What America is losing as President Trump fires independent government watchdogs

CBS News

09-03-2025

President Trump is casting aside those who might stand in his way and among the first to go were at least 20 leaders of federal offices that were created by Congress to hold administrations accountable. You may not know it but, after Watergate, Congress set up a system to audit the executive branch and ensure the rights of federal workers. Those offices became known as watchdogs. Congress has guarded their independence from politics so that no president can use these powerful auditors to punish enemies or hide their own fiascos. But now, for the first time in 44 years, President Trump has fired these officials en masse. One of them is Hampton Dellinger, who has a warning about what America is losing as it's firing the watchdogs.
Hampton Dellinger: Going forward you're always gonna have now a person in my position who's gonna be dependent on the President's good graces. That is not how Congress set up the position, that's not how it's been for the past 50 years. But that independence, that protection is gone.
Scott Pelley: And the message that sends to the watchdog agencies in general is what?
Hampton Dellinger: I don't think we have watchdog agencies anymore. The inspector generals are gone. The head of the Office of Government Ethics is gone. I'm gone. The independent watchdogs who are working on behalf of the American taxpayers, on behalf of military veterans, they've been pushed out.
Before Hampton Dellinger was pushed out, he was head of the Office of Special Counsel—no relation to the office of the same name that prosecuted President Trump. Dellinger's office is where federal workers can bring employment complaints. And where so called "whistleblowers," government employees, can report wrongdoing.
Scott Pelley: So if a person sees fraud, for example, in the Department of Defense, and they're afraid of telling their supervisor because they think there will be retaliation, they go to you?
Hampton Dellinger: They can. And that was a decision not by me, but by Congress, that employees in the Executive Branch who are seeing something going wrong inside of an agency need a safe place to go that's still in the Executive Branch but that is outside of the agency.
And it works. A recent report said whistleblowers helped Office of the Special Counsel find $110 million that was owed to veterans and uncovered the overprescription of opioids at a VA clinic.
Dellinger is a Democrat, appointed by President Biden and confirmed by the Senate.
Hampton Dellinger: My job though was not partisan at all. And my track record I will stand on as someone who has played it by the book. I'm not looking to promote a president's agenda or thwart it. I'm just trying to make sure the laws are followed.
Scott Pelley: And you filed cases against the Biden administration?
Hampton Dellinger: Time, and time, and time again.
Dellinger's present term was supposed to run into 2029.
Scott Pelley: What was the first moment that you learned that you had been fired?
Hampton Dellinger: A Friday evening, when I got an email from someone I didn't know purporting to be with the White House who said, "You've been terminated. Thank you for your service." And, of course, that email is just flatly inconsistent with the law, which says I can only be terminated for a very good reason. They didn't have a very good reason. They had no reason.
Scott Pelley: Nothing?
Hampton Dellinger: Nothing.
The law says there has to be a reason, specifically one of three, neglect, inefficiency or malfeasance. The termination email said none of that. So, Dellinger sued to keep his job.
Hampton Dellinger: I think every American respects the presidency. But I knew that this order, this directive, was unlawful. And ultimately we are a nation of laws. The only reason we have a president is because we have a supreme rule book, the United States Constitution. So as much as we all want the president to succeed it's gotta be within the framework of the law.
But the law may have been ignored just four days into Trump's term when he fired 17 inspectors general, all at once, without cause. The inspectors general or "IGs" for short, were auditors of top departments including defense, veterans affairs, and foreign aid at the U.S. Agency for International Development. Paul Martin was inspector general there.
Paul Martin: Over the years and over the decades, we've been independent, apolitical, nonpartisan watchdogs in our agency with the goal of improving the functioning of that agency, to save money, and to look out for the taxpayers.
Martin policed billions in foreign aid spending. Trump shut down USAID early and in haste. In the chaos of mass firings emergency aid stopped moving. So, Martin did his job, writing an alert that warned that half a billion dollars in food aid might spoil or be stolen.
Paul Martin: We issued the alert on a Monday. On Tuesday, I was terminated.
Scott Pelley: What did that tell you?
Paul Martin: That someone read our report.
Scott Pelley: Have you ever been fired by a president before?
Paul Martin: I have not been fired by a president before.
Scott Pelley: But some people watching these events say, "Doesn't the president always bring in his own team?"
Paul Martin: He may bring his own team in, but there's been an agreement between Congress and administrations over the last 45 years that inspector generals are different. They're chosen to be apolitical, nonpartisan oversight officials in each government agency. And that has been respected from administration to administration.
Paul Martin started in IG offices 25 years ago under Bill Clinton. He was inspector general for NASA in Trump's first term and then Biden's.
Paul Martin: I have worked over more than six presidents, and I have never had a concern that issuing an audit or an investigation even with what would be perceived as negative findings could impact my employment.
Scott Pelley: In these first weeks of the Trump Administration what is happening to these oversight offices?
Andrew Bakaj: They're being dismantled and effectively being destroyed.
Andrew Bakaj is a former CIA officer and a lawyer who has written federal regulations protecting whistleblowers.
David Kligerman: Now it feels like an intentional dismantling. They are going after the things that somebody who knows how to dismantle the system goes after and that's maybe perhaps the scariest part.
David Kligerman is a former State Department attorney. Together, they represent whistleblowers for the nonprofit group Whistleblower Aid. Whistleblower Aid represented a client in the first Trump impeachment.
Scott Pelley: What is the purpose of firing a Hampton Dellinger or the inspectors general?
Andrew Bakaj: It's, in my opinion, to prevent the truth from coming out. The entire purpose of having a Hampton Dellinger or the IG system is to ensure that there's transparency within government.
David Kligerman: This is removing the umpires. This is just taking the umpires out of the game. There's no place to go. If you can't go to the Special Counsel or they effectively neuter it, then there's nowhere for you to go. This is a very, very big deal.
But not a big deal according to the president. He told reporters on Air Force One that firing the watchdogs is—quote— "a very standard thing to do." He's wrong. No president has fired the heads of the watchdog offices, en masse, in 44 years—that was Reagan when the offices were brand new—and he rehired a third of them.
Scott Pelley: And the reason you were given for being fired was what?
Cathy Harris: Oh, no reason. The president gave no reason.
Why fire Cathy Harris? Possibly because she's on the federal board that hears appeals of fired federal workers-- the very people the Trump administration has been laying off by the tens of thousands. If she left, their avenue of appeal could be blocked at least temporarily. Harris is also fighting for her own job. For now, a judge has reinstated her.
Cathy Harris: I swore an oath to the Constitution when I took this job that I would fulfill my term through March 2028. And I believe very deeply in the civil service and in public service. And I just couldn't look myself in the mirror and walk away from this. I'm here to fight.
Cathy Harris fights for fired workers, often after receiving theircases from the office of Hampton Dellinger. In his final days on the job, Dellinger worked to restore employment of workers whom, he says, were fired by Trump, illegally.
Hampton Dellinger: So much is lost. You're losing talent. You're losing experience. You're losing integrity. You're losing tens of thousands of military veterans who served our country in uniform, who put their lives on the line for America, and who came back enjoying the federal civilian work force. But putting aside all the losses, at the end of the day, it has to be done the right way. If you're gonna fire federal employees, you've gotta do it lawfully. And that's my concern, that these mass firings aren't necessarily in accordance with the law.
In February, Dellinger took on the case of 5,000 fired employees of the Agriculture Department. He passed their case to Cathy Harris and her appeals board. Harris stopped the firing, at least temporarily. The Trump administration is still in court to get Harris removed.
Cathy Harris: But you've gotta be able to be in this job and do what it takes to uphold the law and not be afraid. Not be afraid you're gonna be fired at any moment if you make a decision that somebody doesn't like.
Paul Martin: I think the message to inspector generals is that the oversight of these programs, particularly if they're negative findings, is not welcome anymore.
A message loud and clear now, according to former USAID inspector general Paul Martin.
Paul Martin: It's not welcome in the administration, this administration, and it's not welcome in this current Congress.
Scott Pelley: What should Congress be doing?
Paul Martin: Congress created the inspector generals and relied on, for the past 45 years, their findings, and their audits, and investigations to conduct aggressive oversight of any administration's programs. Since the firing of the inspector generals, there has been a deafening silence in Congress as far as pushing back.
Scott Pelley: Why are they not speaking?
Paul Martin: Unclear.
Martin worries that independence lost, might never be regained.
Paul Martin: I'm afraid that we've moved on to-- an era in which every administration will come in and assume that they're going to replace all the inspector generals with people of their choice, that the secretary of treasury or the attorney general will get to pick his or her inspector general. And that will turn the independent IG system on its head.
Scott Pelley: If your office is beholden to the president, what is lost?
Hampton Dellinger: Independence, accountability, a safe place for federal government employee whistleblowers to come to and know that they'll be respected and protected. That's gone.
Other watchdogs are suing to challenge the president's power but Hampton Dellinger is ou t. Last week, an order from an appeals court removed him. He told us that taking his fight to the Supreme Court would take months or a year—and by then his whistleblower office would be devastated.
Scott Pelley: The Trump administration argued to the court that it needed to, quote, "Put an end to Dellinger's rogue use of executive authority over the President's objections." What's your response to that?
Hampton Dellinger: If wanting the rules to be followed is the new definition of going rogue, then call me by that name. I don't think I was going rogue. I think I was being a good American who believes in the rule of law. That's all I was trying to do is make sure the laws are being followed.