Republicans have been struggling to defend President Donald Trump’s crusade against administration inspectors general, a tactic to shut down independent scrutiny that the GOP undoubtedly would have decried under a Democratic White House. And on Monday, Trump admitted that he knew nothing of the reasoning behind his latest firing, completely blowing up the defense given just the day before by Republican Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin.
In an interview on Sunday, Johnson had defended Trump’s right to fire inspectors general. It’s important for inspectors general to have independence from the departments they investigate — in the case of the recently fired IG Steve Linick, the State Department — but not from the president, he said.
“I think their independence needs to remain within their agencies,” Johnson said. “They work and serve the president of the United States. So I take a slightly different view in terms of what they should be independent from. They need to retain their independence within the agencies, so they can do inspections and investigations and provide that to their leadership, but primarily to the president.” Continue reading.