Friday Night Massacre

Late Friday evening about 17 Inspectors General received notices that they were fired, effective immediately. They were from the Departments of Defense, State, Transportation, Veterans Affairs, Housing and Urban Development, Interior, Energy, Commerce and Agriculture plus the Environmental Protection Agency, Small Business Administration and the Social Security Administration.

As Inspector General Mark Greenblatt explained in an interview for the Contrarian, the purge was more comprehensive than it might appear. While there are 73 inspectors general in different departments of the US government, only 34 are Presidentially Appointed, Senate Confirmed (PASC), the rest are agency appointed. And many of the PASC positions were already vacant, so Trump removed the majority of those in his power leaving 5 or 6 who survived the purge. Two of the survivors are Michael Horowitz (Justice) who had criticized the FBI over their 2016 investigation of Russian influence in the Trump campaign; and Joseph Cuffari Jr. (Homeland Security) who was appointed by Trump and who has been accused of misleading the Senate during his nomination hearings and of other instances of misconduct.

There are two issues here.

First, the firing is blatantly illegal. The law creating the independent inspectors general in 1978 to identify fraud, waste and abuse in the government, allows the president to fire them provided they give Congress “the reasons for any such removal” at least 30 days ahead of time. Trump did just that in his first term but with rather flimsy reasoning. In 2022 the law was tightened required the president to provide “substantive rationale, including detailed and case-specific reasons” for any such dismissals. By not providing the 30 days’ notice nor giving any reasons (at all) for the firings, Trump shows his utter disdain for the law (not just this law but the Law in general).

The second issue is even more serious. In his interview Greenblatt said that the 30 days’ notice was not as significant as the potential loss of independence of the Inspectors General. It’s now up to the Senate in the nomination hearings to determine if the replacements for the Inspectors General positions, whoever they turn out to be, will be the “comprehensive, fair, objective, independent overseers that we need” or “lackeys” willing to overlook the corruption of the new regime.

We will find out soon enough.

Sources

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/01/25/trump-firing-14-inspectors-general-illegal/

https://contrarian.substack.com/p/breaking-inspector-general-mark-greenblatt