Inspectors General are a crucial part of the apparatus that keeps the government accountable to the public it is supposed to serve.
Inspectors General have spent decades building careful systems for overseeing the activities of the Executive branch, acting as crucial watchdogs that root out actual inefficiency, waste, fraud, corruption, and abuse throughout the government.
Unlike DOGE, the notorious hard right pet project of Elon Musk which wreaks havoc across the government in the name of “efficiency” while actually elevating private profiteers over the public interest, Inspector General offices conduct evidence based investigations in order to hold the government accountable to its failings. They also offer lagging offices and departments equally evidenced pathways for better serving the public.
Amidst bombastic claims of his administration’s commitment to efficiency and oversight, Trump fired no less than seventeen Inspectors General during his first week in office. The move was brazen and likely illegal, and yet a majority of these offices still sit vacant, leaving huge swaths of Trump’s agencies without the top watchdog that is meant to keep them in check.
Who Trump chooses to fill these vacancies, however, may be even more concerning. Already, Donald Trump has named candidates with a documented track record of corruption and incompetency. Of course, given the crucial necessity of independence in the administration of any real infrastructure of accountability or oversight, such selections are terrifying.
The Revolving Door Project is tracking these vacancies, who is currently leading these offices, and who has been nominated to lead them.
Current Inspectors General:
Department of Homeland Security, Joseph Cuffari
- Joseph Cuffari has been the Inspector General for the Department of Homeland Security since 2019. Cuffari’s tenure at the department has been riddled with accusations of impropriety, interference, and otherwise unethical conduct. As we’ve previously written, he “has also at various times been accused of removing information from DHS OIG reports, failing to act on internal reports of widespread sexual harassment, and otherwise forcing Homeland’s internal watchdog into near dormancy. Members of Cuffari’s own staff have even petitioned for his removal as a result of his profound mismanagement of the department, apparent abuse of his authority, and near sabotage of its career staff.”
Most recently, an October 2024 report released by an investigative committee of other IGs and other federal investigators determined that Cuffari, by a preponderance of evidence, had “abused his authority and engaged in substantial misconduct.” That report specifically noted that Cuffari had misrepresented himself during his nomination hearings before the Senate, engaged in retaliatory activities against former employees of the department, attempted to influence an independent investigation into former employees, and more.
Department of Justice, Michael E. Horowitz
- Michael Horowitz has been the Inspector General of the Department of Justice since 2012. Over his many years in that office, Horowitz has earned a reputation of being an “impartial referee,” in his approach to investigating the department and its subcomponents. Horowitz is notable also for surviving both the Trump administration’s initial slate of removals from IGs offices during its first term, and to be one of just a handful of IGs to not be removed at the start of its second. Such a sparing might be contextualized by a 2019 report from the Center for American Progress which found that Horowitz’s tenure under the first Trump term saw anomalously little investigation into the litany of allegations of corruption and other scandals that had plagued the department, and that “a number of the major reports issued by Horowitz’s office since 2017 have instead focused on political conspiracy theories advanced by President Trump and his allies.” Following this lackluster oversight in real time, Horowitz did conduct a series of investigations into the then-former Trump administration during the Biden administration, including one which revealed Trump’s DOJ had seized the records of Members of Congress and dozens of congressional staffers during its wide-ranging probe into leaks.
Nominees To Be Inspectors General:
Department of Labor, Anthony D’Esposito
- Anthony D’Esposito is Trump’s pick to be the Inspector General for the Department of Labor. D’Esposito is a former NYPD officer and former GOP congressman. He, notably, did not appear to focus on labor issues whilst in Congress. D’Esposito did, however, face a litany of ethics and conduct allegations while he was a police officer, including claims of improperly seizing a gold chain during an arrest, waving his NYPD-issued gun whilst working off-hours as a bartender, lying to a grand jury, and more. While in Congress, D’Esposito also appeared to use his seat as a tax-payer funded patronage system. The New York Times reported in 2024 that D’Esposito had hired his longtime fiancée’s daughter in 2023 as a “special assistant in his district office, eventually bumping her salary to about $3,800 a month, payroll records show.” Later, D’Esposito hired a woman he was reportedly having an affair with, who “collected $2,000 a month for a part-time job in the same district office.” Both payments “stopped abruptly several months later, in July 2023, records show,” and the stoppage reportedly coincided with the timeline of D’Esposito’s fiancée finding out about his affair and briefly breaking up with him, according to the Times’ sources. The House code of conduct expressly forbids members of Congress from hiring their family members, including stepchildren, as well as forbids members from engaging in sexual relationships with members of their staff. Members are expected to comply with both the letter and spirit of.
Department of Health and Human Services, Thomas March Bell
- Thomas March Bell has been nominated to be the Inspector General for the Department of Health and Human Services, a massive job that includes overseeing the over $1 trillion spent from the Medicaid and Medicare programs annually. Bell currently serves as general counsel for House Republicans and has been a longtime GOP operative. The Associated Pressdescribed the nomination as a “brazenly political one for a job that has long been viewed as nonpartisan and focuses largely on accounting for and ferreting out fraud in some of the nation’s biggest spending programs.” Bell is also a controversial pick for other reasons; in 1997 Bell was fired from the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality after he improperly authorized a nearly $8000 payment to a former agency spokesman. Bell was also the Republican staff director and chief counsel for a House panel that investigated Planned Parenthood over thoroughly debunked claims that the organization was profiting off sales of fetal tissue. The panel spent 15 months and $1.6 million in taxpayer dollars to ultimately find no wrongdoing, “but nonetheless recommended that the National Institutes of Health stop funding Planned Parenthood” anyways.
VACANCY TRACKER
| Agency: | Inspector General Status: |
| Department of Agriculture | Vacant |
| Department of Commerce | Vacant |
| Department of Defense | Vacant |
| Department of Education | Vacant |
| Department of Health and Human Services | Vacant; Nominee, Thomas March Bell |
| Department of Homeland Security | Joseph Cuffari |
| Department of Housing and Urban Development | Vacant |
| Department of Justice | Michael E. Horowitz |
| Department of Labor | Vacant; Nominee, Anthony D’Esposito |
| Department of State | Vacant |
| Department of the Interior | Vacant |
| Department of the Treasury | Vacant |
| Department of Transportation | Vacant |
| Department of Veterans Affairs | Vacant |
| Environmental Protection Agency | Vacant |
| Office of Personnel Management | Vacant |