Trump Proceeds With Post-Impeachment Purge Amid Pandemic – By Peter Baker (The New York Times) / April 5 2020
WASHINGTON — Remember the impeachment? President Donald Trump does. Even in the middle of a pandemic, he made clear on Saturday that he remained fixated on purging the government of those he believes betrayed him during the inquiry that led to his Senate trial.
The president’s under-cover-of-darkness decision late the night before to fire Michael Atkinson, the intelligence community’s inspector general who insisted last year on forwarding a whistleblower complaint to Congress, swept away one more official deemed insufficiently loyal as part of a larger purge that has already rid the administration of many key figures in the impeachment drama.
Trump made no effort at a news briefing Saturday to pretend that the dismissal was anything other than retribution for Atkinson’s action under a law requiring such complaints be disclosed to lawmakers. “I thought he did a terrible job, absolutely terrible,” Trump said. “He took a fake report and he brought it to Congress.” Capping a long, angry denunciation of the impeachment, he added, “The man is a disgrace to IGs. He’s a total disgrace.”
Trump’s hunt for informers and turncoats proceeds even while most Americans are focused on the coronavirus outbreak that has killed thousands and shut down most of the country. The president’s determination to wipe out perceived treachery underscores his intense distrust of the government that he oversees at a time when he is relying on career public health and emergency management officials to help guide him through one of the most dangerous periods in modern American history.
“It was a Friday Night Massacre, a purely vindictive decision with no apparent purpose other than punishing the inspector general for doing his job,” said Chris Whipple, author of “The Spymasters,” a coming history of CIA directors to be published in September. “What’s next? Unmasking the whistleblower and hauling him into the dock? The signal here to the intelligence community is, do not dare tell the president what he doesn’t want to hear.”
At his briefing Saturday, Trump likewise endorsed the firing of Capt. Brett E. Crozier of the Navy, who was removed from command of the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt after sending his superiors a letter pleading for help for his virus-stricken crew. “He shouldn’t be talking that way in a letter,” the president said. “I thought it was terrible what he did.”
While appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate, inspectors general are government watchdogs traditionally granted a great deal of independence so that they can ferret out waste, fraud and other misconduct in government agencies without fear of reprisal.
But Trump has demonstrated repeatedly that he has little regard for the positions, which were created by Congress after Watergate to increase government accountability, and expects executive branch officials to serve his interests.
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