US President Donald Trump on Friday fired US Department of State Inspector General Steve Linick, leading to heavy criticism from senior Democratic lawmakers, including US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Trump said in a letter to Pelosi that he no longer had confidence in Linick’s ability to serve, although he did not give the reason for his loss of confidence.
“This is to advise that I am exercising my power as president to remove from office the inspector general of the Department of State, effective 30 days from today,” Trump said.
Photo: Reuters
The letter did not say who would replace Linick, who was appointed to the role in 2013 under the administration of then-US president Barack Obama and is the latest in a string of government watchdogs to be removed in the past several weeks.
However, the department said that he would be replaced by Office of Foreign Missions Director Stephen Akard.
“On Sept. 11, 2019, Ambassador Akard was confirmed by the [US] Senate, 90-2, to lead the department’s Office of Foreign Missions and we look forward to him leading the Office of the Inspector General,” a department representative told the media.
Democratic lawmakers condemned Linick’s removal, with Eliot Engel, the Democratic chairman of the US House Committee on Foreign Affairs, suggesting that it was connected to a probe that Linick had opened into US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
“I have learned that the Office of the Inspector General had opened an investigation into Secretary Pompeo,” Engel said in a statement.
Pelosi described Linick’s ousting as an acceleration of a “dangerous pattern of retaliation” from Trump.
The department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Last month, Trump removed a top coronavirus watchdog, Glenn Fine, who was to oversee the government’s COVID-19 financial relief response.
The president last month also notified the US Congress that he was firing then-US inspector general of the intelligence community Michael Atkinson, who was involved in triggering an impeachment probe of Trump last year.
Earlier this month, Trump ousted Christi Grimm, who led the US Department of Health and Human Services Office of the Inspector General, after accusing her of having produced a “fake dossier” on US hospitals suffering shortages on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic.
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