Opinion: Inspector generals are at risk under another Trump administration

When it comes to the role of inspectors general, IGs, in the Trump administration, we know that the past is prologue. 

Then President Donald Trump declared in 2020 that, “Everybody agrees that I have the absolute right to fire the inspector generals,” after firing the State Department Inspector General in the middle of a probe of Secretary of State Michael Pompeo. He then fired the Intelligence Community Inspector General for his handling of the complaint that eventually prompted the impeachment around issues related to Ukraine. Trump also replaced three acting inspectors general during or at the completion of politically sensitive investigations.

We should expect more of the same in the next four years.

Mr. Trump is clearly focused on the so-called “deep state” and in a ten-point campaign plan indicated his intention to make radical changes to how inspectors general govern, stating that he would “… make every inspector general’s office independent and physically separated from the department they oversee so they do not become the protectors of the deep state.” Leaders of Project 2025, some of the authors of which are joining the administration in senior positions, have called for the president to install his “own IGs” to “have control over the people that work within government.” 

Just as President Trump has challenged other democratic norms, he has been clear that rather than IGs playing the role of independent watchdogs, he would greatly prefer that they serve as loyalists. Meaningful efforts to investigate and audit will be tolerated only as long as they are consistent with administration policy, priorities, and partisan politics.

The cost to taxpayers and to democracy will be great. IGs fill a little appreciated, but vital role in our federal government, exposing waste, corruption, fraud, and other abuses from within.  

IGs make government more effective and efficient by highlighting what works and by exposing what doesn’t. Currently, 74 federal inspectors general are charged with oversight of the various arms of our federal government: the federal IG system has become a model for scores of other IGs at the state and local level as well. Last year federal IGs alone resulted in savings totaling approximately $93.1 billion: a $26 return on every dollar of cost.

Beyond yielding tremendous savings to taxpayers, IGs are fact finders and truth-tellers on matters from the catastrophic to the bureaucratic: A 2007 U.S. Department of Justice IG’s report revealed system failures at the FBI that allowed a former FBI agent to spy for the KGB for more than 20 years; the Department of Labor IG has been diligent over the past several years to hold accountable people who stole COVID-19 Relief funds; the list goes on.  

To do their jobs, IGs must be protected from partisanship and political pressures, and IG authority to conduct investigations must not be impeded by the refusal of agencies to comply with lawful processes including document subpoena and compelled interview authority.

That’s why historically, IGs have been viewed as independent of the agency that they oversee and accountable to both the president and to Congress. Before the first Trump administration, removal only occurred in the most exceptional of cases. And when it occurred, there was bipartisan pushback from Congress. In response to President Ronald Reagan’s 1981 firing of all the federal IGs, Republican Rep. Frank Horton and Democratic Rep. L.H. Fountain led the opposition and two months later President Reagan reinstated several of the fired IGs, asserting that the reappointment “signals to everyone who works for or does business with the government that we mean business.”

The likely challenge to IG independence in a second Trump term could not come at a worse time. The Supreme Court’s Trump v. United States decision greatly expanded presidential immunity and potentially opens the door to expanded immunity for other departmental officials.

While previous Supreme Court rulings explicitly distinguish presidential immunity from that of cabinet and other officers, there is of course no telling what the current or future court may do in terms of extending immunity across the executive branch. A decision permitting agency heads to avoid prosecution for crimes identified during lawful investigations of their assigned inspectors general, for example, would cripple a primary mechanism for addressing and deterring fraud and corruption across the federal agencies. Moreover, since IGs do far more than conduct criminal investigations, if immunity were extended beyond the president to include other executive branch leadership, IG investigative authority would be even more necessary for non-criminal –  but still vital – oversight. 

Now more than ever, Congress needs to step up and reassert the independence of IGs, creating explicit protections against presidential retaliation for doing their jobs. Nearly 50 years after the creation of the federal IG system, it is also time to begin a re-examination of how to strengthen the role that IGs play in the federal government. At a time when there is a widespread lack of confidence in government, IGs need to play a greater role as truth tellers rather than a diminished one.

Lucy Lang serves as New York State Inspector General.