It was almost the weekend when the US president kicked the head of an internal control agency out of his post. The Democrats see a striking pattern in the incident – and want to investigate.
Senior Democrats in the US Congress want President Dismissal of the U.S. State Department’s internal overseer Donald Trump get to the bottom. They sense a politically motivated action, according to a statement by the chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the House of Representatives, Eliot Engel, and Bob Menendez, member of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the Senate, on Saturday.
The Politico news portal and CNN had reported on Saturday night, the republican Trump has the head of the House of Representatives, the democrat Nancy Pelosi, informed about the dismissal of the chief of the internal control authority.
Engel sees an “unlawful act of retribution”
Committee chairman Engel accused Trump of wanting to protect Steve Linick’s “one of his most loyal supporters”: foreign ministers Mike Pompeo. Such a measure “would undermine the foundation of our democratic institutions,” said Engel and Menendez.
Engel said he had learned that Linick’s office had launched an investigation into Pompeo. “The dismissal of Mr. Linick in the midst of such an investigation strongly suggests that this is an illegal act of retaliation.” Engel made no statements about what allegations against Pompeo could be.
CNN and NBC, citing a Democratic source, reported that Linick had investigated whether Pompeo had an employee take care of personal matters for himself and his wife.
Pelosi criticized the fact that the release, announced in the middle of the night, was in a dangerous pattern of retaliation against officials who did their oversight of the authorities. According to CNN, Linick played a role in the impeachment proceedings against Trump, which was, however, relatively small. The House of Representatives, dominated by the Democrats, had accused Trump, among other things, of investigating the Ukrainian government against his democratic rival Joe Biden to have pushed. In February, Trump was acquitted of the majority of his Republicans in the U.S. Senate during the trial.
Certain parallels are striking
A Washington Post report reinforced the impression that there have been striking parallels to a number of layoffs recently: Trump had fired Inspector General of Intelligence Michael Atkinson last month. The removal was also announced late on a Friday.
It was similar in the case of the managing inspector general in the Ministry of Health, Christi Grimm, as the newspaper’s presentation shows. The Washington Post headlined the overview with the words: “Trump’s Friday night slow-motion massacre by inspectors general”.
Atkinson played a pivotal role in that Ukraine affair to get rolling that led to the impeachment process. According to Trump’s acquittal, a National Security Council expert in the White House, Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, and the US ambassador were also at the EU, Gordon Sondland, have been released from their duties. Both had testified against the president in Congress after being summoned to pay a fine.
That is what the Democrats are demanding
Democrats Engel and Menendez each wrote letters to the White House, the State Department and Linick to provide the committees with records and information related to Linick’s release by Friday (May 22).
They explicitly requested access to records of all of the Inspector General’s inquiries relating to the Secretary of State’s office that were open or unfinished at the time Linick was released. They also requested information about the suitability of Stephen Akard, who is now to fill the post, and who, according to Politico, is a confidante of the vice president Mike Pence acts.
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