Glenn Fine (2011). Photo: Diego M. Radzinschi/ ALM

President Donald Trump was a half hour into his press briefing Monday, touting the 1.8 million coronavirus tests he claimed had been conducted nationwide, when a question put him in a familiar position in his relations with the media: on the offensive.

That day, the internal watchdog for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services had issued a report revealing supply shortages and testing delays at hospitals responding to the crisis. At the mention of the inspector general report, Trump interrupted, cutting the question short.

"Did I hear the word inspector general? Really? It's wrong," he said.

"It's wrong," he repeated. Later, he would suggest the report was politically motivated, stressing that the department's inspector general, Christi Grimm, had served in the Obama administration. Left unsaid was that Grimm, a career government official who joined the inspector general's office in 1999, had also served in the George W. Bush administration.

It was only the latest instance of Trump dismissing an inspector general's findings, if not terminating a government watchdog altogether.

Days earlier, he had fired the intelligence community's inspector general, Michael Atkinson, who had alerted Congress to a whistleblower complaint about Trump pressuring Ukraine to investigate a political rival. Trump on Tuesday removed Washington lawyer Glenn Fine as the Pentagon's acting inspector general just days after a new panel of inspectors general tasked him with overseeing how the administration will oversee billions of dollars in coronavirus relief funds.

"It's extraordinarily disturbing," said Jenner & Block partner Neil Barofsky, who served as the special inspector general overseeing the bank bailout program that followed the 2008 financial crisis.

"These actions send a clear message to inspectors general that they're going to be in danger if they criticize the administration," he continued. "That is not how it's supposed to work, and the country will suffer if you don't have independent watchdogs who will report on waste, fraud and abuse when they see it. It undermines the entire system we've set up."

Last week, a panel of inspectors general had selected Fine, then the acting internal watchdog for the Department of Defense, to lead the committee's oversight of the coronavirus relief spending. Trump removed Fine from his Pentagon post and named the Environmental Protection Agency's inspector general to temporarily double as the Defense Department's top internal watchdog.

The move effectively upended the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee, since the coronavirus relief package permits only sitting inspectors general to serve on the panel. It was not immediately clear whom the committee would appoint as its new leader. Fine, who remains in the Pentagon as the principal deputy inspector general, previously served as the Justice Department's top internal watchdog.

Michael Bromwich, a Steptoe & Johnson senior counsel who preceded Fine as the Justice Department's inspector general, said Trump has consistently shown "no interest, appetite or respect" for oversight, whether from Congress or independent watchdogs within the executive branch.

"No one can doubt Glenn's experience, his integrity, his independence and the fact that he has exercised his inspector general role in a completely nonpartisan, nonpolitical way. So what this is is a fundamental attack on IGs and on the independence of IGs and on their ability to conduct independent oversight. So it's not just one IG. Atkinson is not just another IG," Bromwich said, referring to the intelligence community inspector general who was removed last week.

"It really is the whole process, the system of independent oversight, that's now under assault."

The panel of inspectors general was among several new oversight entities Congress created with the roughly $2 trillion coronavirus relief package. Among the others was a special inspector general's office reminiscent of the independent watchdog appointed as part of the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, following the financial crisis.

Trump's firing of Atkinson, the intelligence community watchdog, continued to draw a rebuke Tuesday from a broad spectrum of lawyers. The conservative legal group Checks & Balances, whose members are lawyers from Republican administrations, lambasted Trump in a new statement.

"A statutory inspector general should not be removed based on personality or whim or other frivolous reasons. Under no circumstances should an inspector general be removed for doing his or her job, and for following the law," the group said.

Brian Miller speaks at Patrick Henry College in May 2019. Photo: YouTube, via Patrick Henry College.

Trump on Friday said he planned to nominate White House lawyer Brian Miller, a former inspector general of the General Services Administration, to the role of special inspector general for pandemic recovery. The selection drew immediate criticism, with Bromwich and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi questioning whether a White House lawyer who helped defend Trump against impeachment could independently oversee the administration's response to the pandemic.

"The inspector general providing oversight of the federal response of this historical relief package for workers and families must be independent from politics. The president's nomination of one of his own lawyers clearly fails that test," Pelosi said.

As his removal of Fine drew criticism, Trump ramped up his attacks on the HHS inspector general, calling her recent report a "fake dossier."

Bromwich said Trump's recent moves "inevitably will cast a chill over the work of people in the IG community, not just with respect to pandemic response issues but more generally."

"The game's changed now, the game's totally changed," he said. "It's all-out war on the IG community, because they're a source of independent criticism of what's going on in the administration."

 

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