President Donald Trump is gearing up to fire several inspectors general who provide oversight throughout the federal government and replace them with cronies who will ignore his corruption. It’s a move that experts warn is an “authoritarian coup.”
Trump has already fired two inspectors general in the last week. First, he forced out intelligence community Inspector General Michael Atkinson for passing along whistleblower complaints about his corrupt phone call with Ukraine to Congress. Then he fired the Pentagon inspector general who was set to oversee the trillions of dollars in relief aid passed by Congress to fight the coronavirus pandemic and the economic collapse.
Now, the Daily Beast is reporting that Trump has even more sinister plans to prevent oversight of his misconduct and the misconduct of his lackeys. Specifically, he wants to fire more of the inspectors general and replace them with hardcore supporters who will let him do whatever he wants, such as right-wing extremist Tom Fitton, who often pushes conspiracy theories and defends Trump on Fox News.
Trump himself even admitted to reporters on Tuesday that he has submitted seven nominations for inspector general positions, which means he intends to fire more of them soon.
Several experts have since sounded the alarm, including former Ethics chief Walter Shaub, who wrote a lengthy Twitter thread making it clear what’s going on.
Trump’s assault on Inspectors General is late-stage corruption. The canary in the coal mine was the government ethics program, which began engaging with the Trump team long before the election. The general public got it, but too many people in positions of influence missed it. /1
— Walter Shaub (@waltshaub) April 8, 2020
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Next came Trump’s tests of the enforceability of laws–a little push against the tent wall here and a big jab against it there, followed by even bigger tests and a growing awareness that many laws don’t have teeth or depend upon the executive branch to enforce them. /3
— Walter Shaub (@waltshaub) April 8, 2020
This emboldened Trump and taught him a lesson. He had come into government unaware that “personnel is policy.” Now he both understood that and knew the Senate would let him treat the government like The Apprentice: only the most slavishly obedient appointees would survive. /5
— Walter Shaub (@waltshaub) April 8, 2020
Oversight began only after the Democrats took the House. But Trump’s hold on the Senate was absolute. We don’t know what assurances he received behind the scenes, but we saw even longtime Republican Senators abandon previously espoused principles to protect him in plain sight./7
— Walter Shaub (@waltshaub) April 8, 2020
But the Senate has the final say. With one exception, Republican Senators didn’t even maintain a pretense of honoring their oaths. They ended the sham impeachment trial quickly. The failure of this second constitutional safeguard, moved the republic into a life-or-death crisis./9
— Walter Shaub (@waltshaub) April 8, 2020
Witnesses faired no better. Even some Senators who had spent their careers professing support for witnesses, gave Trump free rein to retaliate against them too. The stakes became high enough that whistleblowers and witnesses would henceforth think twice about coming forward./11
— Walter Shaub (@waltshaub) April 8, 2020
Individual government officials may have the moral fiber and ethics to resist the pressure. But the legal safeguards that help the federal workforce as a whole remain loyal to the American people and the rule of law over a rogue politician have been weakened. That’s dangerous./14
— Walter Shaub (@waltshaub) April 8, 2020
A last line of defense in this war on ethics and law is the Inspector General community. They’re the eyes of the American people, objective investigators traditionally freed to pursue accountability by the safeguard of bipartisan congressional protection./15
— Walter Shaub (@waltshaub) April 8, 2020
What began with the fall of the ethics program is entering the end game with the potential fall of the Inspector General community. The government is failing us, safeguards that took two centuries to build have crumbled, and fascism is eyeing this republic like lunch. /17
— Walter Shaub (@waltshaub) April 8, 2020
All is not lost. The American people are fired up. But it’ll be hard and the outcome’s uncertain. That’s why I want you to understand how big a deal it is that Trump is going after Inspectors General. This is a late-stage move in an authoritarian coup against the rule of law. /22
— Walter Shaub (@waltshaub) April 8, 2020
The Brennan Center’s National Task Force on Rule of Law and Democracy chief Rudy Mehrbani and former Senior Director for Counterterrorism at the National Security Council staff Joshua Geltzer also chimed in.
If true, this is a break glass moment for our democracy. And I’m not an alarmist, nor the biggest fan of all IGs. But they play an essential role in checking abuse & preventing autocracy. If there are more @MittRomney‘s in Congress, now is the time to speak out. STRING 1/ https://t.co/EDiZFxCu20
— Rudy Mehrbani (@RudyMehrbani) April 8, 2020
Trump reportedly firing SEVEN inspectors general all at once.
Guess he figured out that inspectors general were created to ensure accountability & oversight.
Those are 2 things Trump can’t stand.
This move is VERY dangerous to American democracy. https://t.co/bxnUKqwUWD
— Joshua A. Geltzer (@jgeltzer) April 7, 2020
Americans should be frightened — frightened enough that they crawl over that broken glass and through clouds of coronavirus to vote at all costs in November against this tyranny.
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