Tag: Whistleblowers

In 2019, we represented an anonymous whistle-blower from the American intelligence community whose disclosures about President Trump’s attempt to coerce President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine led to his first impeachment. Our goals as lawyers were simple: to ensure that the truth came out and our client was safe from retaliation.

We worked within an inspector general system created by Congress to conduct independent investigations of malfeasance within government, one of the institutional guardrails put in place a half century ago in the wake of the Watergate scandal.

Even then, there were signs during our case that those guardrails were beginning to fracture under Mr. Trump’s sway. The White House’s attacks on our client, and on us, undermined an important system of checks and balances. President Trump subsequently dismissed five inspectors general, including the watchdog for the intelligence community, who had fulfilled his lawful obligations to protect our client at his own peril.

President Trump has now returned to the White House office far more knowledgeable about the inner workings of the government, with a list of grievances he is working through expeditiously.

On Friday night, in a bloodletting reminiscent of the Saturday Night Massacre, in which Richard Nixon ordered the dismissal of the Watergate special prosecutor and accepted the resignations of the attorney general and his deputy, Mr. Trump fired as many as 17 inspectors general. This action has sowed distrust and turmoil within the inspector general system and unfortunately has called into question the pathways that whistle-blowers will have available to them.

Congress created the inspector general posts in 1978 to allow for independent audits and investigations of government departments to guard against waste, fraud and abuse. The president has the power to appoint inspector generals in the major departments with Senate consent, and to fire them. But in this case, Mr. Trump terminated them without first giving Congress 30 days notice, nor, as he is required to do under a 2022 law, providing a “substantive rationale, including detailed and case-specific reasons” for the dismissals. It was a direct challenge not only to the system but to Congress.

The inspectors general he fired included many he appointed in his first term, and who, as customary, remained on the job during the Biden administration. The most reasonable explanation for Mr. Trump’s action is that he is seeking to install loyalists, which would knock the guardrails against government malfeasance clattering to the ground.

This should not have come as a surprise. Well over a year before Mr. Trump was sworn into office for his second term, he issued a video in which he vowed to upend the inspector general system as part of his effort to “dismantle the deep state and reclaim our democracy from Washington corruption.” If the firings hold up, they will give Mr. Trump carte blanche to install watchdogs faithful solely to him, not to the Constitution.

For many decades, the inspector general system has helped to ensure that government officials and agencies are held accountable within the bounds of the law. There has not been such a purge since Ronald Reagan fired 16 inspectors general on his first day in office in 1981. He then invited them to reapply for their jobs “in competition with other applicants” and subsequently reappointed five. Since then, inspector generals have kept their posts when a new president takes office, in deference to the nonpartisan nature of the jobs.

In recent years, inspectors general have found, among other things, that the F.B.I. mishandled allegations of sexual abuse by the former U.S.A. Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar and that billions in pandemic-related unemployment insurance funds were paid out improperly. The scope of their work is reflected in a report to Congress for the 2023 fiscal year that pointed to 2,200 audits, inspection and evaluation reports that year and 4,300 successful prosecutions.

Independent inspectors general provide a safe channel for whistle-blowers, whose complaints often include the raw material needed for audits, inspections and investigations. Without those whistle-blowers, it would be nearly impossible for the inspectors general to learn about problems as they arise and address them.

That, though, is the new reality that Mr. Trump and his policy advisers appear to want, and it is scaring federal employees and government contractors who know they are now being held to a new standard of loyalty, not legality. People who might previously have considered blowing the whistle are going to have to think much more carefully now, not least because they may no longer have a safe avenue through their inspector general office.

We hope Congress will take on Mr. Trump to assure the continued viability of the inspector general system. Outspoken supporters for whistle-blower protection and government transparency, such as Senator Charles Grassley, Republican of Iowa, and Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, should push their fellow lawmakers to intervene. With Congress controlled by Mr. Trump’s own Republican Party, we are not optimistic. Those of us who have worked within government systems of accountability and pursued whistle-blower cases are now trying to develop alternative paths of disclosure.

The voices of whistle-blowers must continue to be heard. And if the federal government will no longer provide them a haven, then private and nonprofit legal groups must step up to protect them in every way possible.

Mark S. Zaid is a lawyer who focuses on national security, speech and government accountability. Andrew P. Bakaj is the chief legal counsel for the nonprofit group Whistleblower Aid. He previously served in the offices of two inspectors general.

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