(Bloomberg) -- Senator Ron Johnson, chairman of the Senate's main committee overseeing government operations, said he's not “crying big crocodile tears” over President Donald Trump's move to dismiss the State Department's inspector general.
Trump late Friday gave 30 days' notice of his intention to dismiss State Department Inspector General Steve Linick.
The president said he lacks confidence in Linick, an Obama appointee. The move drew criticism from congressional Democrats, who are mounting an investigation, and pushback from Republican Senators Mitt Romney of Utah and Charles Grassley of Iowa.
Johnson, a Republican from Wisconsin, appeared on CNN's “State of the Union” Sunday and said inspectors general “serve at the pleasure of the president, and he's got the authority to hire and terminate.”
“I'm not crying big crocodile tears over this termination, let's put it that way,” Johnson said.
Trump Ousts State Department Watchdog Tangled in Ukraine Saga
Trump has increasingly taken action against inspectors general he considers insufficiently loyal. In recent weeks he has dismissed one watchdog, criticized another for spotlighting reports of equipment shortages at hospitals, and shunted another from a post overseeing pandemic spending beyond the Treasury Department.
Romney on Saturday said the firings of multiple inspectors general is unprecedented and doing so “without good cause chills the independence essential to their purpose. It is a threat to accountable democracy.”
Inspectors general conduct investigations of federal spending and operations and are independent of agency heads who can't block their probes.
“That office was created after Watergate to make sure that there was integrity in the departments, the agencies of government,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Sunday on CBS's “Face the Nation.”
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