Revisiting the Firing of the Inspectors General

In March of 2025, former Inspector General of the Department of the Interior, Mark Lee Greenblatt and I discussed the January 24, 2025 firing of the inspectors general and its far-reaching implications for the country. With the blizzard of executive orders, high profile government firings, and other maneuvers, it would be easy to forget about the firing of the IGs and the long-term consequences.

Mark Greenblatt is making it his mission that the American people don’t lose sight of that fact. The importance of what he has to say cannot be overstated.

At the time of the firing of the IGs, we could only engage in conjecture as to what the long-term implications would be. As a reminder, on January 24th, 2025, President Trump fired 16 Inspectors General of the 16 largest most complex US government agencies, and then a 17th – the IG for USAID Paul Martin two weeks later. And that number has since risen to around 20 (given that some were acting IGs).

More recently, Mark Greenblatt, updated me and provided some insights into what has been going on in the IG community and what every American should know. Mr. Greenblatt considers the firing of the IGs and the wider purge across the law enforcement and regulatory community in the U.S. as critically important for the American people to know. The significance of what’s happening in the Inspector general community affects all federal agencies and by extension, it affects every American’s life.

In my conversations with Mark, I learned the Inspector General mantra: “without fear or favor”. It is how the IG function is supposed to operate. What it means is that IG personnel should feel empowered to investigate and issue findings about misconduct and waste without fear of reprisal or the need to appease anyone in a position of power. Mark has continued to keep his ear to the ground in the close-knit community of IGs. Here is what he shared in terms of an update.

First, there is oversight work being done by the IG community. There are 14,000 members in the community and the various federal OIGs sprinkled throughout the government. They are hardworking auditors, inspectors, evaluators, investigators who are still cranking out good work. It’s not as if there’s nothing being done. You look at the FAA, the Department of Transportation IG recently announced that they’re looking at the crash at Reagan National Airport in which 67 people died. The flooding in Texas is being examined by the Department of Commerce IG. And the Veterans Administration IG just issued a report about staffing inadequacy across the agency. Caring for our veterans is our collective, moral obligation. Giving short shrift to their wellbeing is unacceptable.

While there is work being done, what concerns Mark is borne out in a recent, front page article in the New York Times that examined the lingering fear in the IG community. The Times conducted numerous interviews of people inside the IG community who reported that there’s palpable fear of retaliation at the senior levels carrying out the IG mission and doing good work.

Of even greater concern goes to the heart of the Inspector General mission, the continued independence when investigating politically sensitive matters. Politically sensitive cases in which the existence of the investigation would rise to the president’s attention or to that of agency leadership’s attention are what is meant by “politically sensitive”. Are these investigations going to be shut down or is OIG leadership going to be retaliated against if the subject of the investigation is a loyalist or the company at the center a big donor?

That loss of independence and power to sway Inspector General operations is very problematic.

Mr. Greenblatt acknowledged that there is a cloud hanging over the heads of everyone across the IG offices and that this “is a tough time in the inspector general community”.

In response to a question as to what the future of the IG community holds, he said: “a major concern and what should keep the American people up at night is we need a robust independent inspector general community that doesn’t fear for their jobs, for just doing their jobs. That’s exactly the situation we don’t want to have. The key thing is to focus on those politically sensitive matters. That’s where the rubber’s going to meet the road. Are those folks looking into those issues and do they feel empowered to issue unvarnished findings?”

The word transparency is sometimes used as an antonym for the word corruption and crippling the inspector’s general function across 20 government agencies would seem to make transparency less achievable and provide fertile ground for corruption to take root. I asked IG Greenblatt to provide some examples of things that can and probably will happen without the transparency and accountability that occurs with fully operational IGs offices.

He responded: “imagine if the IRS said: we are not going to conduct any more audits of income tax returns. You just file and we’re going to go on the honor system. What do you think’s going to happen? People are going to cheat on their taxes left, right, and center right? No one’s going to pay what is owed under the law. If you remove the cop on the beat, you’re going to have more crime in that area. If you remove or neuter the IGs who are overseeing contracts and grants, what are you going to get?

You’re going to get fraud and misconduct with respect to contracts and grants. And that is a huge amount of American tax dollars going out the door. The key analogy is if you remove the cop on the beat, you’re going to get more crime in that area and that holds true with the IG community. What can we foresee? We can foresee a lot more contracting grant fraud and a lot more ethics misconduct”.
To listen to the entire conversation with former U.S. Department of the Interior Inspector General Mark Greenblatt, click here.