The Project On Government Oversight reports:

The top watchdogs for the Central Intelligence Agency and Office of the Director of National Intelligence are leaving their roles in the wake of former President Donald Trump’s re-election, sources tell the Project On Government Oversight (POGO) and their agencies confirm.

These departures come as unease has swept across the federal inspector general community, which anticipates the possibility of a purge of senior watchdog officials by the incoming Trump administration.

Appointed by the president and housed within executive agencies, inspectors general investigate waste, fraud, and abuse of power and are responsible for reporting wrongdoing both to agency directors and to Congress. Oversight by inspectors general has long been considered to be more important when both the executive branch and Congress are under control of the same political party.

One of the departing inspectors general, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s Thomas Monheim, first took his watchdog role after Trump fired his predecessor Michael Atkinson in the spring of 2020. Atkinson had transmitted a whistleblower complaint to Congress that sparked Trump’s first impeachment in 2019.

“It is hard not to think that the President’s loss of confidence in me derives from my having faithfully discharged my legal obligations as an independent and impartial Inspector General,” Atkinson said in a statement at the time.

Installing loyalists in key oversight positions was a recommendation of the conservative Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025. [Continue reading…]