The top watchdogs for the Central Intelligence Agency and Office of the Director of National Intelligence are leaving their roles in the wake of former President Donald Trump’s re-election, sources tell the Project On Government Oversight (POGO) and their agencies confirm.
These departures come as unease has swept across the federal inspector general community, which anticipates the possibility of a purge of senior watchdog officials by the incoming Trump administration.
Appointed by the president and housed within executive agencies, inspectors general investigate waste, fraud, and abuse of power and are responsible for reporting wrongdoing both to agency directors and to Congress. Oversight by inspectors general has long been considered to be more important when both the executive branch and Congress are under control of the same political party.
One of the departing inspectors general, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s Thomas Monheim, first took his watchdog role after Trump fired his predecessor Michael Atkinson in the spring of 2020. Atkinson had transmitted a whistleblower complaint to Congress that sparked Trump’s first impeachment in 2019.
“It is hard not to think that the President’s loss of confidence in me derives from my having faithfully discharged my legal obligations as an independent and impartial Inspector General,” Atkinson said in a statement at the time.
Installing loyalists in key oversight positions was a recommendation of the conservative Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025. Individuals involved in a training video created as part of the project and obtained by ProPublica and Documented, said the next president should select “their own IGs” so that they “have control of the people that work within that government.” Trump’s presidential campaign distanced itself from Project 2025, but there are numerous ties between that Heritage Foundation effort and the incoming administration.
Monheim and his counterpart at the CIA, Robin Ashton, were both nominated by Biden and confirmed by the Senate in 2021 (Monheim began serving as acting inspector general the year before, during the first Trump administration).
Ratcliffe earlier served as the Director of National Intelligence at the tail end of Trump’s first term, and he narrowly won Senate confirmation amid criticisms that he would put loyalty to Trump over duty.
Concerns about the willingness of these nominees to do their jobs well, and apolitically, as well as the underlying importance and sensitivities of these agencies means the watchdog roles at the CIA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence are critical. Whoever fills them is under intense pressure, regardless of the president.
