Exclusive-USDA inspector general escorted out of her office after defying White House

Source: Reuters via Yahoo News

Date: January 30, 2025

By Rachael Levy

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Security agents escorted the inspector general of the U.S. Department of Agriculture out of her office on Monday after she refused to comply with her firing by the Trump administration, sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.

Phyllis Fong, a 22-year veteran of the department, had earlier told colleagues that she intended to stay after the White House terminated her Friday, saying that she didn’t believe the administration had followed proper protocols, the sources said.

In an email to colleagues on Saturday, reviewed by Reuters, she said the independent Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency “has taken the position that these termination notices do not comply with the requirements set out in law and therefore are not effective at this time.”

Fong declined to comment and the Office of the Inspector General did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

After this article was published, a USDA spokesperson said Fong left the office Monday on her own accord.

"She was accompanied by two friends who she paused to take selfies with on her way out. Security officials did not play any role in her departure,” the spokesperson said.

The White House defended the firing of Fong and the other inspectors general, saying "these rogue, partisan bureaucrats... have been relieved of their duties in order to make room for qualified individuals who will uphold the rule of law and protect Democracy."

The USDA inspector general has a broad mandate, pursuing consumer food safety, audits and investigations of the Agriculture Department as well as violations of animal welfare laws. The USDA has been at the heart of concerns about bird flu, which has spread among cattle and chickens and killed a person in Louisiana.

In 2022, the inspector general’s office launched an investigation of Elon Musk’s brain implant startup Neuralink, which remains ongoing, sources said. In recent years, the office has also taken on animal abuse at dog breeders for research labs and the listeria outbreak at Boar’s Head, among other issues.

Musk spent more than a quarter of a billion dollars to help President Donald Trump get elected in November and has emerged as a key player in the president’s orbit.

Fong was among the 17 federal watchdogs fired by Trump on Friday in what critics described as a Friday-night purge. Speaking to reporters afterwards aboard Air Force One, Trump defended the move saying "it’s a very common thing to do." He did not say who would be installed in the vacant posts.

The dismissals, handed out less than a week after Trump took office for his second term, appeared to violate federal law, the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency said in a letter to the White House on Friday.

Fong served as the first chairperson of CIGIE from 2008 through 2014, according to her biography on USDA’s website.

In response to the Reuters story, Senator Mazie Hirono criticized Trump's firing of the watchdogs.

"Egg prices are soaring. Bird flu is out of control. USDA should be fixing this problem. Instead, Trump is stacking the federal government with yes-men. He doesn’t care about your grocery prices," she wrote on X.

President Trump fired more than a dozen inspectors general in a Friday night massacre that threatens to neutralize the independent oversight performed by these good government watchdogs.

Among a dizzying first week of actions, these terminations stood out for their deviation from a longstanding bipartisan consensus on retaining inspectors general after elections. Trump did not comply with congressional notice requirements, and the move was apparently inconsistent with his administration’s stated interest in efficiency.

Congress must hold Trump accountable for these personnel decisions and take steps to maintain inspectors generals’ abilities to monitor the government’s honesty and efficiency.

Federal inspectors general and their staff serve the critical function of detecting and preventing fraud, waste and abuse by conducting impartial investigations and audits of departments and agencies. They are highly effective.

In fiscal 2023, federal inspector general oversight resulted in $93 billion in savings, more than 4,000 criminal prosecutions and more than 7,000 noncriminal actions. Yet inspectors general are also susceptible to attack due to their scrutiny of executive branch wrongdoing and failures.

Unlike political appointees, inspectors general remain in place after elections. No president had removed an inspector general during a transition since Reagan. Speaking on Reagan’s removals, Rep. L.H. Fountain (D-N.C.), a chief sponsor of the Inspector General Act, said “it was never intended” for inspectors general to “be automatically replaced on a wholesale basis without regard to their individual merits whenever there is a change in administrations.”

Retention became the norm regardless of party. This norm was reflective of the inspector general’s political role, which persisted for decades until last week.

Inspector general removals outside of presidential transitions have also been rare. During his first term, Trump fired two inspectors general and replaced three acting inspectors general for reasons that appeared to be retaliatory or to subvert oversight.

Members of Congress responded by proposing legislative action to protect inspector general independence from adverse actions. These proposals included removal for cause protection that would have restricted presidential removal of inspectors general to specific grounds set forth in the law.

At the time, I argued that inspector general removals for cause were necessary legal protection to prevent future abuses and that the policy was constitutional under the Supreme Court’s “inferior officer” exception to the presidential removal power. However, Congress did not enact removal protection.

Instead, in 2022, legislators added to a 30-day advance notice provision, requiring the president to provide Congress with a “substantive rationale, including detailed and case-specific reasons” for any inspector general removal action.