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Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., wants the agency inspectors general who President Donald Trump fired last Friday to report for duty anyway.
“I’m not aware of any inspectors general who have decided to show up for work in defiance of the unlawful termination, though I encourage them to do just that,” he said during a press call Wednesday. “Because not to show up to work is tantamount to conceding this unlawful act is, in fact, lawful, and I don’t agree with that.”
Connolly, the top Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, is not optimistic that the current Congress will meaningfully respond to the IG firings and other executive actions to weaken job protections for federal employees.
“No, I don’t think you can expect action from Congress. What do we not get about the fact that the Republicans are in the majority of the House and the Senate and they have drunk the Kool Aid? They’re not going to hold Donald Trump account to anything,” he said. “But we’re going to do it as much as we can, and when we get the majority back in two years, we’re going to make sure that this administration is held to account and the sins of these two years will be revisited.”
Under a 2022 law, the officials who lead an IG office when there is a vacancy generally should be IG deputies. Given that Trump already has ignored a requirement to notify Congress 30 days before removing an IG, however, Liz Hempowicz — the deputy executive director of American Oversight, a nonpartisan open records nonprofit — is concerned the president will flout the acting IG rules too.
“It remains to be seen whether or not that’s another part of the law the president decides to just completely disregard. When we saw President Trump remove inspectors general in 2020 and replace them with other political appointees from offices within those same agencies, that presented conflicts, such as one individual who came from a general counsel’s office and then was meant to serve as an acting inspector general,” she said on the press call. “There’s a clear conflict there when you talk about independent oversight of an agency.”
Connolly said that he will have reservations trusting IG reports under the Trump administration.
“If they can’t meet the test of pure as driven snow, then yes, we have reason to doubt all of their work. That’s the tragedy here,” he said. “If you can’t trust the independence of the inspector general, if you believe that person and those persons around that person are, in fact, politically motivated, have an agenda of their own, are not objective — it taints all of their work.”
When asked on Saturday about the removals, Trump did not give a thorough explanation.
“I don’t know them…but some people thought that some were unfair, some were not doing their job, and it’s a very standard thing to do,” Trump said during a press gaggle on Air Force One.
While political appointees are generally replaced during a presidential transition, IGs typically stay on regardless of the administration.
A White House official said in a statement Tuesday to Government Executive that the firings will “make room for qualified individuals who will uphold the rule of law and protect Democracy.”
“These rogue, partisan bureaucrats who have weaponized the justice system against their political enemies are no longer fit or deserve to serve in their appointed positions,” the official said.
Following the IG removals, Connolly led House committee ranking members in a letter to the White House, urging Trump to reverse course.
“Firing inspectors general without due cause is antithetical to good government, undermines the proper stewardship of taxpayer dollars and degrades the federal government’s ability to function effectively and efficiently,” they wrote.
Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, did not respond to a request for comment.
A spokesperson for Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, who recently launched the bipartisan Inspector General Caucus to support the oversight officials, said in a statement Tuesday to Government Executive that the senator “looks forward to learning more about this [removal] decision and working with the president to nominate replacements, so the important work of independent investigators to root out waste, fraud and abuse can continue with full transparency.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., in a Sunday interview with NBC News, said he wasn’t worried about the IG firings, even though he acknowledged that Trump “technically” violated the law by not notifying Congress 30 days ahead of time.
“When you win an election, you need people in your administration that reflect your views,” he said. “Trump has the authority to do it, so I’m not losing a whole lot of sleep that he wants to change the personnel out.”
On Tuesday, Sens. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Dick Durbin, D-Ill., the leaders of the Judiciary Committee, sent a letter to Trump requesting the “substantive rationale, including detailed and case-specific reasons” for each of the IG removals, the name of each official that will serve as an acting IG and that he “work quickly to nominate qualified and non-partisan individuals to serve in these open positions.”
Chioma Chukwu, the interim executive director of American Oversight, said during the press call that her organization has filed Freedom of Information Act requests to more than a dozen agencies for any communications among agency heads, the Trump transition team or Congress regarding the IG firings.
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