US President Donald Trump.
Credit: Reuters Photo
President Donald Trump fired 17 inspectors general, the internal watchdogs who monitor federal agencies, on Friday night, capping a week of dramatic shake-ups of the federal bureaucracy focused on loyalty to the president, three people with knowledge of the matter said.
The sweeping move did not affect Michael E Horowitz, the inspector general for the Justice Department, according to one of the people with knowledge of the matter. But inspectors general at several major agencies were believed to have been fired.
The Washington Post reported the firings earlier. A White House spokesperson did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.
The firings threatened to upend the traditional independence of the internal watchdogs, and critics of Trump reacted with alarm.
“Inspectors general are charged with rooting out government waste, fraud, abuse and preventing misconduct,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., said in a statement. “President Trump is dismantling checks on his power and paving the way for widespread corruption.”
People involved in the Trump transition had signaled such a shake-up was likely. And it is in keeping with an effort that Trump began in early 2020, when he dismissed five inspectors general from their roles.
At the time, Trump was dealing with a raging pandemic across the country, but he also was seeking to reshape the government to remove people he saw as trying to damage him. That included Michael Atkinson, the inspector general for the US intelligence community, who dealt with the anonymous whistleblower complaint that led to Trump’s first impeachment by the House.
Democrats accused Trump of trying to gut the independent offices.
Horowitz delivered to the Justice Department in late 2019 a report about the FBI investigation of potential links between his campaign and Russians that began in 2016, called Crossfire Hurricane.
Horowitz found that the FBI had a valid basis for opening the investigation, but he was critical of the application for a warrant to secretly monitor a Trump campaign adviser, Carter Page. He also said the FBI director at the time the investigation was opened, James Comey, had violated the department’s policy with secret memos about his interactions with Trump that later became public.
The Justice Department declined to prosecute Comey, a decision that infuriated Trump.