On Tuesday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth declared that changes would be coming to the department’s inspector general office. Just hours earlier, the Office of Management and Budget effectively defunded an office that supports and trains oversight employees who root out waste, fraud, and abuse governmentwide.
Both moves raised red flags among bipartisan members of Congress and governmental oversight organizations who have been critical of President Donald Trump’s actions against inspectors general since he fired 17 of them during the first days of his second term.
“This is not the final step, but we’re getting close to the final steps of undoing the entire system of oversight within the executive branch,” said Andrew Bakaj, chief legal counsel for the nonprofit Whistleblower Aid.
Hegseth vs. his OIG
During his Tuesday speech to senior military leaders in Quantico, Virginia, Hegseth said that the IG process “has been weaponized, putting complainers, ideologues and poor performers in the driver’s seat.”
Hegseth, who inveighed against DOD’s equal opportunity and military equal opportunity programs, said that there would be: “No more frivolous complaints. No more anonymous complaints. No more repeat complainants. No more smearing reputations. No more endless waiting. No more legal limbo. No more sidetracking careers. No more walking on eggshells.”
Bakaj argued that the event, at which Trump also spoke, would deter people from whistleblowing.
“The atmosphere that was created in the meeting yesterday by the secretary of — still the secretary of Defense, Congress has not changed the name to secretary of War — the secretary of Defense and the president chilled the ability for anybody to come forward,” said Bakaj, who used to work in the DOD IG office.
In a memo released after his speech, Hegseth ordered the military secretaries to work with the department IG to make several changes to the IG investigation process including:
- Requiring an evaluation to be completed within seven days of receiving a complaint to assess its credibility before launching an investigation. Hegseth also directed the military departments to “explore the use of artificial intelligence with human oversight” to meet such a timeline.
- Updating the subject of a complaint, their commander and the complainant every 14 days on the investigation’s status.
- “Establish[ing] clear and enforceable procedures to identify and manage complainants who submit multiple complaints without credible evidence, that are frivolous or that knowingly include false information.”
Faith Williams, the director of the Effective and Accountable Government Program at the Project on Government Oversight, contended that the credibility assessment and regular updates could be beneficial, but the focus on repeat complainants stood out to her.
“It reinforced a tone that I had sort of picked up on throughout the memo, which is this assumption that the complaints and information that inspectors general were receiving are somehow false or malicious,” she said.
While noting that whistleblower retaliation has been an issue across administrations, Williams argued that the memo recasts how whistleblowers are portrayed.
“Whistleblowers perform a critical oversight role. They help report and prevent waste, fraud and abuse of power. And I think many prior administrations, many elected officials, would agree that they’re essential,” she said. “This [memo] puts whistleblowers, instead of in a more heroic position, into this more villainous position.”
In a Wednesday statement, Bakaj argued that the memo would enable “senior officials to dictate timelines and procedures from the top down” and lead to disclosures being “weaponized” against whistleblowers.
In speaking with Government Executive, Bakaj also cited one of his former clients as an example of how a repeat complainant can be valuable to an agency.
“She was fulfilling an audit role, looking at various contracts, and she had the unique perspective to be able to see when something was going wrong,” he said in an interview. “One of this individual’s last disclosures was, in fact, evidence, which ultimately became substantiated, of a multimillion dollar fraud committed by a contractor.”
Mark Greenblatt, who was IG at the Interior Department before Trump removed him as part of the mass firing in January, emphasized that IGs are themselves already subject to oversight from Congress and periodic review by other IG offices to ensure fairness.
“It’s hard for me to believe that IGs can kind of slip one past the goalie on a partisan basis when we have so many guardrails in place,” he said.
Hegseth is currently under evaluation by the DOD IG, at the request of Senate Armed Services Chairman Roger Wicker, R-Miss., and ranking member Jack Reed, D-R.I., over his use of Signal to discuss upcoming military operations in Yemen.
Withholding funding
OMB on Sept. 26 informed the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency that it would not be apportioned funding for fiscal 2026, according to a letter that Tammy Hull, the IG for the U.S. Postal Service and acting chair of CIGIE, sent to Congress.
Hull wrote that CIGIE’s work would not be affected by the ongoing shutdown because of how the agency is funded, but that OMB’s decision is forcing them to furlough 25 employees. She added that the disruption would interrupt congressionally authorized whistleblower hotlines, IG employee training and an oversight body that reviews allegations of wrongdoing against the watchdogs.
Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, a longtime IG defender, on Monday sent a letter to OMB Director Russell Vought urging him to “reverse course.”
“Effectively defunding CIGIE — contrary to congressional intent — will disrupt numerous important oversight functions, including the Oversight.gov website, whistleblower reporting portals and activities designed to ensure the inspectors general community is held accountable,” they wrote.
Grassley announced on Wednesday that OMB has since apportioned $5 million to the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee, a part of CIGIE that investigates fraud in COVID-19 pandemic spending and was extended until 2034 in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. He and Collins said in a statement that OMB should “promptly apportion funds for CIGIE as well.”
But the Trump administration does not seem to be inclined to do that.
“Inspectors general are meant to be impartial watchdogs identifying waste and corruption on behalf of the American people. Unfortunately, they have become corrupt, partisan and in some cases, have lied to the public,” an OMB spokesperson said in a statement to Government Executive. “The American people will no longer be funding this corruption.”
During his first term, Trump fired the IG whose notification to Congress led to his first impeachment.
As of Thursday morning, the the CIGIE website is down, as are those webpages of at least 15 agency OIGs that were hosted by CIGIE’s platform.
“Without [CIGIE’s] infrastructure, I fear that individual IGs will be isolated, their effectiveness diminished and their ability to protect taxpayer interests severely compromised,” Greenblatt said in a statement. “Defunding CIGIE eliminates the infrastructure that enables inspectors general to coordinate, share best practices and hold federal agencies accountable across government.”
Greenblatt, a former CIGIE chair, hypothesized that the entity’s effective defunding is due to its 2024 finding that Homeland Security Department inspector general Joseph Cuffari, who was appointed during Trump’s first term, abused his authority and engaged in substantial misconduct. But President Joe Biden took no disciplinary action against him, and Cuffari was spared during January’s mass firing.
“Make no mistake: this decision is not about budget efficiency nor streamlining government,” Greenblatt said in his statement. “Over the last few years, Cuffari and his minions have led a long-term and highly destructive campaign to undermine CIGIE and the IG community. I believe this is a direct outgrowth of that dishonest effort.”
Cuffari filed a lawsuit, which a federal judge dismissed in 2023, alleging that CIGIE’s investigation of him amounted to unlawful harassment. The DHS OIG did not respond to a request for comment.
Bakaj of Whistleblower Aid and Williams of POGO in statements Tuesday also condemned the withholding of funding for CIGIE.
Congressional Democrats slammed the Trump administration’s actions as well. House Appropriations Committee ranking member Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., argued that “OMB is choking off resources of the Council of the Inspectors General to halt their operations.”
“This moment demands action. The fastest way to restore trust is to guarantee inspectors general true independence — and to finally establish an inspector general at the ‘nerve center of federal spending,’ the Office of Management and Budget,” she said in a statement. “I call on Russ Vought and the Office of Management and Budget to release CIGIE’s funding immediately, and I look forward to working with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to make sure this never happens again.”
