Trump Pulls Inspector General Who Was Overseeing That $2T

President Trump has removed the inspector general who was tapped to chair a special oversight board of the $2.2 trillion economic package intended to help businesses and individuals affected by the coronavirus, officials said Tuesday. Glenn Fine, the acting Defense Department inspector general and a veteran watchdog, had been selected by a panel of inspectors general last month for the oversight position, reports the AP. Now it’s unclear who will oversee the rescue law. The move threatens to upend the rigorous oversight that Democrats in Congress had demanded of the huge sums of money being pumped into the American economy because of the virus.

The action follows Trump's firing of the intelligence community’s inspector general, Michael Atkinson, on Friday (Atkinson had alerted Congress to an intel official's complaint about Trump's July 25 phone call to the Ukrainian president). Politico notes the president has also been publicly critical of Health and Human Services Inspector General Christi Grimm following her office's release of a report about COVID-19 testing holdups and supply shortages in the US. (Here's what Atkinson has to say about Trump.)