Saturday, May 16, 2020

Trump's IG Firings Continue, This Time At State



The retribution against Inspectors General by corrupt con man and lawless authoritarian Donald "Mango Mussolini" Trump continued late yesterday with the firing of State Department Inspector General Steve Linick by Trump flunkee Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Inspectors General are the "watchdogs" posted at Federal agencies to identify and investigate cases of waste, fraud and abuse, and clearly Trump wants to stifle further exposure of his administration's corruption. Linick was investigating Pompeo's inappropriate use of a political appointee at the State Department to run personal errands for himself and his wife when he was fired.

Linick joins former HHS IG Christi Grimm who was fired last month for stating that there was a severe shortage of testing kits and PPE at hospitals, a counter message to Trump's lies that there was an abundance of those items. Her firing followed that of Michael Atkinson, the IG for the Intelligence Community, who angered Trump by forwarding the whistleblower complaint by Lt. Col. Alex Vindman concerning Trump's shakedown call to Ukrainian President Zelensky, which led to Trump's impeachment.

With each firing of an independent IG, and their replacement by a Trump lackey, the Government moves closer and closer to being Trump's private fiefdom, where he is immune from criticism and above the law. The IGs are the public's eyes and ears for waste, fraud and abuse. Trump wants them shut so he can continue his abuses.

2 comments:

donnah said...

The Trump Administration does this all of the time; they fire anyone who is critical of what they're doing. It's usually (always) when the Administration is committing illegal acts. So Trump fires them and replaces them with donors and sycophants.

How is this even legal? Why can this be allowed to happen over and over? Can't anyone stop it?

I believe that when the Democrats finally get back into power they're going to have to completely revamp our system of laws and limitations. Trump broke it. Republicans helped him.

Hackwhackers said...

donnah -- There was a time in the not so distant past when each of these firings would have been a multi-day story. Trump's daily outrages have caused almost a numbness because while one is focusing on the latest, he's on to the next with no sense of shame or ethics. We've got to stop him in November, along with his rotted out party.