Steve Linick: State Department official investigating Pompeo is fired

The Trump administration has fired the state department’s inspector general who is reported to have been investigating the secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, for a potential abuse of office.

The inspector general, Steve Linick, was given notice of his dismissal late on Friday night and is to be replaced by Stephen Akard, a close ally of the vice-president, Mike Pence, from his home state of Indiana. A state department spokesperson said that Akard, who has been running the office for foreign missions, would take over immediately as acting inspector general.

According to a Democratic congressional aide, just before his abrupt dismissal Linick had opened an investigation into allegations that Pompeo had been using a political appointee at the state department to run personal errands for him and his wife, Susan.

Under US law the president is required to give 30 days’ notice before firing an inspector general, to allow Congress to investigate the reasons for dismissal. In recent months Congress has not used that month-long notice period to prevent the termination of other watchdog officials fired by the president.

In a letter to the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Trump said: “It is vital that I have the fullest confidence in the appointees serving as Inspectors General. That is no longer the case with regard to this Inspector General.”

Linick is the latest in a string of officials in watchdog roles fired by the president in recent months, turning on its head the tradition that such jobs are filled with non-partisan figures. Trump has demanded personal loyalty from officials working in the administration, especially those in an oversight role.

“This firing is the outrageous act of a president trying to protect one of his most loyal supporters, the secretary of state, from accountability,” said Eliot Engel, the Democratic chair of the House foreign affairs committee. “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.”

Linick is not the first inspector general to be fired late on a Friday night. On 3 April this year Trump dismissed the intelligence community inspector general, Michael Atkinson, who had first deemed credible a whistleblower complaint expressing concern about Trump’s call last summer to his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, which ultimately triggered impeachment proceedings against the president.

On 1 May Trump dismissed the principal deputy inspector general at the department of health and human services, Christi Grimm, who had published a report about shortage of medical supplies at hospitals around the country in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.

“Let’s be clear: all of these moves are punishment for doing the jobs the law authorizes and requires IGs [inspectors general] to do,” Michael Bromwich, former justice department inspector general, said in a tweet.

“This will not end until Congress takes these retaliatory firings seriously. The appointment of a crony of the VP further politicizes jobs that by statute are supposed to be non-partisan. Another important norm defiled.”

In 2019 a state department whistleblower reportedly alleged that Pompeo had used his security detail to run chores like picking up food and picking up the family dog from the grooming salon.

Walter Shaub, former head of the US Office of Government Ethics, said: “The assault on the IG is late-stage corruption, and Trump’s kicking down one of the last bulwarks that stand between us and the burgeoning corruption-driven authoritarianism.” He added some advice to journalists: “Cover it like you’re a foreign correspondent in a collapsing republic. Because you are.”