Democrats Launch Probe Into Trump's Firing Of State Department Inspector General

Congressional Democrats declared Saturday they're mentioning all records and reports in regards to President Trump's choice to fire State Department Inspector General Steve Linick, the fourth government guard dog Trump has terminated or tried to evacuate over the most recent a month and a half.

"We unalterably oppose the politically-motivated firing of inspectors general and the President's gutting of these critical positions," New York Rep. Eliot Engel,seat of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, and New Jersey Sen. Robert Menedez, the top Democrat on the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, wrote in a letter to the representative secretary of state.

The Trump organization reported Friday evening that Linick will be supplanted by Ambassador Stephen Akard, who as of now coordinates the's Office of Foreign Missions. Linick's evacuation is compelling in 30 days.

A White House official told NPR on foundation Saturday that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo suggested the move, "and President Trump concurred."

Engel said he'd discovered that Linick had opened an examination concerning Pompeo. A Democratic assistant on Capitol Hill disclosed to NPR that the auditor general was researching Pompeo's supposed abuse of a State Department political representative who was performing individual undertakings for the secretary and his significant other.

"Such an action, transparently designed to protect Secretary Pompeo from personal accountability, would undermine the foundation of our democratic institutions and may be an illegal act of retaliation," the Engel and Menendez letter states.


The letter demands that organization authorities protect all records identified with the terminating and surrender that data to the Democrats' boards of trustees by Friday.


Asked about the removal on CBS' Face The Nation Sunday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., conceded that "the president has the right to fire any federal employee," but said the decision was "typical of the White House, announcing something that is very unsavory" late on a Friday.

Maine Sen. Susan Collins voiced concern on Twitter, saying,"The President has not provided the kind of justification for the removal of IG Linick required by [a 2008] law."

Utah Sen. Mitt Romney said in a tweet that the firings of multiple inspectors general were "unprecedented," and "doing so without good cause chills the independence essential to their purpose."

Romney was the lone Republican to vote for Trump's impeachment in his Senate trial.

Bill Richardson, a Democrat and former ambassador to the United Nations, was asked about the role of inspectors general on NPR's Weekend Edition Sunday.

"You have to respect their independence," he said. "They don't work for you; they work for the public, for the Congress, for openness. And this is being violated massively in this administration."

In early April, Trump fired the intelligence community's inspector general. He then removed the head of the group charged with overseeing a $2 trillion coronavirus relief package. And early this month, he moved to replace a watchdog at the Department of Health and Human Services who reported on hospital shortages of medical supplies.