Quotes
We're looking at what amounts to a threat to democracy, a threat to independent oversight and a threat to transparency in government. This is no doubt. The statute isn't just a technicality, it's a key protection of IG independence is what it is,
Ware told MSNBC’s "Ana Cabrera Reports" back in January Your actions violate the law, attack our democracy, and undermine the safety of the American people,
The whole construct of inspectors general, it’s based on us being independent, that we’re not beholden to a political party of any stripe, that we are there as the taxpayers’ representatives to call balls and strikes without any dog in the fight. And so the question is: what will President Trump do with these positions? Is he going to nominate watchdogs or is he going to nominate lapdogs
This is not about any of our individual jobs. We acknowledge that the president has the right to remove any of us that he chooses. But the protections that were baked into the act is everything, absent having to provide a real reason. We’re looking at what amounts to a threat to democracy, a threat to independent oversight, and a threat to transparency in government.”
Hannibal “Mike” Ware, one of the plaintiffs in Wednesday’s lawsuit and the former inspector general for the Small Business Administration, told MSNBC last month Despite the obvious illegality of these purported terminations, the head of each affected agency – including the eight heads of plaintiffs’ respective agencies – effectuated and continue to effectuate the purported removals.”
Instead, President Trump falsely claimed after the fact that such removals were ‘a very common thing to do’ and ‘a very standard thing to do’,
The purported firings violated unambiguous federal statutes—each enacted by bipartisan majorities in Congress and signed into law by the President—to protect Inspectors General from precisely this sort of interference with the discharge of their critical, non-partisan oversight duties,
In this action, the duly appointed Inspectors General of eight major U.S. agencies— the Departments of Defense, Veterans Affairs, Health and Human Services, State, Agriculture, Education, and Labor, and the Small Business Administration—seek redress for their unlawful and unjustified purported termination by President Donald Trump and their respective agency heads,
their complaint, which was filed in Washington, D.C. federal court, said The firing of the independent nonpartisan inspectors general was a clear violation of the law,
said Michael Missal, who Trump removed as the top watchdog for the Department of Veterans Affairs
