Trump Continues To Gut Meaningful Gov’t Oversight, Fires At Least 15 Inspectors General

The Trump Administration is apparently going to be a law unto itself. There have been plenty of people put up against the wall in recent days, but the weekend concluded with Donald Trump — perhaps illegally — firing at least 15 Inspectors General. This mass firing leaves the Defense Department, State Department, Department of Veterans Affairs, and the Social Security Administration without anyone in charge of internal investigations. Also affected are the departments of Transportation, Health and Human Services, Interior, Commerce, Energy, Housing and Urban Development, and Labor. The EPA and Small Business Administration IGs were also fired.

Donald Trump is, of course, a stupid narcissist and aspiring fascist. So of course he would claim this unprecedented (and illegal!) mass culling of the IG herd is just the normal stuff one does when elected king president.

“It’s a very common thing to do,” Trump claimed to reporters on Air Force One traveling to Florida, in his first comments after a decision that caused alarm among government watchdogs and members of Congress.

Is it, though? Pretty much everyone and everything else begs to differ.

The dismissals appeared to violate federal law, which requires Congress to receive 30 days’ notice of any intent to fire a Senate-confirmed inspector general. 

Violating federal law like this is not a “very common thing to do.” I mean, I would hope not. We’ve never seen this before, so it’s safe to say most presidents don’t follow up their inauguration with illegal acts. As the Washington Post report notes, this move even managed to upset some Trump loyalists.

This move also upset people Trump and his party personally appointed during his last term in office. But it shouldn’t have surprised them. Trump’s short-term-only memory makes it impossible for him to remember anyone that hasn’t made him consistently happy throughout the entirety of his political career. Here he is weighing in on the many personal appointees he just unceremoniously (and illegally!) fired:

“I don’t know them,” he said, even though many of those he fired were people that he appointed during his first term. “But some people thought that some were unfair or some were not doing their job. It’s a very standard thing to do.”

To be fair, with the exception of DHS IG Joseph Cuffari (someone who has himself been under investigation for years and who was found to have engaged in misconduct), most of the IGs weren’t Trump loyalists in the classic sense, which explains the president’s willingness to kick them to the curb during this latest wave of “drain the swamp but replace it with an even murkier swap” efforts.

Unfortunately for Trump, this isn’t going to go as smoothly as he apparently believes it will. A lot of the fired Inspectors General know the law and plan to keep showing up for work until they’re given proper notice and the 30 days to vacate that the law mandates. A late Friday night purge (the HHS IG received notice at 11:45 pm) is not exactly a confidence builder. And even Trump, a man seemingly incapable of feeling shame, realized it was best to do this as late as possible to avoid the sort of scrutiny that comes when you kill massive amounts of accountability in broad daylight on a work day.