President Donald Trump has fired from his post Acting Defense Dept. Inspector General Glenn Fine, an attorney who has been described over the years as “worthy and respected,” “widely-respected,” and “a model inspector general.”
Trump had indicated in a signing statement he would not comply with a portion of the $2 trillion CARES ACT that requires an existing Inspector General to oversee an emergency coronavirus fund – including the $500 billion bailout fund Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin controls. Today’s move allows Trump to put in place an IG who will be expected to do the President’s bidding.
“A panel of inspectors general had named Glenn Fine — the acting Pentagon watchdog — to lead the group charged with monitoring the coronavirus relief effort,” Politico reports. “But Trump on Monday removed Fine from his post, instead naming an EPA inspector general to serve as the temporary Pentagon watchdog.”
Fine was to head the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee, which CNBC described as “a body created to oversee the roughly $2 trillion stimulus deal that President Donald Trump signed into law last week in response to the economic devastation wrought by the coronavirus outbreak.”
His job as chair was “to prevent waste, fraud, and abuse” of those funds.
Inside Defense reports Fine “will revert to his position as principal deputy inspector general, while Sean O’Donnell, the Environmental Protection Agency’s inspector general, will serve as the acting DOD IG in addition to his current duties at EPA.”
Those moves allow Trump to nominate “Jason Abend, who currently serves as senior policy advisor at United States Customs and Border Protection, to be the new DOD IG.”
“Glenn Fine is one of the most experienced and respected IGs,” former Wisconsin Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill said, responding to the news. “His service goes back many years, for both parties. Not a partisan bone in his body.”
In fact, Fine from 2000 to 2011 Fine served as Inspector General of the Department of Justice, first under President Bill Clinton, then under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. He moved to the private sector, then returned to the Obama administration in 2016 as Acting Inspector General of the Department of Defense.
Fine has also served as an Asst. U.S. Attorney and served as Special Counsel to the Dept. of Justice Inspector General.
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