President Donald Trump’s abrupt firings of top watchdogs in charge of rooting out waste, fraud and corruption in the federal government violated the law, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said Wednesday.
Trump fired the inspector general of the U.S. Agency for International Development on Tuesday after his office released a scathing report on the administration’s efforts to dismantle the agency, including how it put nearly half a billion dollars of food assistance at risk of spoiling. The move followed Trump’s decision last month to axe 18 inspectors general in other federal agencies.
The administration is required under the law to provide 30 days’ notice to Congress before firing an inspector general and provide specific reasons for doing so. It did not do so.
Grassley, a longtime defender of inspectors general and their mission established by Congress after President Richard Nixon’s Watergate scandal, suggested he agreed with the firing of USAID inspector general Paul Martin, saying that he “wasn’t doing his job.”
But he said Trump needed to notify Congress before doing so.
“I’d like to alert the president to the fact that he can abide by the law and still get rid of the people he wants to get rid of,” Grassley said. “He can put them on administrative leave for 30 days and send us a letter.”
Asked by HuffPost if he planned to alert Trump himself, Grassley said, “I just did, by talking to you.”
Grassley wrote a letter to Trump asking for an explanation for his earlier firings of inspectors general but he still hasn’t received an answer. (The senator dined with the president at his Florida estate over the weekend, sharing a photo online.)
In a report on Monday, the USAID Office of Inspector General said the Trump administration’s shuttering of nearly all of USAID and its sweeping freeze on foreign assistance abroad led to widespread confusion and put aid shipments at risk.
“While initial guidance following the pause in foreign assistance funding provided a waiver for emergency food assistance, shipments of in-kind food assistance have been delayed around the world,” the report said.
“This uncertainty put more than $489 million of food assistance at ports, in transit, and in warehouses at risk of spoilage, unanticipated storage needs, and diversion,” it continued.
Republicans have broadly supported the Trump administration’s efforts to eliminate USAID despite their past support for the agency and the role it played countering the influence of adversaries like China and Russia in Africa and elsewhere around the globe.
“USAID is an agency that let us all down,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) told reporters on Tuesday, criticizing some of the agency’s spending initiatives.
In 2021, however, Graham called the agency “a force for good.” Many other Republicans, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump, have expressed similar praise for USAID in the past.
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Last week, a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to allow some USAID workers back onto the job until courts rule on the legality of the agency’s shuttering. But the administration has continued to block workers from the agency’s Washington headquarters, suggesting some of its space would occupied by officials from U.S. Customs and Border Protection instead.