Coronavirus taking its toll on Donald Trump’s men at the top

Donald Trump is moving aggressively to challenge the authority and independence of agency watchdogs overseeing his administration.

Acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly has resigned. Picture: AFP

Donald Trump is moving aggressively to challenge the authority and independence of agency watchdogs overseeing his administration, including removing the inspector general tasked with overseeing the $2.2 trillion coronavirus rescue package.

In four days, the US President has sacked one inspector general tied to his impeachment, castigated another he felt was overly critical of the coronavirus response and sidelined a third meant to safeguard against wasteful spending of the coronavirus funds.

On top of that, the acting Navy Secretary resigned on Wednesday AEST after an uproar over his verbal­ attack on the former captain of the virus-stricken aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt.

All these actions have sent shockwaves across the close-knit network of watchdog officials in government, creating open conflict­ between a President reflex­ively resistant to outside criticism and an oversight community tasked with rooting out fraud, misconduct and abuse.

The most recent act threatens to up-end scrutiny of the $2.2 trillion coronavirus rescue effort now under way, setting the stage for a major clash between Mr Trump, government watchdogs and Democrats who are demanding oversight of the vast funds being pumped into the American economy.

The latest broadside came on Wednesday, when the Defence Department revealed Mr Trump had removed acting inspector general Glenn Fine, an experienced officia­l, from his role as head of a coronavirus spending oversight board.

Mr Trump shed little light on the decision, saying he didn’t know Mr Fine, but had “heard the name”.

A day earlier, he had asserted without evidence that an inspector general report warning of short­age­s of coronavirus testing in hospitals was “just wrong” and skewed by political bias. The report surveyed more than 300 US hospitals.

“Did I hear the word inspector general? Really?” Mr Trump said when pressed about the Health and Human Services watchdog report.

“Give me the name of the inspector­ general,” he demanded, before asking: “Could politics be entered into that?”

Most dramatic of all was Friday­’s late-night sacking of Michael­ Atkinson, the intelligence community inspector general who drew the President’s disdain for notifying congress of an anonymous whistleblower complaint on Ukraine. The complaint led to the President’s impeachment.

Mr Trump defended the firing by complaining that Mr Atkinson had never spoken with him about the complaint, even though Mr Atkinson­’s job is to provide oversight independent of the White House.

The dismissal prompted a sharply worded statement from Justice Department watchdog ­Michael Horowitz, who chairs a council of agency inspectors genera­l. Mr Horowitz called Mr ­Atkinson’s handling of the whistleblower complaint an example of “integrity, professionalism, and commitment to the rule of law”.

Meanwhile, Navy Secretary Thomas Modly had already been under pressure to resign after an extraordinary chain of events over the past two weeks as the navy and the military scramble to respond to the COVID-19 crisis, with more than 1500 infected members across the armed services.

Mr Modly resigned after telling the crew of the Roosevelt this week that its former captain, Brett Crozier, “was either too naive or too stupid to be a commanding ­officer of a ship like this”.

His resignation capped a month in which sailors on the ship were stricken by the coronavirus at sea. With the virus rapidly spreading among the crew, Captain­ Crozier distributed a memo demanding support getting the sailors off the carrier.

After the memo was leaked to news organisations, Mr Modly reliev­ed him of duty, saying Captai­n Crozier went outside the navy’s chain of command.

Mr Modly then took the unusual step over the weekend of travelling to the carrier, which is now at port in Guam, and addressing the crew over the ship’s loudspeakers, angrily and sometimes profanely criticising the former commander. That move fuelled widespread anger on the ship, at the Pentagon and on Capitol Hill.

AP, The Wall Street Journal