The Opinions - They Saved Taxpayers Billions. Trump Fired Them Anyway.

Episode Date: March 13, 2025

Inspectors general are our government watchdogs. They root out corruption and check for fraud and inefficiencies — all things President Trump has claimed to want to do. And yet, when he took office, he fired more than a dozen inspectors general without warning.In this episode of The Opinions, we spoke to the reporter and filmmaker Francesca Trianni about her interviews with seven of these inspectors, their relationship to the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, and why they’re worried about the future of American democracy.To see the videos of the Inspectors General, go to nytimes.com.Thoughts? Email us at [e-mail] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Opinions” at nytimes.com/column/the-opinions.This episode of “The Opinions” was produced by Vishakha Darbha. Edited by Kaari Pitkin and Alison Bruzek. Fact-checking by Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Mixing by Carole Sabouraud. The show’s production team also includes Derek Arthur and Jillian Weinberger. Original music by Sonia Herrero, Pat McCusker and Carole Sabouraud. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The Director of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

This is The Opinions, a show that brings you a mix of voices from New York Times Opinion. You've heard the news. Here's what to make of it. My name is Francesca Triani. I'm a video journalist for Times Opinion. I've been an investigative reporter and a filmmaker for almost a decade now. President Trump campaigned on increasing efficiency and rooting out fraud and abuse in government. And four days after taking office, he fired more than a dozen watchdogs. whose job was exactly that. Over the weekend, President Trump continued his flurry of executive moves.

He fired at least 15 inspectors general. Even though federal law requires, he give Congress a 30-day notice. When I first heard of the inspectors general being fired, I just wanted to know more about who these people were. Most of the IGs are nonpartisan, and they've kept their jobs through different administrations. Now that they're out of a job, they filed a complaint against the government and against the president hoping to be reinstated. So at the end of February, Times' opinion video sat down with seven inspectors general who were fired by the Trump administration to get a better sense of what happened.

I'm Paul Martin. I'm Hannibal Mike Weir. My name's Rob Storch. Michael J. Missile. Mark Lee Greenblatt. Christy Grimm. I'm Larry Turner. Each of them was sent a two.

sentence email from the office of presidential personnel entitled White House Notification. Most of them received this email on a Friday night. They were watching TV with their spouse. They were out for dinner. One of them was coming out of a taekwendo class. Dear Christy. Dear Larry. Dear Herald. On behalf of President Donald J. Trump, I'm writing to inform you that due to changing priorities, that your position as Inspector General, Inspector General, Inspector General. Inspector General of Department of Defense at the United States Agency for International Development

of the Small Business Administration of the United States Department of Labor of Department of Veterans Affairs Department of Health and Human Services Department of Interior is terminated. Is terminated, terminated, effective immediately. Thanks for your service.

Like most people, I was not familiar with exactly what they do for the government. I think most of our readers may not be familiar with who inspectors general. are even my family, you know, didn't really have an idea of what I do, what that entails. They just don't know the breadth and extent of the work we do. In fact, sometimes I would meet some VA employees, and I would say I'm the Inspector General. And they said, what's that? What Inspector Generals have done for almost 50 years is not only save taxpayers billions and billions of

dollars, but they also, and this I think is as important, they help make the agencies better. Inspector Generals really are the Internal Affairs Office at each government agency. We conduct audits and we conduct investigations. We look for fraud. We look for misconduct. We look for inefficiencies. And we're the in-house canary in the coal mine that can alert the agency that, hey, these intentions you had for this program are not being achieved or things are going horribly wrong. Inspectors General are watchdogs for the government. In our interviews, we heard so many different types of cases that inspectors general investigated.

So it's everything from murders to threats, to sexual assaults, to drug diversion. Crimes committed against foster care programs, fraud that involved COVID supplies. We got a tip that a woman, veteran was getting a full disability compensation because she claimed she didn't have any use of her hand. And we got a tip that that was not true. And we knew she was going to Disney World with her children.

So we sent two undercover agents into Disney World, and we could put cameras in all sorts of places. So the two agents had a camera inside a Starbucks coffee cup. They found her at Disney World. They went up to her and said, could you please take a picture of us? And so they gave the woman their iPhone, and she was using her hands to put it in different places,

and it's all being recorded on the camera in the coffee cup. The mission for efficiency should sound familiar to all of us. Trump launched the Department of Government Efficiency with Elon Musk. I wanted to ask the inspectors general what they, thought about Doge when they first heard about it. The word I would use to describe Doge is... Ambitious. Abrupt.

Mysterious. Unknown. Confusion. Unprecedented. Aggressive. And initially, they were open to it. My first reaction when I heard of Doge, I was like, oh, this is not a bad thing at all. This is exactly what we do as a community.

Efficiency is literally in our name. And I said, well, this is great. These are folks that we can work with. I reached out to Doge on four different occasions. We were excited to be able to meet with them. That never happened. Never got a call back. The main difference between Doge and the inspectors general,

according to my reporting, is accountability. The inspectors general have this very unique dual reporting relationship in government. They report both to Congress and to the head of their agency. That means that they can truly be independent. They can tell the head of their agency this government is not run effectively because they also report to Congress. Doge doesn't have that, right? Doge doesn't have that sort of accountability right now than we know of. In an interview with Sean Hannity, Trump and Musk stated that they were going to find massive amounts of taxpayer money

that has been squandered away. If you had to put a number on it, how much do you think you've identified waste, fraud, abuse, corruption at this point? Well, the overall goal is to try to get a trillion dollars out of the deficit. We asked the inspectors general, can Elon Musk find a trillion dollars worth of fraud? Trillion dollars is a lot of money.

I don't think there's a trillion dollars in fraud in the federal government. Is there bloat? Is there ineffectiveness? Is there inefficiency? Absolutely. There's no question that there's a lot of fat to trim in the federal government. But to think that there's a trillion dollars worth of fraud, and I'm talking criminal fraud, in any government organization, I just don't think it's realistic. And in comparison, inspectors general have saved American taxpayers a ton of money. The numbers they told us are incredible. 75 billion is what we've saved a taxpayer. Well over $10 billion, I think $10.8 billion.

$30 billion hard dollars. $14.5 billion at least. The big deal here is what happens after you fire the watchdogs, what happens after you fire the folks who are responsible for ensuring transparency in government. In our interviews, that's what the... IGs were worried about, who will be appointed after us? Will they have independence?

Will they be able to issue tough reports without being afraid of being fired the next day? The firings have created a real chilling effect, and the message is sent that if you do the work that you're intended to do, and it's not popular, that you'll be punished. When all measures of accountability, when those checks and balances that the founders put throughout our structure of government, when those checks and balances start to fail, that to me would send off alarm bills. Our democracy is not even in danger. It's no longer a democracy when people don't have the freedom to speak truth to power.

Eight of the former inspectors general have sued the Trump administration to try to get their jobs back. So far, a judge has refused to immediately reinstate them, but their case is expected to be heard at the end of the month. If you like this show, follow it on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. This show is produced by Derek Arthur, Sophia Alvarez Boyd, Vichaka, Fiby Lett, Christina Samuoski, and Jillian Weinberger. It's edited by Kari Pitkin, Alison Brusek, and Annie Rose Strasser. Engineering, mixing, and original music by Isaac Jones, Sonia Herrero, Pat McCusker, Carol Saburo, and Afim Shapiro. Additional music by Amin Sahota.

The fact check team is Kate Sinclair, Mary Marge Locker, and Michelle Harris. Audience Strategy by Shannon Busta, Christina Samuiluski, and Adrian Rivera. The executive producer of Times Opinion Audio is Annie Rose Dresser.