A War on Inspectors General?
Photo by Harold Mendoza on Unsplash
On Friday, President Trump sent a letter to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi informing her that he had decided to remove Steve A. Linick, the Inspector General of the State Department. According to the letter, the president no longer had “the fullest confidence” in Linick. The administration has not provided any other details as to the reasons for the dismissal.
The firing follows the removal by the president of several other inspectors general within the executive branch of the federal government. On Friday, April 3 of this year, he fired Michael Atkinson, the Inspector General for the intelligence community. Within a week after that, the president also removed Glenn Fine, the Acting Inspector General for the Defense Department. On May 2, President Trump announced that he would be replacing Acting Department of Health and Human Services Inspector General Christi Grimm with a new appointee, and Grimm would return to her prior position as principal deputy inspector general.
Several of the inspectors general removed by President Trump ran afoul of him or his administration in one way or another. Linick had issued one report that found State Department employees were subjected to "disrespectful and hostile treatment" and a second report that found Trump political appointees had improperly retaliated against a career civil servant. In addition, Linick had given a private briefing to staff members from several House and Senate committees in connection with the impeachment proceedings against the president. Reports in the media have also indicated that Linick may have been investigating the misuse of a political appointee to perform personal services for Secretary of State Pompeo and his wife. Grimm had approved an inspector general report that found severe and widespread shortages of testing supplies and personal protective equipment relating to the COVID-19 pandemic. And Atkinson was responsible for delivering the infamous “whistleblower” complaint to Congress that kicked off the impeachment proceedings against President Trump.
Many media outlets are describing this as President Trump’s “war on inspectors general.” By this view, he is systematically removing anyone in the executive branch who speaks truth to power, is willing to disclose wrongdoing, or presumes to threaten the talking points of the administration.
On the other hand, other commentators describe all of this as just business as usual. They note that inspectors general are appointed by the president, and while some are career employees of the government, many are political appointees. And in most cases they are subject to removal at the president’s discretion and replacement with the approval of the Senate.
Some further point to a comparison to the tradition of replacing foreign ambassadors or federal prosecutors at the beginning of a president’s term. Linick was an Obama appointee, and so by that standard, President Trump was generous in letting him stay in the role as long as he did.
As a result, the argument goes, this is just typical stuff, the kind of thing all presidents do. President Trump is entitled to have IGs that he has confidence in, just like any other president.
So, are President Trump’s actions here really an unprecedented war on inspectors general, or just business as usual?
The Inspector General Act, which governs IGs today, was passed in 1978. According to the Act, its purpose was to create “independent and objective” officials to conduct and supervise audits and investigations, to prevent and detect fraud, and to keep the head of the applicable agency and Congress informed about problems and deficiencies relating to the administration of programs.
There is, of course, a tension in the role of inspector general. It is to be “independent and objective.” However, inspectors general are offices within the executive branch, subject to direct supervision by the head of the department in which they sit and the indirect authority of the president.
According to a report of the Congressional Research Service issued last week, there were only two instances where IGs were removed prior to President Trump’s term:
Shortly after his inauguration, President Reagan removed all 15 then confirmed and acting inspectors general across the executive branch. Occurring only three years after the Inspector General Act was adopted, it appears that the new administration assumed that IGs, like other political appointees, should be subject to replacement at the start of a new president’s term. However, this action instead caused bipartisan concern in Congress. Both the chair (a Democrat) and the ranking member (a Republican) of the House Committee on Government Relations said at the time that the move could politicize, and so undermine, the role of inspector general. In the end, the concern seems to have been alleviated when the administration re-nominated five of the former inspectors general and made other commitments to support the IG system. Since then, all inspectors general have remained in place during subsequent presidential transitions.
In June 2009, President Obama removed Gerald Walpin, the inspector general for the Corporation for National Community Service. The removal occurred a week after the inspector general issued a report finding that grants by the CNCS to the Research Foundation for the City University of New York in connection with the certification of AmeriCorp teachers provided no additional service, and should be recovered from RFCUNY, together with interest and grant costs. Similar to President Trump’s removal of Linick, President Obama said he had lost the fullest confidence in the existing inspector general. However, the administration later submitted a letter providing other reasons for dismissing Walpin, including support from board members of the CNCS. Walpin claimed he had been removed because his investigation involved Kevin Johnson, a former NBA player, mayor of Sacramento, and friend of President Obama. His suit seeking reinstatement in his position was dismissed by a federal judge in 2010.
That’s it. Since the inception of the Inspector General Act in 1978, no other inspectors general have been removed by a president. Not a single IG was removed by either President Bush or by President Clinton, and President Obama removed just one during his two terms. [Note 1]
In the last six weeks, President Trump has removed four inspectors general.
Given these circumstances, the removal of four IGs in six weeks is indeed without precedent.
Now, the absence of dismissals of inspectors general does not mean prior administrations did not have fraught relationships with the inspector general corp from time to time. In August 2014, 47 of the 73 inspectors general signed a letter complaining that the Obama administration had imposed “serious limitations on access to records that have recently impeded the work of Inspectors General at the Peace Corp, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Department of Justice.” They said these limitations posed “potentially serious challenges to the authority of every Inspector General and our ability to conduct our work thoroughly, independently, and in a timely manner.”
In response to this and other issues, in 2016 Congress unanimously passed and President Obama signed the Inspector General Empowerment Act, which among other things ensures that inspectors general can obtain whatever documentation they require from the agencies they audit, unless a statute specifically requires otherwise.
In addition, during the Obama administration, inspectors general issued reports relating to the “Operation Fast and Furious” gunwalking program, the targeting of conservative non-profits by the IRS, and the use by Hillary Clinton of a private email server while serving as Secretary of State. As far as I have been able to determine, none of these IGs were removed or disciplined.
As of the time of this writing, President Trump has not given any reason for dismissing Linick, other than the loss of the president’s confidence, or for the removal of Glenn Fine, the Acting Inspector General for the Defense Department. The removal of Christi Grimm was tied directly to her approval of an HHS report that contradicted the administration’s position on the availability of supplies related to COVID-19, and Atkinson to the delivery of the “whistleblower” report to Congress. Inspectors general in other administrations have issued reports or taken actions that were just as embarrassing to the president at the time without facing removal.
There has long been an understanding across party lines that inspectors general are not just political appointees, and should have clear independence from the agencies they audit and the administration in which they serve. Efforts by a president to impede the work of inspectors general or to dismiss them have met with consistent bipartisan scrutiny.
The removal of four IGs within six weeks, particularly where several issued reports or took actions inconsistent with the Trump Administration’s policies or pronouncements, is indeed unprecedented. In order to preserve the independence of the inspectors general and their ability to perform the duties assigned to them under the law, Congress has a duty to investigate the motivations behind these actions, and to emphasize to the administration that the removal of inspectors general for political reasons will not be tolerated.
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Note 1: It is possible, of course, that some inspectors general resigned under pressure, but the CRS report notes that since such events cannot be confirmed by publicly available information, it is impossible to determine the extent to which this may have occurred. Two cases that made the press during the Obama administration included Fred Weiderhold Jr., the inspector general for Amtrak, who resigned in 2009 with a severance package, and Judith Gwynn, the acting inspector general for the United States International Trade Commission, who was engaged in a series of 6-month contracts that were not renewed in 2009. Though reports at the time questioned each action, and the Senate sought additional information, no evidence was produced that either was improper.