The Inspector General Purge: How You Blind the Watchdogs
On a single Friday night in January 2025, 17 inspectors general were fired. By October, 75% of IG positions sat vacant. This article traces the systematic dismantling of the federal oversight architecture—the internal watchdogs whose job was to prevent exactly the abuses now documented weekly—and what it means to govern without accountability.
Analytical Frame: Horizontal Accountability and Executive Aggrandizement
Comparative-democracy scholarship often distinguishes between vertical accountability (elections) and horizontal accountability (the internal checks embedded inside the state itself: courts, oversight offices, auditors, inspectors general, independent regulators). Guillermo O’Donnell’s work on horizontal accountability is especially relevant here: when executives neutralize watchdog institutions, the state’s ability to detect and correct abuses collapses even if elections still occur.
This pattern also fits Nancy Bermeo’s concept of executive aggrandizement: democracies can be hollowed out not only by dramatic coups, but by incremental moves that degrade oversight, weaken constraints, and normalize the idea that legality is optional. Levitsky & Ziblatt’s “referees” frame points to the same mechanism: when the institutions that enforce rules (auditors, courts, inspectors general, independent agencies) are attacked, the game continues—but the rulebook becomes symbolic.
In civil-military terms, this kind of oversight dismantling also functions as coup-proofing for the executive: leaders who anticipate legal, bureaucratic, or professional resistance often begin by removing the internal monitors who would document misconduct, preserve paper trails, or trigger congressional scrutiny.
What Inspectors General Do
Inspectors general are the federal government's internal auditors—independent officials embedded in each major agency whose job is to identify waste, fraud, and abuse. They are, as one description puts it, the "eyes and ears" of the public within the executive branch.
The modern IG system was created by the Inspector General Act of 1978, passed in the wake of Watergate. Congress recognized that executive agencies couldn't be trusted to police themselves. Independent watchdogs with statutory protections were necessary to ensure that when things went wrong, someone would notice and report.
IGs don't take orders from agency heads. They report to Congress as well as the executive. They can investigate anything within their agency's purview. Their independence is the entire point—oversight that can be controlled by the people being overseen isn't oversight at all.
For nearly fifty years, this system worked. IGs uncovered fraud, waste, and abuse across administrations of both parties. They provided the institutional mechanism for accountability that democratic governance requires.
Then came January 2025.
The Friday Night Purge
On a single Friday night in January 2025, at least 17 inspectors general were fired—often via late-night emails citing only "changing priorities."
This wasn't a gradual reorganization. It was a decapitation strike against the oversight architecture of the federal government. In one coordinated action, the administration eliminated the watchdogs at Defense, State, Health and Human Services, Veterans Affairs, Transportation, and other major agencies.
Among those fired was Mark Lee Greenblatt, the Interior Department's inspector general—who had been appointed by Trump himself in 2019. Loyalty to the administration provided no protection. The criterion wasn't partisan alignment; it was the capacity for independent oversight itself.
The firings violated the Securing Inspector General Independence Act of 2022, which Congress passed specifically to prevent this scenario. The Act requires 30-day advance notice to Congress and a detailed rationale for any IG removal. The administration provided neither. The law was simply ignored.
The Legal Aftermath
On September 24, 2025, Federal Judge Ana C. Reyes ruled that the firings were unlawful. The administration had violated the statutory requirements for IG removal.
But Judge Reyes declined to reinstate the fired officials.
This pattern—courts declaring executive action illegal while declining to reverse it—has become characteristic. The judiciary can pronounce the law; it cannot make the executive obey. When the administration ignores procedural requirements and dares courts to do something about it, courts discover the limits of their power.
The fired IGs stayed fired. The vacancies remained unfilled. By October 2025, over 75% of presidentially appointed inspector general positions were vacant.
Three-quarters of the federal government's internal watchdogs—gone.
The Neuralink Connection
Some firings had identifiable triggers. Phyllis Fong, the USDA inspector general, was conducting an investigation into Neuralink, Elon Musk's brain implant company. The investigation focused on alleged mistreatment and euthanasia of test monkeys used in the company's experiments.
Musk had become one of the administration's most prominent supporters and advisors. The IG investigating his company was fired.
No replacement was named. The investigation was halted.
This is what IG removal enables: the protection of political allies from accountability. When oversight can be eliminated by firing the overseers, investigations become optional—dependent on whether the targets have the right connections.
The 2020 Precedent
The January 2025 purge had precedent. During the first term, five inspectors general were removed within a six-week period in 2020:
| Official | Agency | Context |
|---|---|---|
| Michael Atkinson | Intelligence Community | Oversaw the whistleblower complaint that led to the first impeachment |
| Steve Linick | State Department | Investigating Secretary Pompeo for personal misuse of office resources |
| Christi Grimm | HHS (demoted) | Published report on hospital supply shortages during COVID |
| Glenn Fine | Defense (removed from pandemic oversight) | Would have overseen $2 trillion in pandemic spending |
| Mitch Behm | Transportation (demoted) | Various investigations |
The pattern was clear: IGs who uncovered inconvenient facts were removed. The Atkinson firing was particularly consequential—he was dismissed for doing exactly what the law required: receiving a whistleblower complaint and transmitting it to Congress. His removal sent a message to every IG in government: following the law offers no protection.
These 2020 firings prompted Congress to pass the Securing Inspector General Independence Act, attempting to prevent future purges through procedural requirements.
The January 2025 purge demonstrated that procedural requirements mean nothing when the executive decides to ignore them.
The Independent Agency Attack
The IG purge was part of a broader assault on oversight architecture. On February 18, 2025, Executive Order 14215 targeted independent regulatory agencies—the FTC, SEC, FCC, and others.
The order required these supposedly independent agencies to submit proposed regulations to White House review. It prohibited agency lawyers from advancing legal interpretations that contradicted the president's positions. It effectively subordinated agencies that Congress had deliberately structured to be insulated from presidential control.
OMB Director Russell Vought articulated the philosophy explicitly: "There are no independent agencies... the whole notion of an independent agency should be thrown out."
This isn't a legal argument. It's a declaration that statutory independence is illegitimate—that Congress cannot create agencies the president doesn't fully control, regardless of what Congress enacted.
Combined with the IG purge, the pattern is clear: every mechanism designed to provide oversight of executive action is being dismantled. Not reformed, not reorganized—eliminated.
What Vacancy Means
What happens when 75% of inspector general positions sit vacant?
Investigations don't happen. Fraud goes undetected. Waste continues. Abuse flourishes. The agencies that spend trillions of taxpayer dollars operate without anyone checking whether that money is spent lawfully or effectively.
Whistleblowers have nowhere to go. The IG system provides protected channels for employees to report wrongdoing. Without IGs, potential whistleblowers face a choice: stay silent or go public without protection—and face retaliation.
Deterrence disappears. Officials who might hesitate before misconduct if they knew an IG was watching have no such hesitation when no one is watching. The mere existence of oversight changes behavior. Its absence changes behavior too.
Congress loses visibility. IGs report to Congress as well as the executive. They provide the institutional knowledge and investigative capacity that congressional oversight committees depend on. Without IGs, Congress learns about agency problems only when they become scandals—too late for prevention.
The Self-Dealing Problem
One function of inspectors general is investigating conflicts of interest—situations where officials use public power for private benefit.
When IGs are gone, who investigates self-dealing?
Consider: a major political supporter has a company under federal investigation. The IG conducting that investigation is fired. No replacement is named. The investigation stops.
This isn't a hypothetical. It's what happened with the Neuralink investigation.
Now multiply this across every agency with procurement authority, regulatory power, or enforcement discretion. Every decision that could benefit or harm private interests is now made without independent oversight.
The opportunities for corruption are unlimited. The mechanisms for detecting corruption have been eliminated. This is not accidental.
The Accountability Paradox
Inspectors general were created because of Watergate—because an administration that faced no internal oversight committed crimes until external pressure (journalism, congressional investigation, judicial process) forced accountability.
The lesson of Watergate was supposed to be that internal watchdogs prevent the scandals that destroy administrations. IGs serve the executive's long-term interest by catching problems before they metastasize.
But this assumes the executive wants problems caught. It assumes the administration views accountability as valuable rather than threatening.
An administration that intends to operate outside legal constraints has different incentives. Oversight doesn't prevent scandals if you don't care about scandals. Watchdogs don't help if you're the one doing things that watchdogs would report.
The IG purge makes sense only if you intend to do things that IGs would expose.
The Law-Free Zone
Legal scholars have described the result as a "law-free zone"—spaces where misconduct can flourish without risk of exposure or consequence.
In a functioning oversight system, wrongdoing faces layers of potential detection: IGs investigate internally, courts review externally, Congress exercises oversight, and the press provides public accountability. Each layer reinforces the others.
Remove one layer and the others compensate. Remove multiple layers simultaneously and the system collapses.
The IG purge removed internal oversight. Court defiance (documented in the previous article) neutralized judicial review. Congressional oversight has been stymied by executive privilege claims and witness intimidation. Independent journalism faces legal threats and access restrictions.
Every layer is degraded. The law-free zone expands.
What Would Restoration Require?
Restoring the inspector general system would require either executive reversal or congressional enforcement.
Executive reversal would mean a future administration recommitting to oversight norms—filling vacancies, respecting IG independence, following statutory procedures. This is possible but depends on electoral outcomes and the willingness of a successor to restore what was dismantled.
Congressional enforcement would mean new legislation with stronger protections—perhaps automatic funding for IGs that can't be cut, or removal procedures that don't depend on executive compliance. But any such legislation would need to overcome veto and survive constitutional challenge. An administration that ignores existing IG protection statutes would likely ignore new ones.
The deeper problem is structural: oversight depends on the overseen choosing to submit to oversight. When the executive decides that oversight is illegitimate, no statutory mechanism can force compliance. The system worked because presidents believed in it—or at least believed the political costs of dismantling it were too high.
Those beliefs have changed. The costs turned out to be bearable. The system didn't survive contact with an executive willing to simply ignore it.
Governing Without Accountability
What does it mean to govern without accountability?
It means no one knows what the government is doing. It means taxpayer money disappears without audit. It means abuses occur without investigation. It means whistleblowers are silenced and wrongdoing rewarded.
It means the executive branch operates as a black box—taking public resources and exercising public power with no mechanism for the public to know how either is used.
This is not a bug in the current arrangement. It's the point.
The administration that purged the inspectors general did so deliberately, knowing it was illegal, accepting the court ruling that confirmed illegality, and continuing anyway. The watchdogs weren't fired despite their oversight function. They were fired because of it.
To govern without accountability is to govern without constraint. And governing without constraint is the goal.
This is the eleventh article in a series examining democratic decline. The next article documents the "Friday Night Massacre" of February 2025—when the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and other senior military leaders were fired in a single night, and what it reveals about coup-proofing dynamics.