At this point, we do not believe the actions taken are legally sufficient to dismiss Presidentially Appointed, Senate Confirmed Inspectors General,” wrote Hannibal “Mike” Ware, inspector general of the Small Business Administration and acting inspector general at the Social Security Administration.
In a written question in recent days, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) asked Hegseth if he would commit to maintaining the Defense Department’s independent inspector general.
Story continues below advertisement Some inspectors general are presidential appointees, while others are designated by the heads of their agencies.
Deputy inspector general Loren Sciurba has been in charge at that office since the acting inspector general retired in December.
Before the firings, there were more than 70 inspectors general across the federal government, some with large staffs numbering in the thousands.
In a historic purge, the White House has fired the independent inspectors general of almost all Cabinet-level agencies, potentially paving the way for President Donald Trump to appoint loyalists to fill the vital position of spotting waste, fraud, and abuse in the government.
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According to those familiar with the matter, who like others spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the private messages, the inspectors general received emails late Friday from White House personnel director Sergio Gor informing them that they had been fired immediately “due to changing priorities.”. The only Cabinet-level inspector generals who were spared were the watchdogs at Justice and Homeland Security.
Federal law stipulates that Congress must be notified 30 days in advance of any intention to dismiss a Senate-confirmed inspector general, and the dismissals seemed to violate this requirement. When a number of watchdogs who were informed they were fired planned to report to their offices on Monday to continue working, the legal ambiguity could lead to awkward situations.
The reason behind the removals, which were one of several first-week actions that have demonstrated Trump’s willingness to rid the federal government of dozens of leaders he believes to be disloyal to his agenda, including career officials and politically appointed officials, was not immediately clear on Saturday.
The Senate-confirmed watchdogs at the Departments of Defense, State, Transportation, Labor, Health and Human Services, Veterans Affairs, Housing and Urban Development, Interior, Energy, Commerce, Treasury, and Agriculture, as well as the Environmental Protection Agency, Small Business Administration, and the Social Security Administration, were removed on Saturday, leaving oversight of the government’s largest agencies in a state of uncertainty.
🏛.
Attend to politics.
According to one of the dismissed watchdogs, “it’s a widespread massacre.”. “Anyone Trump appoints now will be perceived as a loyalist, which damages the system as a whole. “”.
Republicans were indignant, and some asked the White House to provide an explanation. On Saturday afternoon, the top Democrats from 21 House committees jointly wrote a letter to Trump stating that it is illegal to remove federal watchdogs without informing Congress and defending their independence.
According to the letter, “Firing inspectors general without due cause is antithetical to good government, undermines the proper stewardship of taxpayer dollars, and degrades the federal government’s ability to function effectively and efficiently.”. Please revoke your illegal action and fulfill your duties to the American people. “.”.
Who the Trump administration would choose to replace the outgoing watchdogs was unknown. Any acting inspector general must be replaced by a senatorially confirmed individual or someone with prior experience in the watchdog community. The law was changed by Congress after Trump replaced some of the five watchdogs he swiftly dismissed during his first term with political loyalists.
The watchdog community was shocked to learn that many of those fired on Friday were Republicans or Trump appointees from his first term. However, one well-known Democratic appointee managed to survive: Michael Horowitz, who was appointed by President Barack Obama and has written reports that have been critical of both the Biden administration and the first administration of Donald Trump. Horowitz is currently at the Justice Department. Horowitz’s oversight function will be more apparent than ever as the Justice Department approaches a highly politicized term under a president who has made it clear that he intends to “seek retribution” against the prosecutors who spearheaded investigations into his actions.
Additionally, Trump replaced Joseph V. Cuffari, Jr. serves as the troubled inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security, the third-largest government agency. After years of investigation by an independent panel of watchdogs, Cuffari, a Trump appointee, was found in October to have misled the Senate during his nomination process and engaged in other wrongdoing during his five years in office.
There will probably be a lot of attention focused on Cuffari’s failure to oversee Trump’s administration’s top priority, the crackdown on illegal immigration during his second term.
Late Friday, in a letter to Gor, the chairman of the Council of Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency questioned the White House’s decision.
“I suggest that you speak with White House Counsel about your planned course of action. Hannibal “Mike” Ware, the inspector general of the Small Business Administration and the acting inspector general of the Social Security Administration, wrote, “At this time, we do not believe the actions taken are legally sufficient to dismiss Presidentially Appointed, Senate Confirmed Inspectors General.”.
A law passed by Congress in 2022 mandates that the White House notify Capitol Hill 30 days prior to dismissing inspectors general and provide a “substantial rationale” for the decision. Ware, one of those fired, cited this law.
Federal agencies were notified of the watchdogs’ terminations via emails. While speaking with a Washington Post reporter who had called to inquire about his dismissal, another fired inspector general read the email for the first time and discovered that he had been fired. In response, the individual stated that the new administration “does not want anyone in this role who is going to be independent.”. “.”.
That person went on to say, “IGs have done exactly what the president says he wants: to fight fraud, waste, and abuse and make the government more powerful.”. “It is absurd to fire so many of us. It runs counter to those objectives. “”.
Around the same time that the Senate narrowly approved Trump nominee Pete Hegseth as defense secretary, the firings were announced. Recently, in a written inquiry, Sen. Hegseth was asked by Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) if he would pledge to keep the independent inspector general at the Defense Department.
According to a copy of the questionnaire that The Post was able to view, he replied prior to Friday’s vote, “If confirmed, I commit to protecting the DoD IG’s independence.”. On Saturday morning, Vice President JD Vance swore Hegseth into office, but he made no mention of the dismissals.
Multiple requests for comment were not answered by White House aides. In his remarks Saturday afternoon in front of a raucous audience in a casino in Las Vegas, Trump listed a long list of things he did during his first few days in office. However, after his remarks, he stopped by the craps tables to greet supporters, ignoring reporters’ yelled questions and never bringing up the decision to fire the inspectors general.
A craps player reprimanded reporters for their question by saying, “I’m rolling here.”.
While the heads of their agencies designate some inspectors general, the president appoints others. They usually span administrations and have indefinite terms to protect them from changes in the political landscape. The president may remove them, but only after giving advance notice to both houses of Congress.
“In the middle of the night, there is a purge of independent watchdogs,” Warren wrote on social media on Friday. The duties of inspectors general include preventing misconduct, exposing government waste, and combatting fraud and abuse. The checks on President Trump’s authority are being dismantled, and widespread corruption is being made possible. “.”.
Charles E., the Senate Minority Leader. Schumer, a Democrat from New York, described Trump’s move as a “chilling purge.”. “.”.
On the Senate floor Saturday, Schumer stated, “These firings are Donald Trump’s way of telling us he is terrified of accountability and is hostile to facts and to transparency.”.
The removal of the inspector generals did not impress at least one Republican in Congress. John Barasso, the Republican majority whip in the Senate from Wyoming, stated on Saturday on Fox News that inspector generals occasionally fail to perform their duties. A few of them ought to be let go. “”.
Sen. Sen. have been vocal supporters of the independence of inspectors general within Trump’s party. Chuck Grassley (Iowa Republican). “There may be good reason the IGs were fired,” Grassley said in a statement on Saturday. If that is the case, we must know. I want President Trump to provide more details. In any case, Congress was not given the 30-day comprehensive notice of removal required by law. “”.
Earlier, Grassley had insisted that Trump’s nominee for attorney general, Pam Bondi, respect the independence of the Justice Department’s inspector general. In a statement to The Post on Saturday, Grassley defended Horowitz, who was among the few people Trump did not fire.
“Overall, he’s helped uncover information that wouldn’t have been known without his investigations,” Grassley stated. “I have active ongoing inquiries into some of Horowitz’s investigative matters, and I disagreed with his conclusions on some aspects of recent politically charged inquiries.”. “Horowitz must guarantee his continued compliance with my continuing supervision of his investigations, which includes delivering the requested investigative documents to Congress. “”.
The Trump administration had not yet appointed acting successors to the watchdog agencies as of Saturday night, leaving their worried employees in a state of uncertainty. At 11:45 p.m., the deputy inspector general sent an email to HUD staff. A. Friday, following the dismissal of Trump appointee Rae Oliver Davis.
Davis was fired, but no acting leader was named in the email, which stated, “We will let you know when we have more information.”.
There were additional complications at Treasury. Following the retirement of the acting inspector general in December, deputy inspector general Loren Sciurba has assumed leadership of that office. According to those familiar with the situation, Sciurba was told on Friday that he was fired from his job; however, because he is a career civil servant, federal personnel rules prohibit him from being fired from the department outright.
After the Watergate scandal in the late 1970s, the Senate-confirmed inspectors general system was put in place at large agencies to carry out independent audits and investigations of federal operations and spending and to report the results to the public and Congress.
Michael Atkinson, the inspector general of the intelligence community who informed Congress of the whistleblower complaint that resulted in Trump’s initial impeachment, was the first of the five watchdogs that Trump fired in 2020. Trump had Atkinson on board. The chief watchdog of the State Department, who had started looking into allegations of wrongdoing by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, was also fired by the president.
At the time, many lawmakers expressed their belief that the watchdogs were dismissed merely for participating in investigations that portrayed the first Trump administration negatively.
However, the watchdog community was taken aback and confused by Friday’s dismissals because many of the people fired had conducted in-depth investigations into Biden administration operations.
The Biden administration’s handling of Veterans Affairs’ problematic attempt to establish a large electronic health records system for veterans’ medical data, for instance, was the subject of several investigations led by Inspector General Michael Missal. The reports revealed, among other things, that the system had lost the prescriptions of veterans, putting them at risk. For months, the project has been put on hold. A humiliating investigation into the $11 million in bonuses that VA gave to over 180 senior executives, some of whom received over $100,000, was also released by Missal in May. The bonuses were paid out of money that Congress set aside to hire and retain the personnel required to handle billions of dollars in new benefits for veterans.
During her eight years as the VA watchdog, Obama appointee Missal stated in an interview that “Inspectors General are nonpartisan and independent, and ensure transparency from our federal government.”. “We battle abuse, waste, and fraud every day. The efforts we made to enhance benefits and services for veterans and their families make me proud. “”.
A Trump appointee at the Interior Department, Mark Greenblatt, was fired Friday after releasing a long 2021 investigation that found that when the U. S. . In the first Trump administration, Park Police led police officers into a crowd of largely nonviolent protesters outside Lafayette sq\.. This was done as part of a plan days earlier to erect a fence around the park to protect officers, not to allow the president to visit a nearby church minutes later.
For the most part, that report was seen as clearing Trump, who faced harsh criticism following the incident. In a tweet at the time, Trump thanked Greenblatt, but he did not mention him by name, and praised his report.
There were over 70 inspectors general in the federal government prior to the firings, some of whom had sizable staffs of thousands. Senate approval was needed for thirty-two.
At risk of losing their jobs, the remaining federal watchdogs must now decide whether to ease their oversight of the new administration or promise their employees that they will not back down from difficult investigations.
A senior executive in one office, who was not authorized to speak on the record, stated that the news of the dismissals left some inspector general staff members “absolutely shocked.”.
“This is completely unheard of. That’s what we were afraid of. Trump’s aides made some remarks during his campaign, and there was talk about him doing this during the transition, the executive said.
Contributions for this report came from Cat Zakrzewski in Las Vegas and Liz Goodwin and Isaac Arnsdorf in Washington.