agencies.
Until now. President Donald Trump has one-upped the Gipper. Instead of Reagan’s house cleaning, Trump has set about systematically removing only those inspectors he deems disloyal.
Trump’s tendency to force out any critical voices within his inner circle — from Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to Defense Secretary Jim Mattis to any number of insufficiently compliant chiefs of staff — is well known, as are his attacks on political opponents, the press and even the independent judiciary, when rulings go against him.
But in last week’s firing of the State Department’s inspector general, Steve Linick, Trump has made it more difficult than ever for Americans to trust their government is working in their interest.
Linick, a 12-year federal prosecutor and later a Justice Department official under both Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, is the fifth inspector general Trump has fired for overtly self-interested reasons.
The fifth.
By repeatedly ousting inspectors for adhering to their job descriptions, Trump sends a message to all who remain: Pursue investigations critical of the administration at risk of removal. If his intimidation succeeds, internal checks and balances fashioned to fend off corruption will collapse.
“These inspectors general were established by law by members of Congress of both parties to help make government officials more accountable to Congress and to the public,” R. Nicholas Burns, a career diplomat who was undersecretary of state for political affairs under Bush, told the editorial board.
“They are nonpartisan and don’t favor administrations of either party. They can help discover waste and inefficiencies in government that will help save the taxpayers money. They uncover problems in management that can help government to work better for the people.”
Recall another casualty of
Trump’s paranoid self-protection: Michael Atkinson, the intelligence community’s inspector general who forwarded to Congress a CIA whistleblower’s complaint about Trump and Ukraine’s president, was fired and replaced by a member of Trump’s own staff.
Such firings follow the same pattern as Trump’s purge of ambassadors and others who testified before the House impeachment hearings.
Linick’s is the most troubling of all because it doesn’t appear motivated by mere revenge. There is growing concern it was engineered to derail ongoing investigations into Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
Linick was reportedly investigating Pompeo on at least two fronts: whether he had used political appointees working for him to run personal errands, a petty form of corruption, and a more serious inquiry into Pompeo’s role in helping Trump bypass Congress’ moratorium on arms sales to Saudi Arabia following the kingdom’s murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
Federal law requires the president to state in a letter to Congress within 30 days his reasons for firing an inspector general. Trump’s only explanation so far: Pompeo asked him to. “I never even heard of him. I was asked by the State Department, by Mike, to terminate him. … I asked who appointed him. They said President Obama. I said, ‘Look, I’ll terminate him.’ ”
That’s highly worrisome.
“It is extremely unusual for any administration to fire an inspector general, especially if he or she is investigating that same administration,” said Burns, who was also Bush’s ambassador to NATO from 2001 to 2005. ”The fact that President Trump has now fired five inspectors general in a few short months is unprecedented in history and very troubling for the cause of good, honest government.”
Good government — what a precious notion these days. But it needn’t be.
Congress must act in three ways: Demand Trump offer a full accounting, determine for itself whether Pompeo had Linick fired to cover up his own mess, and see that investigations Linick had begun continue.
Forty-two years ago, abuses in the executive branch had left a nation, and Congress, reeling. Congress created the inspectors general to make sure such transgressions would not occur again. No American who stands against corruption should stand by as Trump makes a mockery of safeguards intended to keep our government honest.