"President Trump's firing of IGs and removal of acting IGs, and then the subsequent appointment of some very political folks as IGs ... does raise the specter of a politicized inspector general community," one of those fired watchdogs, Mark Lee Greenblatt, told Nextgov/FCW."
"Max Stier, the president and CEO of the nonpartisan Partnership for Public Service, who recently told reporters that he's worried the administration's "hunt for waste" will become a "mechanism to pursue enemies.""
""This administration utilizes the clothing of good government without the substance of it," he said. "Firing [these inspectors general] for no good reason was the clearest sign that, in fact, waste is not their goal here. Control is their goal. Their choices have been entirely designed to maximize their ability to remove anybody that will get in their way of doing what the"
The White House emphasized combating fraud while dismissing nearly 20 inspectors general soon after taking office in 2025. A federal judge found those dismissals unlawful. The removal of apolitical watchdogs was followed by politically aligned appointments, raising the risk of politicized oversight and partisan investigations. Rhetoric about a "hunt for waste" functioned as a pretext to increase control over oversight rather than to reduce genuine waste, fraud, and abuse. These actions weakened independent accountability and increased the potential for political interference in fraud enforcement across government programs.
Read at Nextgov.com
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