Happy Birthday, Sweetie!
In this modern day situation, we have a president who is not firing U.S. attorneys, but Inspector Generals.
According to Wikipedia, Steve leaked stuff through a private attorney who was never appointed to represent the U.S., with advice and consent of the Senate, to U.S. House Judiciary Committee Member Jamie Raskin, who has never, once, spoken about those trafficking tiny human issues, Like TARP, Detroit, or those gloriously autocephalious, cherished children's trust funds.
Early in his career, Linick served as an Assistant District Attorney in the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office and as an associate at the Newman & Holtzinger law firm in Washington, D.C.As a matter of fact, Pompeo has never once murmured a whisper on the trafficking tiny humans, but I believe that has something more to do with the ICC ongoing legal proceedings of the U.S. and what they did to the tiny ones over in Afghanistan.
Linick served as an Assistant United States Attorney in California from 1994 to 1999 and Virginia from 1999 to 2006. He also served as Executive Director of the Department of Justice’s National Procurement Fraud Task Force and Deputy Chief of its Fraud Section in the Criminal Division from 2006 to 2010. During his tenure at the Department of Justice, he supervised and participated in white-collar criminal fraud cases involving corruption and contract fraud against the U.S. in Iraq and Afghanistan.[10]
He served as the first Inspector General of the Federal Housing Finance Agency from 2010 until 2013.
Linick began his tenure as the Inspector General for the U.S. Department of State on September 30, 2013. As Inspector General, Linick was the senior official responsible for identifying operational risks within the Department of State and the U.S. Agency for Global Media, assessing the sufficiency of internal controls, and conducting administrative and criminal investigations of waste, fraud, mismanagement, and misconduct. He was responsible for providing oversight to more than 70,000 Department of State and U.S. Agency for Global Media employees, 270 overseas missions and other facilities worldwide, and more than $70 billion in Department of State, U.S. Agency for Global Media, and foreign assistance resources. He also served as the Associate Inspector General for designated overseas contingency operations.
Trump–Ukraine scandal
In the midst of the Trump–Ukraine scandal, Linick transferred a packet of documents from Rudy Giuliani by way of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to Judiciary Committee member Jamie Raskin.
Steve Linick: Trump fires state department inspector general
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| Steve Linick |
The US state department's inspector general, Steve Linick, has become the latest senior official to be fired by US President Donald Trump.
Mr Trump said Mr Linick no longer had his full confidence and that he would be removed in 30 days.
Mr Linick had begun investigating Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for suspected abuse of office, reports say.
Democrats say Mr Trump is retaliating against public servants who want to hold his administration to account.
"It is vital that I have the fullest confidence in the appointees serving as inspectors general. That is no longer the case with regard to this inspector general," Mr Trump is quoted as saying in a letter sent late on Friday to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, US media report.
Not long after Mr Linick's dismissal was announced, the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee said Mr Linick had opened an investigation into Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
"This firing is the outrageous act of a president trying to protect one of his most loyal supporters, the secretary of state, from accountability," Eliot Engel, a Democrat, said in a statement.
"I have learned that the Office of the Inspector General had opened an investigation into Secretary Pompeo. Mr Linick's firing amid such a probe strongly suggests that this is an unlawful act of retaliation."
Mr Engel did not provide any further details about the content of this investigation into Mr Pompeo.
Congressional aides, speaking on condition of anonymity, have been quoted in different media as saying that Mr Linick was examining complaints that Mr Pompeo may have improperly used staff and asked them to perform personal tasks.
Mr Linick, a former prosecutor, was appointed by Mr Trump's predecessor, Barack Obama, to oversee spending and detect mismanagement at the state department.
'Retaliation'
Democrats have been reacting to the move. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Mr Linick was "punished for honourably performing his duty to protect the constitution and our national security".
The late-night, weekend firing of State Department IG Steve Linick is an acceleration of the President’s dangerous pattern of retaliation against the patriotic public servants charged with conducting oversight on behalf of the American people. https://t.co/VavmuJpX25— Nancy Pelosi (@SpeakerPelosi) May 16, 2020
"The president must cease his pattern of reprisal and retaliation against the public servants who are working to keep Americans safe, particularly during this time of global emergency," she added in a statement.
Senator Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut, said the Senate Foreign Relations Committee needed to learn more about the dismissal.
If Inspector General Linick was fired because he was conducting an investigation of conduct by Secretary Pompeo, the Senate cannot let this stand.— Chris Murphy (@ChrisMurphyCT) May 16, 2020
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee must get to bottom of what happened here.
This is the latest in a series of dismissals of independent government watchdogs.
Last month, Mr Trump dismissed Michael Atkinson, the inspector general of the intelligence community.
Mr Atkinson first alerted Congress to a whistleblower complaint that led to Mr Trump's impeachment trial.
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