The Hill reports:

President Trump has nominated a former White House official and Project 2025 author to be the Interior Department’s internal watchdog, a move that critics say could hurt the integrity of the office’s investigations.

Trump nominated Dennis Kirk, one of the authors of a chapter of the conservative policy playbook and a former official in the White House Office of Personnel Management during the first Trump administration, to be the department’s inspector general.

Mark Greenblatt, a former inspector general (IG) of the department, recently told The Hill that having someone with clear political leanings in the role of independent watchdog was unprecedented and could hamper investigations and compromise whistleblowers.

“You have whistleblowers who come to the Office of Inspector General to make complaints, including complaints about senior political officials and sensitive political programs, and their names and identities are supposed to be kept confidential,” said Greenblatt, who was ousted during a Trump administration purge of inspectors general last year.

“But if you have an administration mole in the office, all of a sudden, does that information become fair game to the administration?” he added.

In a follow-up text after the nomination was announced, Greenblatt said “the chilling effect on whistleblowers is real. Who would jeopardize their careers by submitting a complaint about an administration official to an IG who is avowedly aligned with the administration?” [Continue reading…]