HHS OIG Head Ousted Amid Overnight Purge of Federal Watchdogs

When they came for the watchdogs, they did so in the middle of the night.

As many as 18 Inspectors General of various federal agencies, including U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Inspector General Christi Grimm, were relieved of their duties in an overnight purge of federal watchdogs that seemed to rattle both sides of the political aisle throughout the weekend.

Grimm’s ousting was particularly notable, given that the HHS Office of Inspector General (OIG) is the largest of its kind within the federal government (that said, as recently as the 2020 fiscal year, its approximately $400 million budget was dwarfed by what has since grown to a $1.7 trillion overall budget for HHS). She was only the sixth fully confirmed Inspector General in HHS history, as the federal OIG framework was established in the 1970s during the aftermath of the Watergate scandal as a nonpartisan mechanism to ensure responsible management of federal agency operations.

The HHS OIG features a staff of “1,600 auditors, evaluators, investigators, data analysts, attorneys, and management professionals who carry out OIG’s mission to protect the integrity of HHS programs, as well as the health and welfare of the people they serve,” according to its website. Grimm was listed as being responsible for the oversight of more than 100 programs administered by HHS agencies, including some of the more widely known entities in federal government, such as the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), Administration for Children and Families (ACF), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Grimm’s career at the HHS OIG began in 1999, and she had worked under the Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations. She served in acting capacity as head of HHS OIG from the start of 2020 until February 2022, when the U.S. Senate held a unanimous voice vote to make her the first fully confirmed agency head since Daniel Levinson – a longtime RACmonitor contributor and seven-time guest on the Monitor Mondays weekly Internet radio broadcast, who left federal service following a nearly 15-year stint as HHS OIG head in May 2019.

President Trump appeared to first learn of Grimm’s existence in April 2020, shortly after she announced the grim results of a survey of over 300 hospitals in nearly 50 states and territories to better understand what challenges they faced during the opening weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“It’s just wrong. Did I hear the word ‘inspector general’? Really? It’s wrong. And they’ll talk to you about it. It’s wrong,” Trump said in response to a question about the development during a news conference, according to Vox. “Where did he come from – the inspector general? What’s his name? … No, what’s his name? What’s his name? … If you find me his name, I’d appreciate it.”

POLITICO reported Saturday that the OIG purge sets up what it labeled likely “one of Trump’s first major court battles since taking office.” At least one of the fired Inspectors General, the U.S. State Department’s Cardell Richardson Sr., has told staff he plans to show up to work on Monday regardless, arguing that the firings were done illegally, the news outlet reported, citing an unnamed source.

POLITICO said the list of those ousted includes Inspectors General at the departments of State, Agriculture, Interior, Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, Education, Labor and Defense, as well as the Small Business Administration, the Department of Energy, and the Environmental Protection Agency, along with HHS. The Inspectors General at the Department of Justice, Office of Personnel Management, the Federal Communications Commission, the Export-Import Bank and the Department of Homeland Security remained in place, the report said.

The firings reportedly took place via emails from the White House Presidential Personnel Office, with no notice sent to Congress and no substantive reasoning given. The Associated Press (AP) confirmed the news via a conversation Trump had with reporters aboard Air Force One on Saturday, reportedly pledging he would “put good people in there that will be very good.”

Congress is reportedly supposed to receive 30-day notice on such firings, along with substantive reasoning justifying them, under the law.

“There may be good reason the IGs were fired. We need to know that if so,” Sen. Chuck Grassley, the Republican Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said in a statement reported on by the AP. “I’d like further explanation from President Trump. Regardless, the 30-day detailed notice of removal that the law demands was not provided to Congress.”

Prominent Democrats were less conciliatory in tone.

“To write off this clear violation of law by saying, ‘Well,’ that ‘technically, he broke law.’ Yeah, he broke the law,” Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., told NBC News’s Meet the Press on Sunday.

“His comment was responding to Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who earlier in the program told Meet the Press moderator Kristen Welker that ‘technically, yeah,’ Trump had violated the Inspector General Act, which Congress amended to strengthen protections from undue termination for inspectors general,” NBC reported.