The Project on Government Oversight reported that two Inspectors general, one from the CIA, the other from Office of the Director of National Intelligence are departing before the Trump administration takes over. These are among the first officials to resign in the wake of Trump announcing he’s cleaning the corruption out. Trump nominated John Ratcliffe, former intelligence director, to lead the CIA.
Officials jumping ship
POGO reported on these two departures. “One of the departing inspectors general, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s Thomas Monheim, first took his watchdog role after Trump fired his predecessor Michael Atkinson in the spring of 2020. Atkinson had transmitted a whistleblower complaint to Congress that sparked Trump’s first impeachment in 2019.”
“Monheim and his counterpart at the CIA, Robin Ashton, were both nominated by Biden and confirmed by the Senate in 2021 (Monheim began serving as acting inspector general the year before, during the first Trump administration).”
Officials need to be in place
When one party controls the power.
“Appointed by the president and housed within executive agencies, inspectors general investigate waste, fraud, and abuse of power and are responsible for reporting wrongdoing both to agency directors and to Congress. Oversight by inspectors general has long been considered to be more important when both the executive branch and Congress are under control of the same political party.”
And multiple officials in the DOJ and the FBI maybe lawyering up to hopefully keep criminal investigations at a minimum. Trump is serious about purging corruption.
Trump warned officials
The transition team warned that subverting, undermining, or sabotaging the incoming agenda will get you fired. The term “administrative state” refers to unelected and unaccountable agencies, including national security, who make up their own rules. There are a lot of unelected bureaucrats.
The DOJ is going to have to do an about face. It will suddenly need to deport illegal aliens, secure the southern border, ban race-based affirmative action, investigate antisemitism, halt big tech censorship, and grant pardons and commutations to January 6 defendants. One former FBI official whined, “Everything we did was aboveboard. But this is a different world.”
