Any question about the motives behind President Trump’s decision to fire 18 independent, nonpartisan inspectors general in the middle of the night three weeks ago was answered by this week’s firing of the inspector general for the U.S. Agency for International Development. These firings were designed to impede and deter independent oversight of the Trump administration, putting taxpayer dollars and program performance at risk.
On Monday, USAID Inspector General Paul Martin did precisely what inspectors general are charged with doing. His office made public the results of an independent analysis designed to promote efficiency and to prevent and detect fraud, waste and abuse — in this case, in USAID programs and operations.
More specifically, the purpose of this report was to “identify risks and challenges to the safeguarding and distribution of USAID’s $8.2 billion in obligated but undisbursed humanitarian assistance funds following the State Department’s pause on foreign assistance programs and subsequent personnel actions by USAID that have substantially reduced the operational capacity of its Bureau of Humanitarian Assistance.”
The report found that both actions severely compromised USAID’s operations and the dollars already allocated to its programs. One particularly egregious example was that over $480 million in food assistance was at risk of spoilage and diversion and, in the absence of personnel to conduct required vetting, the program was exposed to potential involvement by terrorist organizations.
The USAID inspector general’s report serves as Exhibit A on the need for independent oversight. This is exactly the work that the more than 70 federal inspectors general are charged with doing, along with their state and local counterparts across the country.
Just one day after the USAID report was made public, and on the same day that eight of the previously-fired inspectors general rightly filed a lawsuit, the executive branch rebuke came fast and furious. And by email: “On behalf of President Donald J. Trump, I am writing to inform you that your position as Inspector General of the United States Agency for International Development is terminated, effective immediately. Thank you for your service.” Full stop.
This should shock the conscience, for two reasons.
First, as I and others have noted over the last several weeks, evidence-free firings of federal inspectors general are a flagrant violation of the law requiring a 30-day notice to Congress and the enumeration of detailed and case-specific substantive rationale for such terminations.
Second, it is a plainly retaliatory abuse of executive power, inconsistent with democratic norms, including both nonpartisan oversight and public transparency. If an independent oversight professional can be summarily fired for doing his or her job — investigating the actions of the executive branch and making the findings public — there will be a permanent chilling effect on oversight agencies across the country.
Nikolai Gogol’s 1836 play “The Inspector General” satirizes a Russian town in which a corrupt mayor mistakes a visitor for an inspector general who was expected to arrive for a planned oversight visit. Throughout the play, the mayor and his cronies flatter and bribe the visitor in hopes of buying a favorable report. The visitor ultimately leaves, now engaged to the mayor’s daughter. Then, it is revealed that the real inspector is on his way, much to the embarrassment of the mayor for directing his corruption toward the wrong person.
I don’t know Inspector General Martin, but his reputation is well-known in the inspector general community and he was no sham inspector. In the 12-month period preceding last September, his office conducted 67 audits and inspections covering funds totaling more than $58 billion. During former President Joe Biden’s term, Martin’s office identified and reported on the sending of funds by the administration to a terrorism-linked nonprofit organization and about USAID’s failures to apply due diligence in the vetting of international spending more generally.
Neither of these reports reflected well on the Biden administration, but both exemplified an inspector general doing exactly what his job demanded: following the facts where they led. That the findings reflected poorly on the executive branch was — properly — not relevant.
In the final scene of Gogol’s play, the humiliated corrupt mayor breaks the fourth wall, screaming at the audience, “What are you laughing about? You are laughing about yourselves!” And indeed, if we sit idly by as an audience to this illegal and unprecedented weaponization of the inspectors general by an American president, the joke will ultimately be on us.
Lucy Lang serves as New York State Inspector General.
