Tag: watchdogs

President Donald Trump’s top advisers have discussed ousting independent watchdogs — known as inspectors general — at multiple federal agencies, sources familiar with the conversations tell ABC News.

The conversations began during Trump’s transition period to the White House, but sources tell ABC News that it’s not clear if or when the moves are expected to occur.

A decision on whether or not to fire the IGs has not been made, and it’s not clear how many of the watchdogs Trump would seek to remove, the sources said.

Inspectors general can be fired by the president, but only after communicating a reason for the removal to both houses of Congress 30 days in advance. In 2022, Congress strengthened and expanded protections for inspectors general, making it harder to replace them with hand-picked officials and requiring additional explanations from a president for their removal.

While the politically-appointed leaders of agencies and departments come and go with each administration, an IG can stay and serve under multiple presidents.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

“It would essentially be removing this critical component of oversight and it really leaves the American public vulnerable to corruption and abuse of power,” Faith Williams, the director of the Effective and Accountable Government Program at the Project on Government Oversight watchdog group, told ABC News.

Trump installed political loyalists after firing multiple inspectors general during his first term in office — including five over six weeks in 2020 — in a move that was criticized by lawmakers and government watchdogs who accused Trump of attempting to erode safeguards and independent checks on the federal government.

In April of 2020, Trump fired Michael Atkinson, the inspector general for the intelligence community, telling reporters he did a “terrible job.”

Atkinson’s communications to Congress about a whistleblower complaint helped initiate the Ukraine impeachment inquiry against Trump, leading to his first impeachment by Congress. Trump was ultimately acquitted by the Senate.

“I thought he did a terrible job, absolutely terrible. He took a whistleblower report which turned out to be a fake report, it was fake, it was totally wrong. It was about my conversation with the president of Ukraine,” Trump said. “He took a fake report, and he brought it to Congress.”

Atkinson transmitted an intelligence official’s complaint to Congress that centered on Trump’s phone call urging Ukraine’s president to investigate the Biden family’s dealings in Ukraine. Democrats later impeached Trump for abusing his power in efforts to get Ukraine to investigate his political rival, and for obstructing the congressional investigation into the affair.

Trump said he fired State Department inspector general Steve Linick at the urging of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo — who was being investigated by the office.

“I don’t know anything about him, other than the State Department, or Mike in particular, weren’t happy with the job he was doing,” Trump said. “He asked me if that would be possible, and I said, ‘Sure, I’ll do that.’”

Earlier this year, President Joe Biden fired the inspector general of the U.S. Railroad Retirement Board, Martin Dickman, following an investigation into workplace harassment and abuse, according to The Hill.

And President Barack Obama fired Gerald Walpin, the inspector general of the Corporation for National Community Service, in 2009. It followed Walpin’s criticism of a Justice Department settlement with then-Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson, who had been accused by his investigators of using AmeriCorps volunteers as chaffeurs and personal assistants. Johnson, a Democrat, had campaigned for Obama.

Since 1978, inspectors general have been tasked with investigating waste, fraud and abuse across departments and agencies. Nearly half of the 74 inspectors general in the federal government are nominated by presidents to serve in nonpartisan roles.

By law, an inspector general must be hired “without regard to political party and solely on the basis of integrity and demonstrated ability in accounting, auditing, financial analysis, law, management analysis, public administration, or investigations.”

Currently, there are nearly a dozen vacant inspector general positions for Trump to fill, including at the Treasury and Commerce Departments and the National Security Agency.

The inspectors general of the Central Intelligence Agency and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence resigned late last year, giving Trump the opportunity to nominate his own picks to lead oversight of the powerful national security agencies.

While an inspector general lacks prosecutorial power, IGs can identify possible criminal behavior and refer it for prosecution.

In 2021, the State Department IG determined that Pompeo and his wife broke ethics rules by asking staff to carry out personal favors. Pompeo defended his actions, arguing that they asked “small, simple” tasks of a “friend” who was a longtime aide.

In the past, Trump has defended the president’s authority to remove inspectors general — but the move could prompt political backlash.

In his first day in office, President Ronald Reagan dismissed more than a dozen inspectors general, and was accused by Republicans and Democrats of politicizing the roles, according to The New York Times.

The outcry led Reagan to hire some of the ousted watchdogs back into their roles, Williams of the Project on Government Oversight told ABC News.

“I would hope that there would be some outcry now” if Trump were to take action, Williams said. “One of Congress’s duties is oversight, and one of the ways it achieves that is by working with the inspector general community.”

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, a longtime advocate for inspectors general, told ABC News that IGs are “very important” to support Congress’ work as a check on the executive branch.

“Inspector generals are expected to be independent of political pressure, independent of the head of the agency, and to make sure the law is enforced and money is spent appropriately,” he said.

Trump’s first transition team also contemplated removing inspectors general: In 2017, the House Oversight Committee obtained an internal transition team email with instructions to inform IGs they were “being held over on a temporary basis.”

As president, Trump repeatedly complained about inspectors general and their work — once calling it “insane” that the Pentagon IG’s reports were publicly released.

“For these reports to be, to be given out, essentially — forget about the public — given out to the enemy is insane. And I don’t want it to happen anymore, Mr. Secretary. You understand that,” he said in a January 2019 Cabinet meeting to his then-acting Defense secretary, Patrick Shanahan.

ABC News’ Lalee Ibssa contributed to this report.