Trump Fires IGs Across Government
President Trump fired more than a dozen inspectors general across the federal government Friday night, yet another sign that Trump has little concern about objective mechanisms for accountability in his administration.
The president fired at least 12 inspectors general, according to an article in the Washington Post, although other news outlets later reported that as many as 17 had been fired. Affected agencies included 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.
Inspectors general are meant to act as a sort of chief compliance officer and internal auditor rolled into one, investigating allegations of fraud, misconduct, or abuse. Every large department or agency of the federal government has its own IG, and there are dozens of them in total — so while last night’s firings are shocking, the 17 IGs who were sacked do represent only a fraction of the whole population.

Source: Agriculture Department, before it presumably scrubs the page.
Most IGs are appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate. Once appointed, however, they have considerable independence within their assigned agencies and they’re allowed to serve indefinite terms. For example, one of the IGs fired yesterday, Phyllis Fong, had been inspector general at the Agriculture Department since 2002.
Now, to the obvious question: can Trump do this? According to statute, no he can’t.
The Inspector General Reform Act of 2008 states that a president can indeed fire an IG, but he or she is supposed to give Congress 30 days’ notice before doing so. Trump didn’t do that, so last night’s firings seem to be illegal.
That said, we should note that Trump isn’t the first president to try something like this. Ronald Reagan did it in 1981, and then hired back some of them amid pressure from Congress. George H.W. Bush tried a similar gambit in 1989, and dropped the issue after resistance from Congress. Even Trump himself fired several inspectors general in 2020. (Numerous presidents have also fired individual IGs over the years, including Presidents Obama and Biden. All of those incidents, however, were for substantiated allegations of misconduct and were done with the required 30 days notice to Congress.)
It is also worth noting that last night’s firings are not a surprise. Trump’s advisers had been talking about purging IGs from his administration for at least several weeks, and for whatever reason they decided last night that the time had come.
One notable exception to last night’s purge was Michael Horowitz, inspector general at the Justice Department and a high-profile member of the IG community. Horowitz, an Obama-era appointee, has published reports critical of both the Trump and Biden administrations, and in 2017 received an award from the Society of Corporate Compliance & Ethics. As of today, at least, he still has a job.
The Larger Meaning Here
Well, the larger meaning here is plain to see. The Trump Administration, and Trump himself, are hellbent on abolishing all independent guardrails that might try to enforce ethics, accountability, and standards within the Administration. The IG firings are just one more box to tick on that To Do list.
I assume that at some point, Administration spokesmen will start talking about how the president “needs to have confidence in the people working for him” or some such answer, but we all know what that really means. Trump wants loyalists who will do his bidding and remember who signs their paycheck. He wants to cow any remaining IGs and their staffs into fear, silence, and obedience. He wants to shield his merry band of incompetents, unqualifieds, and crackpots taking perch across the federal government from objective oversight and accountability.
Will he get away with it? Probably, because Republicans in Congress won’t stand up to him for breaking the law. Perhaps a fired IG could sue for wrongful termination and win a monetary settlement, but we all know that’s a long and difficult road under the best of circumstances.
The plain truth is that if this debacle happened in the corporate world, every compliance officer and internal auditor around would all be saying this is no way to run a railroad. We have a feckless board (Congress) and a reckless, felonious, runaway chief executive (Trump) trying to defang every accountability mechanism he can find, even as at least half the shareholders and customers (voters and the public, respectively) don’t like the guy.
Could a corporate CEO do that? From a legal perspective, sure — but nobody would say that business is building the right discipline, mechanisms, and culture to succeed for the long term. Nobody would say that business is a model of good governance. On the contrary, we’d all be holding it up as an example of what not to do if you take ethics and compliance seriously.
Then again, Trump gave us lots of examples like that in his first term. I don’t expect the second to be any different.