When it was first reported this past weekend that Donald Trump continued his ongoing purge of government watchdogs by axing the State Department inspector general, the initial explanation was that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was being investigated for using government employees to run personal errands.
But frankly, misusing taxpayer funds is practically a Trump administration right of passage. Sure, it's an ethical violation that in any other administration would be immediate cause for termination. But the idea that longtime State Department inspector general Steve Linick got the ax for probing a Pompeo dog walking and errand runner scandal seemed a little outlandish. So the natural question was, what was the real reason Linick got fired?
Rep. Eliot Engel, chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, may have found a better answer for Linick's abrupt ouster, according to the Washington Post's Greg Sargent.
“I have learned that there may be another reason for Mr. Linick’s firing,” New York democratic Rep. Engel, the chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, said in a statement to the Post. “His office was investigating—at my request—Trump’s phony declaration of an emergency so he could send weapons to Saudi Arabia.”
Ah, okay, arms sales sounds more like it. Also, not just Pompeo, Trump too. Of course. Specifically, Trump made an emergency declaration in 2019 that allowed him to push through an $8 billion arms sale to Saudi Arabia before Congress could formally object to the deal. Congress ultimately voted to block the sale, but Trump vetoed the legislation. That's when Engel requested the inquiry into the deal, which also involved a former State Department official who had previous ties to a company involved in the transaction.
According to Democrats on the committee, State Department officials had just learned of the inspector general's conclusions in that probe, though no direct link between Linick's firing and the arms sales investigation has been confirmed. But Engel's committee has opened a query into the matter in coordination with Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
“We don’t have the full picture yet, but it’s troubling that Secretary Pompeo wanted Mr. Linick pushed out before this work could be completed,” Engel said in the statement. They have requested that the White House and State Department preserve any documents that could be material to that investigation.
But if there's one thing we know about Trump's malfeasance, initial reports always reveal the tip of what inevitably turns out to be a gigantic iceberg lurking just below the surface. No reason to think this time will be any different.
