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Epoch Times
21-04-2025
- Politics
- Epoch Times
The Case of the Fired Inspectors General
Commentary On March 27, Judge Ana Reyes of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, held a hearing in The fired IGs argue that their 'purported terminations violate the plain language of a federal statute—one enacted with bipartisan support in Congress and signed into law by the President. Specifically, the Inspector General Act (IG Act) unambiguously provides that an IG may be removed only 'by the President,' who must first (1) notify Congress about a planned removal at least 30 days before it occurs and (2) provide a substantive, case-specific rationale for the termination.' According to the fired IGs, each of their removals 'from their positions was done ... without any such notice, and without any rationale being provided. Each removal is therefore a nullity.' In a footnote, counsel for the fired IGs admitted, in effect, that the 'plain language' of the statute at issue is not so plain: 'This statutory provision was not recodified following the 2022 amendments, which are reflected at Public Law No. 117-286, §3(b), 136 Stat. 4208 (2022).' This is an important case about important constitutional issues, and statutory issues involving the authority of inspectors general, who by statute are charged with rooting out fraud, waste, and abuse. Related Stories 4/16/2025 4/9/2025 Inspectors general serve a crucial and unique role in explaining to the American people, typically but not exclusively through Congress, how our government is spending our tax dollars. At the onset of the March 27 hearing, Judge Reyes announced she had not made up her mind about these constitutional and statutory issues. After the hearing, she 'took the matter under advisement.' The easiest and most constitutionally-principled way for Judge Reyes to resolve this case is for her to accept the Justice Department's interpretation of the statute, thereby avoiding the difficult constitutional issues underlying the IGs seeking a declaration that their firings were 'a nullity.' Justice Department counsel for the defendants, who include Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Trump, did a good job explaining to Judge Reyes the difference between the president's authority to remove an inspector general, and the provision in the IG Act calling for the president to notify Congress of the reasons for firing any IG. During the hearing, counsel for the eight fired IG's, Seth Waxman, presented to Judge Reyes a letter dated March 26 from the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, asking the acting Department of Defense (DoD) IG to conduct an inquiry into the recent incident in which a reporter was included, apparently by mistake, in a group Signal chat that included members of the National Security Council. According to the senators, 'This chat was alleged to have included classified information pertaining to sensitive military actions in Yemen.' Judge Reyes promptly asked Waxman if the acting DoD IG is required to answer the letter, to which Mr. Waxman replied 'Yes.' With all due respect, Mr. Waxman was wrong. There is nothing in the IG Act that requires the acting DoD IG to answer the letter or to conduct the requested inquiry. Nevertheless, on April 3, the acting DoD IG released a memo to Hegseth announcing that 'we are initiating' an 'Evaluation of the Secretary of Defense's Reported Use of a Commercially Available Messaging Application for Official Business,' citing the March 26 letter from the chairman and ranking member. My April 10 article, ' This footnote is antithetical to transparent government, and creates the appearance that the acting DoD IG is engaging in hidden politics. The acting DoD IG should identify all members of Congress who made 'similar requests.' The American People deserve to know. I still think that the easiest and most constitutionally principled way for Judge Reyes to resolve this case about important constitutional issues, and statutory issues involving the authority of inspectors general, is for her to accept the Justice Department's following interpretation of the statute, thereby avoiding the difficult constitutional issues. The Justice Department attorney representing the defendants has argued: 'Because the Inspector General Act does not make the President's removal authority contingent on compliance with the congressional notice provision, Plaintiffs are not likely to succeed on any of their claims or in obtaining any of the relief they seek in their Complaint.' If Congress does not like this result, Congress can clarify its currently not-so 'plain language.' Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Yahoo
14-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Trump's firings of inspectors general like me will have a chilling effect
A recent audit found that Medicare may have made up to $454 million in improper payments to providers for 38.7 million Covid tests. In another case, a multiagency investigation found that a former U.S. Air Force employee and the owners of government contracting firms conspired in a bribery scheme that spanned more than a decade and involved more than $400 million in government contracts. The investigation led to six criminal convictions, more than $88 million recovered for the government and more than 34 years of jail time for the defendants. A 2023 report revealed that the Small Business Administration had decided to stop collecting on certain delinquent loans — totaling roughly $62 billion. After the report was issued and congressional Republicans 'blasted the [Biden] administration for its leniency,' the SBA reversed course and announced plans to pursue those deadbeat loans aggressively, and could recover as much as $30 billion for American taxpayers. The reports mentioned above represent just a handful of the times inspectors general, the independent watchdogs inside the various agencies of the federal government, have either called out fraud or waste or saved the American people money. IGs have also improved the federal government's performance on a wide variety of critical issues, from combating violent gangs to preventing veterans' suicides, from uncovering cyberfraud to fighting cyberstalking, from overseeing U.S. aid to Ukraine to evaluating the evacuation from Afghanistan, from exposing border corruption to analyzing bank failures. That's why President Donald Trump's decision to fire 18 inspectors general in the first week of his term is so puzzling. According to the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency, IG oversight has collectively resulted in potential savings of about $93.1 billion in FY 2023. With the OIG community's aggregate FY 2023 budget of approximately $3.5 billion, these potential savings represent an approximate $26 return on every dollar invested in inspectors general. IGs should be a natural ally in the president's effort to make the government more efficient; 'Efficiency' is literally in our name. IGs ultimately share a mission with the rest of the executive branch, which is to improve the federal government for the American people. And the IGs' track record makes clear that IG oversight is a good investment for the American taxpayer. Even if it's true, as some have argued that the White House fired me along with my IG colleagues because the president does not want independent oversight into the executive branch, here's why President Trump should want independence for his inspectors general. If IGs are not independent — if they can't make findings of waste, fraud, abuse or misconduct about government programs, without fear of being fired, disciplined or reprimanded and can't be objective in their assessments of government programs — then their oversight will be worthless. To use a business analogy, President Trump would likely avoid investing in a company whose auditors were hopelessly conflicted, and he wouldn't trust the financial audit of the company's balance sheet or cash flow statement if the auditor would have gotten fired for anything other than a clean opinion. Surely, he wouldn't trust a bond rating if the rating officials would have been fired or reprimanded for anything other than a AAA rating. Similarly, who would believe any findings of any office of inspector general if IGs can be removed for any negative findings? The programs that President Trump cares about most are precisely the ones in which he should want the straight scoop. This is not a hypothetical. In 2022, when I was inspector general of the U.S. Interior Department, my office found that the department's Bureau of Land Management, which administers oil and gas leasing programs on federal land, was failing to conduct a necessary step to prevent waste, fraud and abuse in the leasing program. BLM was awarding leases for the mineral extraction, including oil and gas, without confirming whether the entities and individuals were prohibited from doing business with the federal government. After our report, BLM began immediately checking the list of prohibited entities before issuing those leases. That is a great example of government oversight at its best. Here's the catch: I don't know that such a report could be issued today. There's reason to believe that a negative report on a sensitive program, regardless of how true it is or how helpful it is to the American taxpayer, would be viewed as disloyal and cause for termination. The chilling effect on IGs seems already to be occurring. Paul Martin, who served as inspector general of the U.S. Agency for International Development was fired last month, the day after releasing a report that cautioned that the Trump administration's freeze on foreign aid, as well as its efforts to cut USAID's staffing, made it harder to ensure billions in U.S. funding were being spent properly. Roughly two weeks later, The Washington Post reported that his successor, the acting IG at USAID, had been accused of holding 'two critical reports on the consequences of President Donald Trump's funding freeze on crucial services in Africa and the Middle East, amid fears of retaliation from the White House.' That is the polar opposite of what President Trump should want. He should want to know if there are problems in the federal government, so he can fix them for the American people. IG reports are a tremendous tool to do just that, but only if the IGs are empowered to call it like they see it, without the proverbial sword of Damocles hanging over their heads. President Trump is famously adamant about loyalty. Well, it's not loyal to bury bad news. To the contrary, allowing decision-makers to waltz down the primrose path, unwittingly blind to the realities on the ground, is the ultimate in disloyalty. Sharing the truth, even if it is not what the principal wants, is the ultimate show of loyalty. This article was originally published on
Yahoo
17-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
‘This is a coup': Trump and Musk's purge is cutting more than costs, say experts
Donald Trump and Elon Musk's radical drive to slash billions of dollars in annual federal spending with huge job and regulatory cuts is spurring charges that they have made illegal moves while undercutting congressional and judicial powers, say legal experts, Democrats and state attorneys general. Trump's fusillade of executive orders expanding his powers in some extreme ways in his cost-cutting fervor, coupled with unprecedented drives by the Musk-led so-called 'department of government efficiency' (Doge) to slash many agency workforces and regulations, have created chaos across the US government and raised fears of a threat to US democracy. Trump and Musk have also attacked judges who have made rulings opposing several of their moves after they ended up in court, threatening at least one with impeachment and accusing him of improper interference. Related: Trump is the most lawless president in American history | Robert Reich 'In the US, we appeal rulings we disagree with – we don't ignore court orders or threaten judges with impeachment just because we don't like the decision. This is a coup, plain and simple,' Arizona's attorney general, Kris Mayes, said. Trump and Musk, the world's richest man and Trump's largest single donor, now face multiple rebukes from judges and legal experts to the regulatory and staff cuts they have engineered at the treasury department, the US Agency for International Development and several other agencies. Incongruously, as Trump has touted Musk's cost-cutting work as vital to curbing spending abuses, one of Trump's first moves in office last month was to fire 17 veteran agency watchdogs, known as inspectors general, whose jobs have long been to ferret out waste, fraud and abuse in federal departments. Those firings were done without giving Congress the legally required 30 days' notice and specific justifications for each one, prompting mostly Democratic outrage at Trump's move, which he defended as due to 'changing priorities', and falsely claimed was 'standard'. In response to the firings, eight of those inspectors general filed a lawsuit against Trump and their department heads on Wednesday arguing their terminations violated federal laws designed to protect them from interference with their jobs and seeking reinstatement. The IGs who sued included ones from the Departments of Defense, Education and Health and Human Services. Democratic critics and legal experts see Trump's IG firings and Musk's Doge operation as blatant examples of executive power plays at the expense of Congress and transparency. 'I think their claims that they're going after waste, fraud and abuse is a complete smokescreen for their real intentions,' the Democratic senator Sheldon Whitehouse said. Likening Trump's firing of the IGs to 'firing cops before you rob the bank', Whitehouse stressed: 'It's pretty clear that what's going on here is a very deliberate effort to create as much wreckage in the government as they can manage with a view to helping out the big Trump donors and special interests who find government obnoxious in various ways.' On another legal track opposing Trump and Musk's actions, many of the nation's 23 state Democratic attorneys general have escalated legal battles against Doge's actions and sweeping cost cutting at treasury, USAid and other agencies. For instance, 19 Democratic AGs sued Trump and the treasury secretary in February to halt Doge from accessing sensitive documents with details about tens of millions of Americans who get social security checks, tax refunds and other payments, arguing that Doge was violating the Administrative Procedures Act. The lawsuit prompted a New York judge on 7 February to issue a temporary order halting Doge from accessing the treasury payments system. In response, Musk and Trump lashed out by charging judicial interference. Musk on his social media platform Twitter/X where he has more than 200 million followers charged that the judge was 'corrupt' and that he 'needs to be impeached NOW'. Trump, with Musk nearby in the Oval Office on Tuesday, echoed his Doge chief saying: 'It seems hard to believe that a judge could say, 'We don't want you to do that,' so maybe we have to look at the judges because I think that's a very serious violation.' Legal experts, AGs and top congressional Democrats say that Trump's and Musk's charges of improper judicial interference and some of their actions pose dangers to the rule of law and the US constitution. 'The president is openly violating the US constitution by taking power from Congress and handing it to an unelected billionaire – while Elon Musk goes after judges who uphold the law and rule against them,' said Mayes. Ex-federal prosecutors echo some of Mayes's arguments. 'The suggestions by Trump, Musk and Vance that courts are impermissibly interfering with Trump's mandate to lead is absurd,' said the former federal prosecutor Barbara McQuade, who now teaches law at the University of Michigan. 'Under our constitutional separation of powers system, each co-equal branch serves as a check on the others. The role of the courts is to strike down abuses of executive power when it violates the law. Comments disparaging the courts seems like a dangerous effort to undermine public confidence in the judiciary. If people do not respect the courts, they will be less inclined to obey their orders.' Likewise, some former judges worry that certain judges could face violence sparked by the threats Musk and Trump have publicly made. 'While federal judges expect people to disagree with their opinions, I have long feared that personal attacks like those from Trump and Musk against at least one New York judge would expose them to harm and even death,' said the former federal judge and Dickinson College president, John Jones. 'Worse, judges are essentially defenseless when it comes to fighting the false narratives that are being promulgated because their code of conduct prevents them from engaging with the irresponsible people who make these statements.' Legal experts too are increasingly alarmed about how Musk and Trump are exceeding their power at the expense of Congress, including some of the retaliatory firings by Trump against critics or perceived political foes. In one egregious case the IG for USAid, Paul Martin, on Tuesday was abruptly fired almost immediately after he issued a highly critical report warning of serious economic repercussions from the sweeping job cuts that Doge was making as it gutted agency staff. Musk has blasted USAid, which doled out over $40bn in congressionally authorized aid in 2023 and consummated $86bn in private sector deals, as a 'criminal organization' and an 'arm of the criminal left globalists'. The agency's mission is to provide humanitarian aid and fund development assistance and tech projects in developing countries. 'The firing of IG Paul Martin, a highly respected and experienced inspector general, on the day after his office released a critical report, risks sending a chilling message that is antithetical to IGs' ability to conduct impactful independent oversight on behalf of the American taxpayer,' said the ex-defense department IG Robert Storch. Storch, one of the 17 IGs Trump fired abruptly last month who has joined the lawsuit against the Trump administration, stressed more broadly that 'IGs play an essential role in leading offices comprised of oversight professionals across the federal government to detect and deter waste, fraud, abuse and corruption.' A former IG, who requested anonymity to speak freely, warned bluntly: 'Trump and Musk are gaslighting the American people. No one should believe Musk and his troops have actually discovered billions of dollars of waste, fraud, abuse and 'corruption'. If they had, we would know the specifics. They can't provide them and they won't. At most, they have seen things that may need to be explained, but they haven't bothered to seek the explanation from anyone with relevant knowledge.' Despite rising concerns about the powers assumed by Musk, Trump unveiled a new executive order in the Oval Office on Tuesday expanding Musk's authority and mandate. Trump's new order requires federal agencies to 'coordinate and consult' with Doge to slash jobs and curb hiring, according to a White House summary. All agencies were instructed to 'undertake plans for large-scale reductions in force' and limit new hires to only 'essential positions', according to the summary. During the Oval Office meeting on Tuesday Musk spoke in grandiose terms about his mission with a few dubious and broad claims about frauds that it had uncovered, while declaring without evidence that it was what 'the people want'. Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, which have received billions of dollars in federal contracts in recent years, is wielding his new federal authority as a 'special government employee' without giving up his private-sector jobs. Musk's post is a temporary one that bypasses some of the disclosure requirements for full-time federal employees. As Musk's powers have expanded and Doge has done work in more than a dozen agencies, 14 state AGs filed a lawsuit in federal court in DC on Thursday broadly challenging Musk and Doge's authority to obtain access to sensitive government data and wield 'virtually unchecked power'. The lawsuit argues that Trump violated the constitution's appointments clause by establishing a federal agency without Congress's approval. At bottom, some legal experts and watchdogs say the threats posed by Musk's cost-cutting drive that Trump has blessed, are linked to the record sums that Musk gave Trump's campaign. 'After Musk reportedly spent close to $300m to help Trump get elected, Trump has been giving Musk what appears to be unprecedented access to the inner levers of government, including private and confidential information about individuals,' said Larry Noble, a former general counsel at the Federal Election Commission who now teaches law at American University. 'Musk and his followers can use that access to help Trump kill or neutralize congressionally created agencies and rules that serve and protect the public interest, while ensuring the government protects and serves the ability of the wealthy to grow their fortunes.' Other legal watchdogs fear more dangerous fallout to the rule of law from Trump's greenlighting Musk's Doge operation and agenda. 'President Trump has not only afforded Elon Musk and Doge extraordinary power over federal agency operations with little public oversight and accountability, but he has also done so at the expense of Congress and its constitutionally mandated power,' said Donald Sherman, the chief counsel at the liberal-leaning watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. 'Trump enabled Musk's capture of the federal government after illegally firing more than a dozen inspectors general despite Congress strengthening the laws protecting IGs less than three years ago … ' Sherman noted that 'what's even more troubling is that congressional Republicans have been more than willing to cede their constitutional powers in service of President Trump and Elon Musk's political agenda.'
Yahoo
12-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Pentagon and VA Watchdogs Fight Trump's Firings in New Lawsuit, Calling Them Illegal
The inspectors general for the Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs, as well as six other federal agency watchdogs fired by President Donald Trump days after he took office, have filed a lawsuit against the president and his administration in an effort to get their jobs back, according to a Wednesday court filing. The IGs allege that Trump failed to notify Congress about the firings at least 30 days before they occurred and did not provide a "substantive, case-specific rationale" for the terminations as required by federal law, according to the filing. The lawsuit further alleges that the president's firings have "inflicted substantial damage on the critical oversight ethos of transparency" and that the IGs' integrity has been "baselessly maligned" publicly to incorrectly imply that they have committed wrongdoing. Read Next: Gabbard, Dogged by Syria Visit and Echoing Russian Disinfo, Approved to Take Helm of Intelligence Agencies "The purported firings violated unambiguous federal statutes -- each enacted by bipartisan majorities in Congress and signed into law by the president -- to protect inspectors general from precisely this sort of interference with the discharge of their critical, nonpartisan duties," the court document said. The lawsuits by the former IGs -- who are charged with identifying and rooting out government waste, fraud and abuse -- are among dozens of others filed in the wake of Trump's early and sweeping executive actions meant to gut the federal government in the name of efficiency. The New York Times reported that the White House told as many as 17 IGs that they would be fired due to "changing priorities." The plaintiffs include not only the former IGs of the Pentagon and VA, but Health and Human Services, State Department, Department of Agriculture, Department of Education, Department of Labor and the Small Business Administration. The filing requests a court injunction to allow them to return to those jobs after the Trump administration pulled their access to email accounts, computer systems, government phones and ID cards, and "physically disabled" them from entering the buildings where they worked. The IGs, some of whom served during Trump's first term, such as Michael Missal of the Department of Veterans Affairs, said that they are nonpartisan officials who head independent watchdogs of the federal government that audit waste, fraud and abuse, not only saving the American taxpayers billions of dollars but also safeguarding national security, helping put fraudsters in prison and having "helped to end mistreatment of some of the nation's most vulnerable citizens," to include veterans, according to the filing. The filing cited the Inspector General Act of 1978 as the law that requires the president to notify Congress of IG firings at least 30 days in advance. Trump followed that law and provided notice in his first term when he fired the State Department inspector general in 2020. Robert Storch, who was the Pentagon inspector general before his firing two weeks ago, was appointed by Joe Biden and confirmed by the Senate in 2022. Prior to his work at the DoD, he was the IG for the National Security Agency, having been nominated by Trump for that position. At the DoD, he oversaw the release of 281 reports, made more than 970 recommendations for improvement to the Pentagon's various systems and policies, and "delivered a 'monetary impact' of over $10.8 billion," according to the court filing. Since 2016, Missal's VA IG office made nearly 2,500 reports, 10,000 recommendations and "delivered a monetary impact of over $45 billion" to VA programs, policies and operations, the filing said. Meanwhile, Trump has tasked Elon Musk -- who himself has billions of dollars in various federal contracts including with the Department of Defense -- to root out government waste and fraud via his so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. The White House said that Musk would not be required to file a public financial disclosure, which would have allowed the public to scrutinize his potential conflicts of interests, according to CNN, as Musk insisted his team would be transparent about their efforts during a press gaggle in the Oval Office with Trump on Tuesday. The same day, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said that he will "welcome DOGE to the Pentagon," adding that he believes it can find "billions of dollars" in savings within the military. previously reported that Principal Deputy Inspector General Steven Stebbins and the deputy inspector general, David Case, would be stepping into the IG roles for the Pentagon and VA, respectively, until replacements are named. Related: Watchdogs at Pentagon, VA Fired in Purge of Inspectors General Across Federal Government
Chicago Tribune
12-02-2025
- Politics
- Chicago Tribune
Government watchdogs fired by President Donald Trump sue his administration and ask a judge to reinstate them
WASHINGTON — Eight government watchdogs have sued over their mass firing that removed oversight of President Donald Trump's new administration. The lawsuit filed Wednesday in federal court in Washington asks a judge to declare the firings unlawful and restore the inspectors general to their positions at the agencies. The watchdogs are charged with rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse at government agencies, playing a nonpartisan oversight role over trillions of dollars in federal spending and the conduct of millions of federal employees, according to the lawsuit. Presidents can remove inspectors general, but the Trump administration did not give Congress a legally required 30-day notice, something that even a top Republican decried. The White House did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment on the lawsuit. Trump has said he would put new 'good people' in the jobs. The administration dismissed more than a dozen inspectors general in a Friday-night sweep on the fourth full day of Trump's second term. Though inspectors general are presidential appointees, some serve presidents of both parties. All are expected to be nonpartisan. Two of the plaintiffs had been nominated to inspector general roles by Trump in his first term. 'The firing of the independent, nonpartisan inspector general was a clear violation of the law,' said Michael Missal, the former inspector general of the Department of Veterans Affairs. 'The IGs are bringing this action for reinstatement so that they can go back to work fighting fraud waste and abuse on behalf the American public.' At the time of the firings, Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said there may have been good reasons for the terminations but that Congress needed to know. The lawsuit comes a day after the White House fired the inspector general for the U.S. Agency for International Development, following a warning from his office that the administration's dismantling of that agency had made it all but impossible to monitor $8.2 billion in unspent humanitarian funds. The role of the modern-day inspector general dates to post-Watergate Washington, when Congress installed offices inside agencies as an independent check against mismanagement and abuse of power. Democrats and watchdog groups said the firings raise alarms that Trump is making it easier to take advantage of the government. Trump, said at the time the firings were 'a very common thing to do.' But the lawsuit says that is not true and that mass firings have been considered improper since the 1980s. The dismissals came through similarly worded emails from the director or deputy director of the Office of Presidential Personnel. The watchdogs' computers, phones, and agency access badges were collected within days. The officials were escorted into their respective agencies to collect their personal belongings under supervision, they said in the lawsuit. The inspector general of the Agriculture Department, however, returned to work as normal the Monday after being informed of the firing, 'recognizing the email as not effective,' the lawsuit said. The watchdog conducted several meetings before agency employees cut off her access to government systems and took her computer and phone. Trump in the past has challenged their authority. In 2020, in his first term, he replaced multiple inspectors general, including those leading the Defense Department and intelligence community, as well as the one tapped to chair a special oversight board for the $2.2 trillion pandemic economic relief package. The latest round of dismissals spared Michael Horowitz, the longtime Justice Department inspector general who has issued reports on assorted politically explosive criminal investigations over the past decade. In December 2019, for instance, Horowitz released a report faulting the FBI for surveillance warrant applications in the investigation into ties between Russia and Trump's 2016 presidential campaign. But the report also found that the investigation had been opened for a legitimate purpose and did not find evidence that partisan bias had guided investigative decisions. The lawsuit was filed by the inspectors general of the departments of Defense, Veterans Affairs, Health and Human Services, State, Education, Agriculture, and Labor, and the Small Business Administration. Originally Published:
