In 2019, we represented an anonymous whistle-blower from the American intelligence community whose disclosures about President Trump’s attempt to coerce President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine led to his first impeachment. Our goals as lawyers were simple: to ensure that the truth came out and our client was safe from retaliation.
We worked within an inspector general system created by Congress to conduct independent investigations of malfeasance within government, one of the institutional guardrails put in place a half century ago in the wake of the Watergate scandal.
Even then, there were signs during our case that those guardrails were beginning to fracture under Mr. Trump’s sway. The White House’s attacks on our client, and on us, undermined an important system of checks and balances. President Trump subsequently dismissed five inspectors general, including the watchdog for the intelligence community, who had fulfilled his lawful obligations to protect our client at his own peril.
President Trump has now returned to the White House office far more knowledgeable about the inner workings of the government, with a list of grievances he is working through expeditiously.
On Friday night, in a bloodletting reminiscent of the Saturday Night Massacre, in which Richard Nixon ordered the dismissal of the Watergate special prosecutor and accepted the resignations of the attorney general and his deputy, Mr. Trump fired as many as 17 inspectors general. This action has sowed distrust and turmoil within the inspector general system and unfortunately has called into question the pathways that whistle-blowers will have available to them.
Congress created the inspector general posts in 1978 to allow for independent audits and investigations of government departments to guard against waste, fraud and abuse. The president has the power to appoint inspector generals in the major departments with Senate consent, and to fire them. But in this case, Mr. Trump terminated them without first giving Congress 30 days notice, nor, as he is required to do under a 2022 law, providing a “substantive rationale, including detailed and case-specific reasons” for the dismissals. It was a direct challenge not only to the system but to Congress.