Inspectors general may be fired, but that’s not the end of the story
"It's quite stark and severe, if you will. This is sort of like the bureaucratic version of a perp walk," said former Interior Department IG Mark Greenblatt.
Mark Lee Grenblatt has worked as a federal inspector general for more than five years. He was also the chairman of the Council of Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency (CIGIE). And until Friday, he was the IG for the Interior Department. He’s one of more than a dozen IGs the Trump administration let go on Friday. But that’s not the end of the story. He joined the Federal Drive with Tom Temin.
Interview transcript:
Tom Temin How did the news come to the IGs?
Mark Greenblatt So I received an email about 7:30 on Friday night. I was actually coming back from Tae Kwon Do practice. And I just happened to check my email.
Tom Temin So you punch a hole in the wall there, or anything?
Mark Greenblatt Exactly. And there was an email from the White House. It was entitled “White House Notification.” And I said to myself, “Well, this can’t be good.” You may remember that IG’s in the past in the first Trump administration were removed on a Friday night. It seems to be their modus operandi. And so when I when I saw that, my stomach sank a bit and I knew this, this can’t be good.
Tom Temin And who was the signatory on the email? Where did it come from?
Mark Greenblatt The director of the Office of Presidential Personnel. And he said that on behalf of President Trump, due to changing priorities, my position as DOJ inspector general was terminated effective immediately. Thank you for your service.
Tom Temin And that was it.
Mark Greenblatt That was it. Which is important because, as you know, under the IG Act, which created us and governs how we do our business, it requires that if the president wants to remove an inspector general, they must provide 30 days notice, so in advance of any removal, 30 days in advance, they must provide notice to Congress specifically articulating the reasons why this specific IG is going to be removed. And so my two sentence email had none of that.
Tom Temin And you had no instinct to say, well, go back in on Monday morning and say, “Hey, you didn’t tell Congress. No reasons, no 30 days. You haven’t even been in office 30 days.” Or did you just decide to stay away and that’s it?
Mark Greenblatt Well, to be honest, they had already put the wheels in motion to remove access from my email. They’ve already started the wheels, the bureaucratic steps, the administrative steps that need to happen to remove me. And so I didn’t want to create a security incident or anything along those lines. I didn’t want one of those infamous perp walks where a criminal defendant is walked out in front of the courthouse. I didn’t want any situations like that. I didn’t think that would be good for anyone. And so my attitude is, if there’s discussion to be had or actions to be taken, that’s not one.
Tom Temin And what actions might be planned? I mean, you have a mass of people 12, 14, 15 IGs, [the Council of Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency], any action from there? Or what do you think is going to happen next?
Mark Greenblatt “I don’t know” is the answer to the question. And first of all, we’re actually up to 17 or 18 IGs at this point. They keep, we had a couple of additional ones that were identified over the weekend. So we’re up even higher, Tom, than we thought earlier than what’s been, generally speaking, reported in the media. So we’re up to possibly 18 now. And as far as next steps, I don’t know. I would hope that Congress would get involved. And there has been some rumbling on the Hill, folks recognizing that this is not following the procedure laid out in the IG Act. And so we’ll see where it goes. But I don’t know is the answer to your question.
Tom Temin What about your security clearance? What about the [personal identification verification] card? You must have had a laptop. And I mean, there’s logistical things that have to happen.
Mark Greenblatt Yeah, all the things in my office, as you know, when you’re in office for five and a half years, you you accumulate things and but you’re right, the pick card, laptop, all of those sorts of things have to be accounted for. And so we’re working out those administrative steps right now.
Tom Temin And what about family photos?
Mark Greenblatt Exactly.
Tom Temin Favorite mugs. I think you have a Federal News Network mug.
Mark Greenblatt I do. I do have a Federal News Network mug, and it is displayed prominently and on one of my credenzas. And so, yes, I have things like that. All the challenge coins that you have throughout the federal government. Right. So that’s something that we have to certainly have to work with the department, work with my old staff to figure that out. But those are the small things. And it’s going to break my heart breaking down my office and and retrieving those things. That’s a special place for me. And I love my team and I love what we did there. And I’ll have some of the greatest memories of my professional career in that office.
Tom Temin How many people work in the Interior IG office all together?
Mark Greenblatt We’re right around 300. It’s folks strewn all over the country. And these are some of the best professionals out there. I mean, these are dedicated auditors, inspectors, evaluators, investigators, attorneys. They run the gamut and they’re first rate, really, really good. And that’s the saddest part from my perspective, is that I’m not going to be able to be with my team.
Tom Temin Has the White House given you any indication that you can at least go in to clean up and take your personal effects and say goodbye to people? Any of that worked out yet?
Mark Greenblatt No. This was quite austere. And it was just that two sentence email. And then follow up from the department, HR, the ethics office is basically moving on. And it’s quite stark and severe, if you will. This is sort of like the bureaucratic version of a perp walk.
Tom Temin We were speaking with Mark Lee Greenblatt. He was, until Friday, inspector general of the Interior Department. Yeah, because there’s other practical matters I think other federal employees are wondering about. You’ve got a TSP account. You’ve got a federal employee health benefit plan. All of these things have access and passwords. And as far as you can tell, you can still touch those things.
Mark Greenblatt That’s what we’re working through with the HR folks, with the financial management folks. There’s a whole suite of ethics considerations going on in terms of what I can do going forward, what any senior federal person can do going forward. There are restrictions that you have to be mindful of. And so that’s the kind of thing that the off-boarding process, generally speaking, is quite robust and takes time. All of this is accelerated and without me being present in the facility. So this is all over email and Zoom and what have you. So it’s a bit … we’ll muddle through, let’s put it that way, Tom.
Tom Temin Have you been in touch with the other IGs? Are you talking to one another? Are you talking to your assistants that might have been in the office, the administrative assistants and so forth?
Mark Greenblatt Certainly the other IGs, there’s a lot of communication. We’re close, we’re a close community and some of these folks are not just professional colleagues. They’re friends at this point. And I trust them. And that breaks my heart too, is because these are the folks as an American taxpayer, these are the folks you want ferreting out waste, fraud and abuse. And to see them go breaks your heart. And then in terms of my staff, yes, I have. And I’ve gotten such an unbelievable outpouring of support from them, on social media and LinkedIn, what have you. And it’s just overwhelming, Tom. I mean, just reading some of their comments, their messages, their notes to me, it gets you choked up because you realize just how much that relationship mattered to me.
Tom Temin Plus, on a practical sense, there were reports in progress that you would have had to sign off on. So as far as you know, those are just suspended also.
Mark Greenblatt Well, I would imagine my staff is going to move forward with them. I mean, I hope they would. They are important, high-impact work. We’re looking at the highest risk areas in the in the Department of the Interior. And so I hope they aren’t suspended in the sense that they’re waiting for me or on hold. I would hope that they would move forward apace.
Tom Temin And some members of Congress are interested in the IG community and that general area of accountability. [Sen.] Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) comes to mind, and I haven’t seen much from them. A couple of statements we’ve gotten over the transom here that seem like boilerplate, not including Grassley’s.
Mark Greenblatt We have had extensive interaction with folks on the Hill for years. There was even just a few days ago, Sen. [Joni Ernst (R-Iowa)] founded the IG caucus in the Senate, which is bipartisan. There are six members, I believe, that started, the founding members, bipartisan, three and three of each political party. Chuck Grassley is one of them. Joni Ernst, like I said, is the founding chair, and I would hope that they would step up and be vocal. They understand the value that we as inspectors general add for the American taxpayer and for Congress. And so I hope they step up and identify that there are some real problems with how this unfolded and not just the process, but the substance of it. This has a possibility of being an existential threat for the oversight community. And I think American taxpayers need to need to understand that this is not some small issue about the removal of of a handful of folks in the federal government. No, this is a big, big deal.
Tom Temin And just briefly review your own career. Besides the five and a half [years] in the IG community, you go back further than that.
Mark Greenblatt Absolutely, I spent the biggest chunk of my career in the federal oversight community. So I was a lawyer. I went to Columbia Law and I did litigation up in New York. Big law, general corporate litigation. I needed a moral quality to what I was doing. And so I found this dream job at the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations in the U.S. Senate. And that was just the greatest experience a young lawyer could have. And it was basically investigating waste, fraud and abuse in the federal government and the United Nations. I don’t know if you remember the Oil for Food program.
Tom Temin Sure. Yeah.
Mark Greenblatt Yeah. That was riddled with with waste, fraud and abuse. And that was my baby when I was at the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. And that was when I was bitten by the investigatory bug. And I then moved over to the Department of Justice OIG, working for Glenn Fine in his Special investigations unit. He left and then Michael Horowitz came in. So the way I like to describe it is I learned at the feet of the masters, and I took the lessons that I learned from them about how to be an effective inspector general. And as I rose up through the ranks, I kept those in mind. And then ultimately, President Trump appointed me in 2019, as confirmed by the Senate unanimously in 2019. And that’s when I started at the Department of the Interior. And I was there, as you say, for about five and half years.
Tom Temin Trump giveth and taketh away, I guess.
Mark Greenblatt Yeah. And I don’t see the through line on it. I’ve been fair, objective and independent. My team’s reports are, I think, outstanding and very high quality. I actually don’t get it, frankly. Maybe it had something to do with CIGIE. I know there were some frustrations on the Republican side of the aisle with respect to the Council of Inspectors General, which I was the chair of, and before that, the vice chair. I know there were some frustrations there. I don’t know if they identified me as sort of the personification of CIGIE at the time, but I would hope that’s not the motivating factor. But you never know. There was no explanation.
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Tom Temin
Tom Temin is host of the Federal Drive and has been providing insight on federal technology and management issues for more than 30 years.
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