House Oversight ranking member Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) encouraged agencies to protect whistleblowers and uphold inspector general independence — noting past interference under the first Trump administration.
Connolly on Wednesday sent letters, obtained by The Hill, to both the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency (CIGIE) as well as the Office of the Special Counsel (OSC), two agencies active in ensuring inspector general independence as well as protecting the rights of government whistleblowers.
The letter to OSC asks the agency to contact the panel’s Democrats “any time your independence or transparency is undermined” — a sign both of the committee’s interests in whistleblowers as well as how it plans to position itself under a second Trump administration.
The letter to CIGIE outlines a string of incidents during the first Trump administration, most notably firing Michael Atkinson, the inspector general for the intelligence community, after he raised concerns from Alexander Vindman that became the subject of Trump’s first impeachment.
“During the first Trump Administration, President Trump removed IGs that enforced transparency and accountability that he found to be inconvenient or that exposed his own abuses of power,” Connolly wrote, using an abbreviation for inspectors general.
“When appointing new IGs, President Trump often left IG positions vacant or picked political appointees at the agencies who already worked at the agency, a clear...
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