Trump’s Plans to Corrupt the Stimulus Revealed by Firing of the Pentagon’s IG
Statements From Public Citizen’s Experts
Note: The White House announced today that President Donald Trump terminated Glenn Fine as Inspector General for the Pentagon, removing him as chair of the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee, a newly constituted oversight body of some 20 inspectors general as provided under the $2 trillion CARES Act. This follows by five days the termination of intelligence community Inspector General Michael Atkinson, the man who forwarded the Ukrainian whistleblower complaint to Congress.
“Trump may not have anticipated the coronavirus, but clearly he’s planning to corrupt the $2 trillion in spending Congress just approved, whether it’s by steering the money to political favorites, negotiating more favorable terms with certain parties or punishing his enemies with a failure to provide aid. Who could have seen this coming? Literally everyone.”
- Bartlett Naylor, financial policy advocate
“Trump’s brazen termination of Fine must stiffen the backbone of Congress to approve necessary oversight to ensure relief ends up in the wallets of workers, not profiteers.”
- Lisa Gilbert, vice president of legislative affairs