By Lisa Rein · The Washington Post (c) 2025
A group of federal inspectors general ousted by the White House last month sued the Trump administration on Wednesday, claiming that their firings were carried out illegally.
By dismissing the watchdogs in two-sentence emails, the administration violated a federal law requiring it to inform Congress with 30 days’ notice and provide in writing “substantive rationale” for the firings, says the 32-page complaint filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
The plaintiffs are eight of the 17 Senate-confirmed inspectors general fired four days into President Donald Trump’s term, for what the White House cited as “changing priorities.” They are seeking reinstatement to their positions conducting oversight of waste, fraud and abuse at the departments of Defense, Veterans Affairs, Health and Human Services, Education, Agriculture, Labor and State, and the Small Business Administration.
“IGs must be watchdogs, not lapdogs,” says the complaint, which names as defendants the Trump-appointed leaders or acting heads of each agency.
“Plaintiffs’ purported removals have sent shockwaves and a massive chilling effect through the IG community,” the lawsuit says. They “have been sent a message that non-partisanship and truth-telling will not be tolerated. That message will have the effect of intimidating the [inspector general] workforce and thus chill their critical work for the American people.”
The fired inspectors general who joined the suit are Rob Storch (Defense), Michael Missal (VA), Christi Grimm (HHS), Sandra Bruce (Education), Phyllis Fong (Agriculture), Larry Turner (Labor), Cardell Richardson (State) and Hannibal “Mike” Ware (SBA).
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit.
Appointed by Democratic and Republican presidents, including Trump in his first term, the group of seasoned watchdogs had decades of experience, some overseeing staffs of more than 1,000 auditors and investigators. The watchdogs at Homeland Security and Justice were the only Cabinet-level inspectors general spared.
The unprecedented purge was widely viewed as clearing the way for Trump to install loyalists in the crucial roles. The administration appointed the fired leaders’ deputies in acting roles.
On Tuesday, the White House fired another inspector general: Paul Martin at the U.S. Agency for International Development. Martin, appointed by President Joe Biden in December 2023, was informed of his dismissal through a two-sentence email from Trent Morse, deputy director of the White House Office of Presidential Personnel.
The dismissal came one day after Martin’s office issued a blistering report assessing the impact of the Trump administration’s efforts to hobble the agency’s mission and shrink its staff. Martin oversaw a staff of 275 with a dozen offices abroad.
The system of Senate-confirmed inspectors general at large agencieswas established in the late 1970s, after the Watergate scandal, to conduct independent investigations and audits of federal spending and operations and report the findings to Congress and the public.
After Trump in his first term fired numerous watchdogs whose work had been critical of his administration, Congress amended the Inspector General Act in 2022 to strengthen procedural safeguards on removing a federal watchdog, including the requirement to notify Congress first.
The complaint filed Wednesday alleges that Trump still has not communicated to Congress his intention to remove the watchdogs. Nor has he communicated to Congress, in writing or otherwise, any “substantive rationale for the removal of any IG – let alone the required detailed and case-specific reasons,” the lawsuit says. “His only public explanation came during a press gaggle on January 25 … when he stated, ‘I don’t know them … but some people thought that some were unfair, some were not doing their job,’ and falsely asserted that ‘it’s a very standard thing to do.’”
“The President did not identify the ‘people’ who supposedly ‘thought’ these things, which IGs any such thoughts pertained to, or how the unidentified IGs supposedly “were not doing their job,” the complaint says.
In the days after they were ousted, agency employees cut off the inspectors general’s access to government systems, collected their assigned government equipment – computers, phones and access badges – and arranged for them to collect personal belongings from government buildings under supervision, the lawsuit says.
Fong continued to work after her dismissal, “recognizing that her termination was not effective because it failed to comply with the IG Act’s requirements,” the complaint says.
On the Monday after her firing, “she returned to work as normal (i.e., as she had for over two decades), and conducted several meetings before USDA employees cut off her access to IT … systems, took possession of her computer and phone, and deactivated her badge.”