Inspectors general for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) are heading for the exit before the new Trump administration takes power, the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) reported Monday.
The departure of the agency watchdogs represents some of the first officials to remove themselves from the administrative state before President-elect Donald Trump takes office. Trump has vowed rid the federal bureaucracy of rogue and corrupt actors.
To carry out those reforms, Trump nominated John Ratcliffe, the former director of national intelligence from 2020 to 2021, to lead the CIA. He also nominated Tulsi Gabbard, a former Democrat congresswoman from Hawaii, to be Director of National Intelligence.
POGO reported on the departures of ODNI Inspector General Thomas Monheim and his counterpart at the CIA, Robin Ashton:
One of the departing inspectors general, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s Thomas Monheim, first took his watchdog role after Trump fired his predecessor Michael Atkinson in the spring of 2020. Atkinson had transmitted a whistleblower complaint to Congress that sparked Trump’s first impeachment in 2019.
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Monheim and his counterpart at the CIA, Robin Ashton, were both nominated by Biden and confirmed by the Senate in 2021 (Monheim began serving as acting inspector general the year before, during the first Trump administration).
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Appointed by the president and housed within executive agencies, inspectors general investigate waste, fraud, and abuse of power and are responsible for reporting wrongdoing both to agency directors and to Congress. Oversight by inspectors general has long been considered to be more important when both the executive branch and Congress are under control of the same political party.
The term “administrative state” specifically describes the phenomenon of unaccountable and unelected administrative agencies, including the national security apparatus, exercising power to create and enforce their own rules. The administrative state uses its rule-making ability to essentially usurp the separation of powers between the three branches of government by creating a so-called fourth branch of government not formed by the Constitution.
First published by Breitbart News
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