During the late Friday evening news dump, President Donald Trump fired U.S. State Department Inspector General Steve Linick without the required 30-day notice to Congress and replaced him with Ambassador Stephen Akard, the director of the State Department’s Office of Foreign Missions.
Linick is the third inspector general Trump has fired since April, under the cover of the coronavirus epidemic, and the third to have exerted oversight that would’ve challenged and put a check on Trump’s power. While Trump will announce his official nominee to replace Linick in the coming days, his current replacement is generally regarded as unqualified for the last job Trump nominated him for.
Akard once served as then-Indiana Governor Mike Pence’s senior foreign affairs advisor. But Akard is perhaps best known on Capitol Hill as Trump’s failed October 2017 nominee as director general of the Foreign Service.
At the time, anonymous State Department officials referred to Akard as a “political pawn” and a “yes man” because Akard had only served eight years in the foreign service from 1997 to 2005 whereas the position normally went to highly distinguished ambassadors with decades of experience in the foreign service office. That’s because the job involves “heading human resources, running trainings and promotions, advising the secretary on management and personnel, and handling difficult internal conflicts and issues with U.S. ambassadors and diplomats abroad.”
So after officials and legislators criticized his lack of experience and his prior work under Pence, Akard withdrew his nomination in March 2018, but now he’s back, and as a temporary appointee, he requires no congressional scrutiny or approval.
Even more concerning is that Linick’s firing seems to follow a pattern of getting rid of watchdogs who’ve criticized Trump administration. Linkick was reportedly investigating Trump’s Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s “misuse of a political appointee at the Department to perform personal tasks for himself and Mrs. Pompeo” when he was fired — in fact, CNN Senior Congressional Correspondent Manu Raju said Pompeo actually made the call to fire Linick. Also, during the January 2020 impeachment proceedings against Trump, Linick gave House members documents that the president’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani had handed to the State Department.
In mid-April, Trump fired Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson after his handling of a 2019 whistleblower complaint alleged that the president had tried to extort Ukraine to start a corruption investigation into presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, former Vice President Mike Pence.
In early April, Trump removed acting Pentagon Inspector General Glenn Fine who was set to oversee the president’s management of a $2 trillion dollar coronavirus relief fund for American businesses.
“The President’s late-night, weekend firing of the State Department Inspector General has accelerated his dangerous pattern of retaliation against the patriotic public servants charged with conducting oversight on behalf of the American people,” wrote Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California in a statement issued Friday night.