More on the Linick issue

Trump has given Congress 30 days' notice (as required by law) that he plans to fire State Department IG Steve Linick.  Apparently, the IG's decision to investigate Pompeo's use of staff for personal tasks such as walking his dog and picking up his laundry isn't the only thing Linick was looking into.

There’s a backstory here that has not yet gotten scrutiny — one that could make the firing appear even more corrupt.

House Democrats have discovered that the fired IG had mostly completed an investigation into Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s widely criticized decision to skirt Congress with an emergency declaration to approve billions of dollars in arms sales to Saudi Arabia last year.

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In the spring of 2019, the Trump administration pushed through a plan for more than $8 billion in weapons sales, almost entirely to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

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The move was condemned by lawmakers in both parties who have increasingly been turning on continued U.S. support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen, which stretches back to the last administration and has unleashed a humanitarian catastrophe. Congress subsequently voted to block the arms sales, with some Republican support, but Trump vetoed the effort.

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The Democrats also raised questions about potential conflicts of interest surrounding a former State Department official who may have been obligated to recuse himself of involvement in the sale, given his previous role as a lobbyist for Raytheon Co., which made many weapons involved in the transfer.

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Committee Democrats have also learned that the State Department was recently briefed on the IG’s conclusions in that investigation, aides say.

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[T]he committee is now trying to establish what those conclusions were and what links they might have to the firing, the aides confirm.

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The White House has confirmed Linick’s firing came at Pompeo’s request. Trump claimed he no longer has “confidence” in Linick, a thin justification that highlights Trump’s purging of officials exercising oversight on his administration.

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Democrats on the House Foreign Affairs Committee — and its Senate counterpart — have launched an investigation into Linick’s firing. In letters to the State Department and the White House, they demanded documents be preserved and raised the possibility that the firing might have been an “illegal act of retaliation” against an unspecified ongoing IG investigation into Pompeo.

Importantly, the Democrats are also demanding a full accounting of any and all IG investigations into Pompeo that are ongoing — and thus could have been the basis for the firing.

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To reiterate, we don’t know what the IG found on the arms sales, and it’s possible there’s no connection between that and his firing. But at a minimum, the firing of Linick, coming after the removal of numerous other IGs, already shows Trump’s efforts to purge the government of oversight and accountability on his administration are getting much worse.

  WaPo

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He never heard of his Inspector General for the State Department.  You know, I can actually believe that.

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So maybe some staff member should do their grocery shopping, too.

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