Donald Trump Planned to Fire and Replace Every Inspector General in the Government

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The House Oversight Committee has gotten hold of an email confirming a Washington Post story about Donald Trump’s plan to fire and replace all the Inspectors General of every government agency. Luckily, the committee leadership has dug deep into this and confirmed that it’s nothing to worry about:

House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) said that the White House had told him the phone calls to inspectors general were a “mistake” and the work of a “junior person.” The inspectors general were later told to disregard the initial calls.

“I want to let you know that I’ve spoken with the general counsel at the White House on this topic,” Chaffetz said. “I think it’s safe to say that was a mistake, they wish it hadn’t happened, it’s not their approach, it’s not their intention.

If only Hillary Clinton had done this! It turns out that all you have to do if Congress is investigating you for some kind of misdeed is admit you made a mistake and say that it wasn’t your intention to do anything wrong. Just think how much trouble we could have saved ourselves if only Hillary had known this.

So who was the “junior person” who ordered this purge? In a display of generosity, Chaffetz blacked out the name. No need to publicly humiliate whatever poor intern made this mistake, I suppose. Right?

A person familiar with the email said that the other person is Justin Clark, a Republican lawyer from West Hartford, Conn., who was deputy national political director of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and who has been named deputy assistant to the president and the White House director of intergovernmental affairs.

Welcome to life in the Democratic People’s Republic of America.

DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

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DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And we need your support like never before, to fight back against the existential threats American democracy faces. Fundraising for nonprofit media is always a challenge, and we need all hands on deck right now. We have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

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