ACTING AGAIN LIKE A DICTATOR, TRUMP FIRES ANOTHER INSPECTOR GENERAL

…Trump’s Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo with the Prez

Now, four Inspector Generals have been fired by President Trump.

It all happened as one would expect when a dictator wants to get rid of those that are watchdogs for the improper actions of Trump’s so called “Public Servants” .

President Trump’s Secretary of State lapdog, Mike Pompeo, had his top aides blast the State Department’s ousted internal Inspector General, Steve Linick.  They accused him of mis-handling leaks to the media and failing to promote Pompeo’s mission statement to employees.

The remarks were an attempt to fill in the gaps in the mysterious firing of Linick by President Trump late last Friday night.  But the accusation instead raised new questions about the dismissal and it exposed a sharp divide among State Department employees.

This is the forth dismissal of an IG that happened to be examining whether Pompeo was having staffers do domestic chores, among other mis-placed deeds.  And it is a classic move by an authoritarian leader, such as President Trump.

Many career officials viewed Linick as a dogged investigator of those that didn’t follow the rules, and he was someone who cultivated a reputation for total diligence.

But for the secretary’s hand-picked lackey advisers, who found themselves on the wrong end of Linick’s investigations, the former prosecutor could be a source of frustration and embarrassment.  This was info from four US officials familiar with the matter.

Linick was fired because Pompeo, who could not fire an Inspector General, he had to ask the president to do the deed.  He told The Post that he had advised Trump to fire Linick, because he was not “performing a function”.

But the word on the street has it that Linick was actually inspecting the Secretary of State for his misuse of his aides for using them to do personal deeds for the Secretary and for the secretary’s wife.  The Secretary was also taking his wife with him on official trips, at the tax payers expense, and this was also being under investigation. The fired IG was examining whether Pompeo had a staffer walking his dog, picking up his cleaning, and other duties.

All of the Inspector Generals that have been released were also looking into areas that were where the president’s personal appointees were not doing their jobs.

Here are those that have been fired so far:

1. Intelligence Community Inspector General, Michael Atkinson: President Trump wrote to Congress on April 3, that he had no longer had confidence in Atkinson.  It is interesting that Atkinson just happened to help facilitate the whistleblower complaint that led to Trump’s impeachment. 

2. The Department of Defense acting Inspector General, Glenn Fine, was to chair the panel overseeing coronavirus federal spending.  But no official explanation was provided by Trump for the April 7 firing of IG Fine.  Trump had said: “I don’t think I ever met Fine,” and suggested he was just cleaning out Obama-era holdovers, citing Obama’s nominees having, “reports of bias.”

3. Trump replaced the Health and Human Services acting Inspector General Christi Grimm on May 1 with assistant US Attorney Jason Weida after Grimm released a report in late March that found “severe shortages of testing supplies” and “widespread shortages of personal protective equipment” among other problems experienced by medical workers battling the coronavirus. Trump later tweeted that Grimm was an Obama-era holdover who never contacted coronavirus task force members before conducting the report.

4. The Trump administration firing of the State Department Inspector General, Steve Linick, was just last Friday.  In a letter to Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Trump said he no longer had full confidence in Linick.  Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had asked Trump to fire Linick.  House Democrats had also called on Linick to open an investigation into Pompeo’s efforts to secure an arms deal with Saudi Arabia. Linick was also investigating those reports that Pompeo used his staff to conduct his personal chores.

The Trump administration on Sunday also installed Howard “Skip” Elliot as a new acting inspector general, replacing the Department of Transportation acting Inspector General Mitch Behm.  However, Mr. Behm, will remain in his prior job as deputy inspector general…?

Trump’s IG shuffle has obviously brought on major Democratic criticism, but his firing of Linick has raised bipartisan alarm in Congress.  Pelosi wrote to Trump Monday, giving him a 30-day deadline to explain why Linick was fired.

On Monday, Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) said in a letter to Trump that his explanation of the firing is “not sufficient” to fulfill the Inspector General Reform Act.  That is the law enshrines the rights of internal investigators. “Please provide a detailed reasoning for the removal of Inspector General Linick no later than June 1,” Grassley said.

One of Pompeo’s top aides, Brian Bulatao, said concern over Linick had grown because of a “pattern of unauthorized disclosures, or leaks,” to the news media about investigations that were in their early stages. Bulatao said officials had no evidence Linick was personally responsible for the leaks, but believed that they could taint the outcome of ongoing probes.

Bulatao also said the secretary was frustrated with Linick’s indifference to an “ethos statement” Pompeo formulated for employees last year that includes mottos such as “I am a champion of American diplomacy.”

The terms of Linick’s exit remain contentious. In a letter sent to Congress on Friday, Trump said Linick’s removal would be effective in “30 days,” giving him time to wind down his investigations.  But Linick has since been told that he is physically barred from returning to the State Department even to collect his belongings.  This is of course, complicating his ability to finish his work.  This is per a US official, who like many others in Trump’s administration, always speaks on the condition of anonymity.

Pompeo’s vague criticisms of Linick have left questions about whether one of the inspector’s past or current investigations agitated Pompeo enough to prompt the decision to remove him. Pompeo denied that it was possible for him to retaliate for that reason, because, he said, he was not told about the investigation of him until after the firing.

“I simply didn’t know. I [was not] briefed on it,” he said.

But US officials, including Republican members of Congress, are demanding answers for what they view as an extraordinary punitive measure.

The large number of Inspector Generals were set up by the Inspector General Reform Act.  This occurred after the issues that were brought up during the Watergate trials.  Today there are 74 Inspector Generals, 13 of which are vacant.

The nature of Linick’s work, which involved interviewing various officials and uncovering acts of wrongdoing, means that any investigation could be suspected of causing his downfall, and that his list of enemies is long.

Before he was fired, Linick was investigating an emergency declaration Trump made last year to approve an arms sale to Saudi Arabia, a decision Pompeo had approved, said Rep. Eliot L. Engel (D-N.Y.), the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

The arms transfer had been blocked by a bipartisan group of lawmakers who opposed the killing of Yemeni civilians at the hands of a Saudi-led coalition operating in that country. Engel, who had requested Linick look into the order, said it was “another reason” Trump may have fired the inspector general.

Pompeo told The Post he was not aware Linick had been investigating the domestic errands issue. When asked whether the allegations were true, he declined to comment. “I’m not going to answer the host of unsubstantiated allegations about any of that,” he said.

Linick also took aim at powerful and connected individuals within the Trump administration, including Robert Pence, a Republican Party donor with close ties to Vice President Pence whom Trump nominated for US ambassador to Finland. Last year, Linick’s office wrote that Robert Pence, who is not related to the vice president, had a conflict with his deputy that was not managed “in an appropriate manner, which resulted in a breakdown of trust and communication that complicated the chain of command and contributed to a stressful work environment for Embassy Helsinki staff,” among other things.

Another well-connected official Linick took aim at was Brian Hook, the special envoy for Iran, who maintains good relations with Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and adviser. Linick’s office found that an Iranian American career civil servant, Sahar Nowrouzzadeh, was retaliated against because of her ethnicity and a perceived political bias. Hook came under scrutiny in the probe because at the time she worked in his office.

The probe’s findings were released last fall, which is when Pompeo’s aide, Bulatao, said the department became particularly frustrated with leaks about IG investigations, in particular a Daily Beast report in September focusing on Hook that cited “two government sources involved in carrying out the investigation.”

Bulatao said the report deepened the department’s skepticism of Linick, though there was no evidence that he was involved in leaking to the website. “You know the IG is normally charged with carrying out the investigation,” he said. “It certainly was a very strong finger-pointing at IG Linick’s way.”

If Linick was targeted because of an investigation, nonpartisan analysts have said his ouster would probably constitute a violation of laws protecting inspectors.

“If the president has removed the inspector general because of any investigation he is carrying out, that would be contrary to the law,” said Ron Neumann, the president of the American Academy of Diplomacy.

Neumann’s organization on Monday called for a “more detailed and more complete” explanation of Linick’s firing “consistent with the law.”

At the State Department, where many diplomats are working from home while trying to juggle personal responsibilities, some said Linick’s ouster further dampens department morale.

“It doesn’t touch most people directly. But it undermines confidence the rules apply equally to everyone,” one official said.

Trump, who is the only official legally capable of firing the inspector general, has largely let Pompeo explain the decision.

“I never heard of him. But I was asked to by the State Department, by Mike,” Trump told reporters at the White House.

Trump suggested that if Pompeo was using his staff to do house chores, it would not be a significant breach.

“Do you mean that he is under investigation because he had someone walk his dog from the government? I don't know. I don’t think it sounds like that important,” Trump said. “Maybe he’s negotiating with Kim Jong Un, okay, about nuclear weapons. They say: ‘Please, can you walk my dog? You mind walking my dog? I’m talking to KJU or President Xi. Please walk my dog.’ . . . The priorities are really screwed up when I read this.”

It wasn’t just the chores that Pompeo was asking for.  What about taking his wife on his official trips and that Pompeo had also set up a separate office for his wife in the building, when he was the CIA Director.  All of this was at the expense of the US taxpayers.

Just one more example of the president, and his staff''s leadership incompetence.

Copyright G. Ater 2020