Mattis rebukes Trump over removal of Pentagon inspector general
Former Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis issued a rare public rebuke of President Trump Tuesday over his decision to fire Glenn Fine, the Pentagon inspector general charged with overseeing implementation of the $2 trillion coronavirus stimulus package.
“Mr. Fine is a public servant in the finest tradition of honest, competent governance,” Mattis told Yahoo News in an email. “In my years of extensive engagement with him as our Department of Defense’s acting Inspector General, he proved to be a leader whose personal and managerial integrity were always of the highest order.”
The Department of Defense announced Trump’s latest salvo in an ongoing bid to reshape government oversight of his administration on Tuesday, saying that the president had removed Fine from the acting inspector general role he had held at the Pentagon for more than four years.
“Mr. Fine is no longer on the pandemic response accountability committee,” Department of Defense spokeswoman Dwrena Allen said in a written statement.
Prior to his role at the Pentagon, Fine served for 11 years as inspector general at the Justice Department. Allen said he would be replaced by Sean O’Donnell, who currently serves as inspector general at the Environmental Protection Agency.
“Trump has woken up to the fact that IGs pose a threat to him,” said Michael Bromwich, a former Justice Department inspector general who originally hired Fine and praised him as a hard-working and popular inspector general who had engendered strong loyalty within his office at the Pentagon. He noted that until now, inspectors general have largely felt protected to conduct independent oversight of government wrongdoing — unless there was some evidence they engaged in misconduct.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/mattis-rebukes-trump-over-removal-of-pentagon-inspector-general/ar-BB12hOzY?li=BBnb7Kz
= new reply since forum marked as read
too late in my opinion. He should have been blabbing his guts out as soon as he was booted. 
