Trump Tries To Fire Inspectors General, Likely Violating Federal Law
A law passed in 2022 requires the president to give Congress a "substantive rationale" for removing inspectors general. Trump has not done that.
President Donald Trump reportedly tried to fire at least a dozen inspectors general on Friday night, but that action appears to violate a law that Congress recently passed to prevent such a purge.
Reports vary on how many federal inspectors general were handed pink slips. The New York Times reports that "at least 12" of the executive branch agency watchdogs were dismissed by the president on Friday night, while The Washington Post pegs the number at 15 and ABC says at least 17 were canned.
Many of those fired were Trump appointees from his first term in office, the Post noted. It remains unclear whether the administration plans to fill the positions with newly appointed loyalists or to leave the posts vacant.
The firings will likely trigger an immediate legal battle over the president's authority to send inspectors general packing. A law passed by Congress in 2008 requires the White House to provide 30 days' notice before removing or replacing an inspector general. An updated version of that law, passed in 2022, requires that a president provide Congress with "substantive rationale, including detailed and case-specific reasons" for the removal. (That change was motivated, in part, by Trump's decision in 2020 to abruptly remove an inspector general charged with oversight of pandemic-era stimulus spending.)
In a letter to the White House after the firings, Hannibal "Mike" Ware, chairman of the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency wrote: "At this point, we do not believe the actions taken are legally sufficient to dismiss" the officials.
The Trump administration did not provide notice to Congress and has not informed lawmakers about the rationale for the firing, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R–Iowa), told CNN's Manu Raju on Saturday. "There may be good reason the IGs were fired," Grassley said. "We need to know that if so. I'd like further explanation from President Trump."
"These dismissals clearly violate federal law," Sen. Dick Durbin (D–Ill.), the highest-ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, declared in a statement. Durbin called the move "a brazen attempt to rig these offices to look the other way when violations of law take place."
Some of the officials Trump tried to fire are unwilling to go without a fight. "At least one of the fired inspectors general—the State Department's Cardell Richardson Sr.—has told staff he plans to show up to work on Monday," Politico reported.
This mass dismissal comes on the heels of Trump's move earlier this week to dismiss several members from a White House board that provides oversight on privacy and civil liberties issues, including the federal government's warrantless spying programs.
So far, the second Trump administration seems less interested in draining the swamp than in pushing aside people who might sound the alarm about corruption, illegal actions, and other abuses of executive power.
