Monday, May 18, 2020

THE BUILDING OF THE TRUMP DICTATORSHIP

Purge of government watchdogs escalates drive for authoritarian rule

Trump fires State Department inspector general

Late Friday night, President Donald Trump informed Congress that he was firing the top watchdog within the State Department, Inspector General Steve Linick. The dismissal is the latest move in a purge of inspectors general aimed at eliminating any internal monitoring of the administration and establishing an authoritarian, personalist government.
Over the past six weeks, Trump has removed the inspectors general of the Intelligence Community, the Department of Defense and the Department of Health and Human Services, in addition to Friday's action. Three of the four moves have been announced late on Friday night, when news coverage is generally more sparse and Congress is not in session.
In a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Trump offered no explanation for the sudden firing, other than to say he no longer had "the fullest confidence" in Linick, a veteran of the George W. Bush administration who was appointed to the State Department post by Barack Obama in 2013. Trump said the dismissal would take effect in 30 days.
Steve Linick (Image Credit: U.S. Department of State)
A White House official told the press that Trump had fired Linick on the recommendation of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Media reports quoted an unnamed Democratic aide as saying that Linick was investigating Pompeo’s alleged misuse of a political appointee to perform personal tasks for himself and his wife.
Pelosi denounced the move in a statement issued Friday night. House Foreign Affairs Chair Elliott Engel and Robert Menendez, the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, announced an investigation Saturday into Linick’s removal. They wrote letters to the White House, State Department and Office of the Inspector General to preserve all records related to Linick’s dismissal and turn the information over by May 22. They said the firing “may be an illegal act of retaliation” because the inspector general was investigating Pompeo.
Under Obama, Linick published a highly critical report about Hillary Clinton's use while secretary of state of a private email server. Last October, during the House impeachment hearings, Linick met with congressional aides of both parties and provided them with documents that had been given to the State Department by Trump's private lawyer Rudolph Giuliani. The documents concerned the role of Hunter Biden, the son of former Vice President and presumptive Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, in serving on the board of the Ukrainian natural gas company Burisma Holdings, as well as negative information about Marie Yovanovich, who had been removed by Trump as US ambassador to Ukraine the previous April.
While the information likely bolstered the Republicans' defense of Trump against the Democratic impeachment drive, Linick's intervention into the hearings breached Pompeo's order that State Department officials boycott the investigation.
Last year, Linick published two reports that were highly critical of how Trump political appointees, including a top aide to Pompeo, had treated career staffers at the State Department.
The White House announced that it would appoint Stephen Akard, director of the Office of Foreign Missions, a division of the State Department, as acting head of the Office of Inspector General in place of Linick. Ackard is a former adviser to Vice President Mike Pence when Pence was governor of Indiana. He was also general counsel, chief of staff and vice president of the Indiana Economic Development Corporation, which promotes tax and other incentives for businesses to locate in Indiana.
On Friday night, April 3, Trump dismissed Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson in retaliation for his role in the Democratic impeachment drive. In September 2019, Atkinson bucked efforts by the Trump administration to conceal from Congress the whistleblower complaint filed by a CIA operative in the White House. The complaint concerned Trump’s attempt to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to announce an investigation into the Bidens in connection with Hunter Biden’s paid position on the board of Burisma, while Trump was withholding military aid from the regime in Kiev.
Atkinson turned the complaint over to Congress, sparking the investigation by the Democratic-controlled House and eventual impeachment of Trump for weakening the right-wing, anti-Russian government in Kiev in the midst of a “hot war” with Moscow. Trump was acquitted by the Republican-controlled Senate in February.
After removing Atkinson, Trump defended the firing, saying that he “took a fake report and gave it to Congress.”
Within a week of Atkinson’s firing, on Tuesday, April 7, Trump removed Acting Defense Department Inspector General Glenn Fine, preventing him from becoming the head of the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee, established as part of the $2.2 trillion CARES Act to oversee the president’s management of the massive corporate bailout.
On Friday night, May 1, Trump removed Christi Grimm, the top watchdog at the Health and Human Services Department. This came a month after Trump criticized Grimm for a report in March detailing “severe shortages” of coronavirus testing kits and personal protective equipment for doctors and medical staff. At an April 6 press conference, Trump had dismissed Grimm’s report as “wrong” and attacked her as an Obama holdover.

Trump Ousts State Department Inspector General Steve Linick

Beth Baumann
|
|
Posted: May 16, 2020 10:35 AM
Trump Ousts State Department Inspector General Steve Linick
Source: AP Photo/Evan Vucci
President Donald Trump late Friday night fired State Department Inspector General Steve Linick, which goes into effect in 30 days. He alerted House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) to the decision in a letter.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Trump cited his lack of confidence in Linick as a reason to let him go, although his name wasn't mentioned in the letter. 
Trump didn't provide an exact reason for firing Linick. Last year, the Department of Defense’s inspector general launched an investigation into Linick for improper handling of sensitive information. 
From Fox News:
Last October, Fox News reported Linick had hosted a closed-door briefing on Ukraine for aides from several congressional committees. The briefing examined communications between Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani and fired Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin and current Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko. Linick also shared news clips and information regarding Ukrainian energy company Burisma, Fox reported.
The conversations between Giuliani and the Ukrainians were in reference to reports that former Vice President Joe Biden had sought to have Shokin fired amid an investigation into Burisma, whose board members included Hunter Biden, son of the former vice president.
President Trump’s July 2019 request that Ukraine’s president investigate the Biden matter led House Democrats to impeach the president last December on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. The Senate acquitted Trump in February.
Democrats quickly slammed the president's decision, citing retaliation for Linick launching an investigation into Attorney General William Barr. 
“The President’s late-night, weekend firing of the State Department Inspector General has accelerated his dangerous pattern of retaliation against the patriotic public servants charged with conducting oversight on behalf of the American people. Inspector General Linick was punished for honorably performing his duty to protect the Constitution and our national security, as required by the law and by his oath," Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said in a statement. “It is concerning that the President has taken this action as the House passes The Heroes Act, which contains critical funding for the State Department IG to oversee and ensure the effective, wise spending of coronavirus response funds.  This firing will set back the important work of the Office of the Inspector General to perform critical audits, investigations and inspections of U.S. embassies and programs around the world during this crisis. The President must cease his pattern of reprisal and retaliation against the public servants who are working to keep Americans safe, particularly during this time of global emergency.”
House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Eliot Engel (D-NY) said Trump pulled the trigger to protect Pompeo.
"The firing is the outrageous act of a President trying to protect one of his most loyal supporters, the Secretary of State, from accountability. I have learned that the Office of the Inspector General had opened an investigation into Secretary Pompeo. Mr. Linick's firing amid such a probe strongly suggests that this is an unlawful act of retaliation," Engel said in a statement. "This President believes he is above the law. As he systematically removes the official independent watchdogs from the Executive Branch, the work of the Committee on Foreign Affairs becomes that much more critical. In the days ahead, I will be looking into this matter in greater detail, and I will press the State Department for answers."

No comments: