President Trump fired more than a dozen inspectors general in a Friday night massacre that threatens to neutralize the independent oversight performed by these good government watchdogs.
Among a dizzying first week of actions, these terminations stood out for their deviation from a longstanding bipartisan consensus on retaining inspectors general after elections. Trump did not comply with congressional notice requirements, and the move was apparently inconsistent with his administration’s stated interest in efficiency.
Congress must hold Trump accountable for these personnel decisions and take steps to maintain inspectors generals’ abilities to monitor the government’s honesty and efficiency.
Federal inspectors general and their staff serve the critical function of detecting and preventing fraud, waste and abuse by conducting impartial investigations and audits of departments and agencies. They are highly effective.
In fiscal 2023, federal inspector general oversight resulted in $93 billion in savings, more than 4,000 criminal prosecutions and more than 7,000 noncriminal actions. Yet inspectors general are also susceptible to attack due to their scrutiny of executive branch wrongdoing and failures.
Unlike political appointees, inspectors general remain in place after elections. No president had removed an inspector general during a transition since Reagan. Speaking on Reagan’s removals, Rep. L.H. Fountain (D-N.C.), a chief sponsor of the Inspector General Act, said “it was never intended” for inspectors general to “be automatically replaced on a wholesale basis without regard to their individual merits whenever there is a change in administrations.”
Retention became the norm regardless of party. This norm was reflective of the inspector general’s political role, which persisted for decades until last week.
Inspector general removals outside of presidential transitions have also been rare. During his first term, Trump fired two inspectors general and replaced three acting inspectors general for reasons that appeared to be retaliatory or to subvert oversight.
Members of Congress responded by proposing legislative action to protect inspector general independence from adverse actions. These proposals included removal for cause protection that would have restricted presidential removal of inspectors general to specific grounds set forth in the law.
At the time, I argued that inspector general removals for cause were necessary legal protection to prevent future abuses and that the policy was constitutional under the Supreme Court’s “inferior officer” exception to the presidential removal power. However, Congress did not enact removal protection.
Instead, in 2022, legislators added to a 30-day advance notice provision, requiring the president to provide Congress with a “substantive rationale, including detailed and case-specific reasons” for any inspector general removal action.
By failing to provide notice or explanation to Congress for last week’s firings, the president failed to comply with the 2022 law. Accordingly, he perversely disregarded a congressional requirement enacted in response to his own first-term firings and thwarted legislative oversight of inspector general terminations intended by the law.
The firings are also curious given the administration’s professed desire to make government more efficient. If this interest were genuine, one would not expect the president to gut the leadership of the very oversight offices responsible for promoting public integrity and efficiency.
These firings seem to fit within the administration’s broader campaign to disrupt the country’s independent institutions and dismantle the nonpartisan civil service, which aims to replace a merit-based approach to government employment with politicized hiring that prioritizes loyalty.
The timing and circumstances of the inspectors general firings suggest the president is looking to select inspectors general who are aligned with his priorities and to potentially minimize the type of rigorous oversight of executive actions he encountered during his first term. These are troubling developments for the oversight institution best situated to uncover executive branch abuses of power.
Oversight independence and competence, not loyalty, define inspector general oversight. Congress must act to defend these principles.
Senators have now requested that the president provide the required explanations for the inspector general terminations. Even so, the current law’s focus on procedural notice does not provide an adequate substantive mechanism to protect inspectors general from unjustified terminations, and Congress does not appear interested in revisiting removal for cause protection at this time.
The inspector general community will need advocates to defend the institution from attacks. They need the Senate to ensure that any acting appointments comply with a law that limits who the president can temporarily appoint to certain current inspector general officials, thoroughly vet permanent nominees and only consent to candidates who demonstrate the ability to perform effective oversight and remain independent.
They need congressional oversight hearings to probe executive branch efforts to undermine inspectors general offices, perhaps organized by members of the Senate’s recently created Inspector General Caucus.
And civil society must resist destructive efforts to weaken independent oversight. If our country fails to protect independent inspector general offices, we can expect a lot of bad governance.
Andrew Brunsden is an adjunct professor of Law at New York Law School and an attorney at a government oversight agency. He is the author of “Inspectors General and the Law of Oversight Independence,” published in the William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal.
