President Donald Trump’s firings of independent government watchdogs will have a lasting impact, Clark Kent Ervin, the first Homeland Security Inspector General and a former State Department Inspector General during the George W. Bush presidency, believes.
“It is certainly troubling. There is no question about that,” Ervin told SiriusXM's Dan Abrams, about the ouster of State Department IG Steve Linick, reports Law & Crime.
Linick was fired while reportedly investigating Secretary of State Mike Pompeo over his treatment of a staffer and Trump's sale of arms to Saudi Arabia.
Ervin pointed out that Congress has "vast powers at its disposal" and can take action that would counter Trump's moves.
"The Congress has appropriations power," he said. "The Congress has — the Senate has nominations power, the power to hold up nominations. And so there are a number of things that members of Congress in both parties can do if a bipartisan consensus is formed as to the importance of protecting inspectors general. So I hope that that’s what we’ll see."
Ervin also said he is worried that the inspectors' general mission is compromised by Trump's actions.
“These kinds of moves I’m afraid will have a chilling effect that will dissuade inspectors general from carrying out their statutory mandate," he said. "That’s the short-term and that’s the long-term implication of this."
Ervin also pointed out that even though he supported Bush's elections in 2000 and 2004, he was still able to separate private politics from his duties as a watchdog.
"In carrying out the role of inspector general at both of those agencies, I conducted such audits and such investigations as I thought needed to be conducted and irrespective of what the political consequences were," said Ervin.
In addition to firing Linick, Trump also fired IG Michael Atkinson, who found the Ukraine whistleblower's complaint against him was "credible and urgent; Health and Human Services Principal Deputy IG Christi Grimm during the coronavirus pandemic, after she reported on widespread shortages of personal protective equipment; and Department of Defense IG Glenn Fine, who had been named the chair of the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
© 2026 Newsmax. All rights reserved.