Trump fired 17 general public servants in the evening purge

President Trump fired 17 inspectors general who oversee federal agencies on Friday night, in a dramatic crackdown on federal officials focused on disloyalty to the president, a person familiar with the matter said. said the matter.

The mining operation did not affect Michael E. Horowitz, the inspector general for the justice department, said one of the people familiar with the matter. But critics of the inspectorate at many major agencies believed it had been fired.

The Washington Post reported the excavation earlier. A White House spokesman did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.

The jewelry threatened the independence of the watchdog, and Mr. Trump’s critics expressed alarm.

“The general has been accused of waste, fraud, abuse and malfeasance,” Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, said in a statement. “President Trump is ignoring the checks on his power and building a way to surprise corruption.”

People involved in the Trump transition signed up to such horror. And it’s consistent with Mr. Trump’s efforts in early 2020, when they fired five inspector generals.

At the time, Mr. Trump was dealing with a nationwide pandemic, but he was also seeking to restore the government to get rid of people he saw as trying to harm it. Among them is Michael Atkinson, the inspector general for US civil society, who dealt with anonymous complaints that led to Mr. Trump’s first complaint to the House.

Democrats accused Mr. Trump tried to assemble an independent office.

Mr. Horowitz submitted to the Justice Department in late 2019 a report on the FBI’s investigation into possible links between his campaign and the Russians that began in 2016, called called Hurricane Crossfire.

mr. Horowitz found that the FBI had a basis for opening the investigation, but he criticized the request for a guarantee for a peaceful donor in a secret way, the Carter page. He also said the director of the FBI at the time the investigation was opened, James B. Layey, violated public policy with a secret memo in his communications with Mr. Trump.

The justice department declined to prosecute Mr. Lay, a decision that upset Mr. Trump.