Trump Hates Accountability So He Fires Independent Inspectors General

“The illegal we do immediately, the unconstitutional takes a little longer.”

–Henry A. Kissinger, August 29, 1967

Believe it or not, the caption under Justice Neil Gorsuch’s Columbia University yearbook picture in 1988 is “The illegal we do immediately, the unconstitutional takes a little longer.”  It would seem to be an odd choice for someone whose primary credential is his supposed textual fidelity to the Constitution.

Donald Trump could be the poster child for that yearbook caption in view of the fact that in less than two weeks in the White House he has challenged the Constitution and several  congressional laws. Trump’s attack on the Constitution was his challenging of birthright citizenship, which is protected by the 14th Amendment.  It took just three days for a federal judge to temporarily block Trump’s move, which he called a “blatantly unconstitutional order.”  On January 28th, another federal judge temporarily blocked Trump’s order that paused trillions of dollars for federal programs and sparked mass confusion throughout the country.  The order was unconstitutional and broke congressional laws.

Trump broke the law last Friday night when he summarily fired 18 inspectors general and ignored the 1978 law that requires giving 30 days notice to the Congress and providing cause for such actions.  The law was strengthened in 2023 to require the notice to include a “substantive rationale, including detailed and case-specific reason” for their removal.   Security agents escorted the Department of Agriculture IG out of the building on January 28, when she refused to obey Trump’s firing orders.

There are 76 inspectors general throughout the executive branch, but only 36 of them are Senate-confirmed and presidentially appointed.  Trump’s firings came from the latter group, and involved mostly Cabinet-level IGs, including the departments of agriculture, commerce, defense, education, interior, and labor.  In an interview with CNN on Tuesday, deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller declared that Donald Trump did not accept the legality of the 1978 law, which was part of the post-Watergate reform movement.  Just as Trump had no justification for his Muslim ban in 2017, he provided no justification for the firing of the IGs in 2025.

Trump’s actions in his first and second terms point to a comprehensive effort to weaponize and politicize the key departments and agencies of government, particularly the judicial and national security departments.  His appointees to the Department of Justice, the FBI, the CIA, and the Office of National Intelligence demonstrate the comprehensive effort that Trump will make to get complete subordination from these departments.  The key institutions that could monitor and even block malfeasance in these departments would be their Offices of  Inspector General and of course the inspectors general themselves, who are responsible for preventing fraud, abuse, waste, and lawlessness at their agencies.

Trump’s attack on the inspectors general is part of a larger campaign against the civil service that was documented in Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s blueprint to transform the federal government into a satrapy that serves the wishes of Donald Trump.  Vice President J.D. Vance is already on record as stating that the Trump administration will need to “fire every mid-level bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, and replace them with our people.”  Trump took a major step in this direction on January 27th, when he offered buyout arrangements to all 2.3 million federal employees if they would resign before February 6th.  House Speaker Mike Johnson said that Trump can’t simply walk into an agency and fire everyone, although it would be “appropriate for him to do so in some places.”

Trump has had a grievance against the IGs since the last year of his first term, when the intelligence community’s IG forwarded a CIA whistleblower complaint to Congress that led to his first impeachment.  The law required the IG to forward the complaint.  Trump also removed the Department of State IG for investigating Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s misuse of government employees to run personal errands for himself and his wife.  Trump stated that these IGs were treating him “very unfairly.”

There are few federal offices that are more essential to the maintenance of our democracy than the Offices of the Inspector General.  Without their work, there would be far fewer congressional investigations of the misuse of federal powers.  The reports of the IG as well as congressional investigations are essential to prevent lawlessness in the government and maintain our democracy itself.  One government agency that I’m particularly familiar with is the OIG of the Central Intelligence Agency, which over the years exposed the intelligence failures linked to the 9/11 attacks; the sadistic torture and abuse program; the use of secret prisons in East Europe and Southeast Asia; and the coverup of a shoot down of a missionary plane that was an illegal part of a drug monitoring program in Peru.

Trump’s actions demonstrate that he has little concern regarding good and efficient government; he simply wants to shrink the ranks of the federal workforce and make sure there is no internal investigation or monitoring of the departments and agencies of government.  The investigations of the government’s IGs save the federal government billions of dollars annually.

Unfortunately, there have been other presidents and even CIA directors who have worked to weaken the OIG without any congressional response.  President Barack Obama weakened the CIA’s OIG by taking two years to appoint an IG, and then appointing a very weak one.  CIA director Leon Panetta moved the office outside of the headquarters building in 2015, which made it more difficult to conduct rigorous oversight.

In all these cases, the Senate and House intelligence committees made no effort to intervene and correct these matters.   Trump’s actions are the latest efforts to weaken an open and accountable democracy, and move toward the kind of authoritarian society that George Orwell warned about.

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