Trump’s Dismissal of Competent Officials Is an Attack on Accountability

President Trump’s vengeful dismissal Friday of the intelligence community’s inspector general was part of a relentless campaign — waged even in the midst of the pandemic — against people and institutions that can hold him accountable.

Critics often describe Trump as disruptive, erratic and poorly focused. But in concentrating on these weaknesses, opponents understate Trump’s success in using power aggressively to reward his friends and hurt his enemies, perhaps more than any president since Lyndon B. Johnson.

Trump is even gutting the monitors who are providing accountability for the spending programs to combat the economic effects of the coronavirus. His latest move came Tuesday, when he sacked Glenn Fine, the acting Pentagon inspector general who had been chosen by his fellow IGs to lead a panel overseeing the $2 trillion pandemic bailout effort.

Trump’s campaign against accountability has been especially heavy-handed with the intelligence community. That culminated in Friday’s dismissal of Michael Atkinson, a highly regarded government career attorney who since 2018 had served as watchdog of the 17 agencies that report to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI).

Trump’s curt dismissal letter Friday said he lacked “the fullest confidence” in Atkinson. Trump didn’t explain his reasons for firing him, but Atkinson said later that he was ousted as revenge for “having faithfully discharged my legal obligations” in supporting a whistleblower’s charges about Ukraine that eventually led to Trump’s impeachment.