President Donald Trump has sent a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) informing her he was firing State Department Inspector General Steve Linick because he had “lost confidence” in him, a decision that caused no small number of Left-wing heads to explode.
In his letter, the president told Pelosi he “no longer” had the “fullest confidence” in Linick and promised to send a nominee to Capitol Hill soon. Shortly thereafter, the State Department announced that Amb. Stephen Akard, a career foreign service officer, would take over the inspector general’s office in the meantime.
Akard was chief of staff for the Indiana Economic Development Corporation when Vice President Mike Pence was governor of the state.
Linick was appointed by President Obama in 2013 but fell out of favor with the president over a role he played in the impeachment nonsense, PJ Media reports. Additionally, he was said to be investigating Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for alleged misuse of a political appointee to do personal tasks for he and his wife.
“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,” Pelosi said in an statement, according to Politico. “Inspector General Linick was punished for honorably performing his duty to protect the Constitution and our national security, as required by the law and by his oath.”
Blah, blah, blah.
Meanwhile, Rep. Eliot L. Engel (D-N.Y.), chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, called Linick’s dismissal an “outrageous act of a president trying to protect one of his most loyal supporters, the secretary of State, from accountability.”
Right. Because only Democrat presidents can fire people who might seek to undermine them or drive them from office, depriving the people of their presidential choice.
“Another late Friday night attack on independence, accountability, and career officials,” Sen. Bob Menendez from the broke, failing, overtaxed state of New Jersey tweeted. “At this point, the president’s paralyzing fear of any oversight is undeniable.”
And while Democrats will likely try to tie Linick’s firing to the impeachment, it’ll be a very long stretch, as Politico noted:
Linick played a minor role in the House of Representatives’ impeachment proceedings against Trump, ferrying a trove of documents to lawmakers that had been provided to the State Department by Rudy Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer.
Still, it seems silly and is definitely unprecedented for a State Department IG to be investigating the secretary of state.
Even so, we must remember that President Trump has been under siege by deep state Obama loyalists for three years, so it could be he simply saw an opportunity to get rid of another of his predecessor’s politicized appointees and replace him with a Pence loyalist.
Politico adds:
Trump has removed a number of federal watchdogs in the last few months, including Health and Human Services Inspector General Christi Grimm, who issued a report critical of the administration’s response to the coronavirus pandemic; and the intelligence community’s inspector general, Michael Atkinson, whose handling of a whistleblower report ultimately led to Trump’s impeachment.
