Robert Storch, left, then the inspector general for the Defense Department, speaks with Capt. Richard Gilliard at the hospital at Yokosuka Naval Base, Japan, in April 2024. (Daniel Taylor/U.S. Navy)
WASHINGTON — Robert Storch, the inspector general at the Defense Department, was among more than a dozen IGs at federal agencies fired by President Donald Trump
“It’s a very common thing to do,” Trump claimed Saturday night to reporters on Air Force One traveling to Florida — his first comments after a decision that caused alarm among government watchdogs and members of Congress.
“I don’t know them,” he said, though many of those he fired late Friday night were people who he appointed during his first term. “But some people thought that some were unfair, or some were not doing their job. It’s a very standard thing to do.”
Other inspector generals terminated include the departments of agriculture, education, labor, transportation and state. The move did not affect the inspectors general for the Justice Department or the Department of Homeland Security, NBC News reported.
An inspector general conducts investigations and audits into any potential malfeasance, fraud, waste or abuse by a government agency or its personnel and issues reports and recommendations on its findings. An inspector general’s office is intended to operate independently.
The firings could clear the way for Trump to install loyalists in the role of identifying fraud, waste and abuse in the government.
In 2020, he replaced multiple key inspectors general, including those leading the Defense Department and intelligence community, as well as the inspector general tapped to lead a special oversight board for the $2.2 trillion economic relief package on the coronavirus pandemic, the Associated Press reported.
Storch’s tenure as the Pentagon inspector general began in December 2022. For the past year, Storch investigated former Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s handling of his undisclosed hospitalization. Other matters that the department’s internal watchdog investigated include how effectively the military facilitated the delivery of food aid into Gaza, the Navy’s oversight of the Red Hill fuel facility in Hawaii and weapons systems sent to Ukraine could be rendered useless on the battlefield because the Pentagon lacks a plan for Ukrainian troops to maintain them.
