Fraud, waste, and abuse.
That’s what inspectors general are tasked with investigating throughout the federal government. For decades, these watchdogs have been a key layer of oversight, working to ensure agencies are spending taxpayer money wisely. But in his first week in office, President Donald Trump did something unprecedented. He fired at least 17 IGs—more than any president in history—without notifying Congress or providing a substantive rationale for doing so, both of which are required by federal statute.
Trump, instead, said he would “put good people in there that will be very good.”
On this week’s episode of More To The Story, host Al Letson talks with one of those fired IGs, Larry Turner of the US Department of Labor. This is his first extended interview since being fired.
“It was a power purge to get rid of the people, the watchdogs, that actually provide oversight,” he says of Trump’s mass firings. “We are really the eyes and the ears for the American public.”
Trump has authorized Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency to root out the same kind of fraud, waste, and abuse that congressionally authorized IGs are typically responsible for investigating.
Turner has spent much of his career as an IG, including stints at the Department of Defense and the Army. Since 2021, he’d overseen hundreds of employees who worked to publicize waste within the Labor Department. His office uncovered widespread unemployment insurance fraud after the COVID-19 pandemic. So far, 2,000 people have been for filing fraudulent claims that cost U.S. taxpayers $47 billion.
Turner is now one of eight IGs suing the Trump administration to be reinstated. He describes Trump’s effort to oust IGs as a threat to democracy itself.
“They have basically dismantled the civil service,” Turner says. “What they have done is cruel.”
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