A Harvard law professor contends that President Donald Trump’s firing of 17 inspectors general on Friday was “probably lawful.”
Jack Goldsmith, the Learned Hand professor at Harvard University, detailed in an article published on Monday on Lawfare Media, an outlet he co-founded, that Trump’s mass firing is likely within his presidential power.
“The removals are probably lawful even though Trump defied a 2022 law that required congressional notice of the terminations, which Trump did not give. Trump probably acted lawfully, I think, because the notice requirement is probably unconstitutional,” he writes.
The 2022 law, Securing Inspector General Independence Act, calls for “substantive rationale, including detailed and case-specific reasons” to be provided to Congress along with 30-day notice of a firing, according to Goldsmith.
However, he contends Trump has a powerful legal argument against the constitutionality of the notice requirement:
The Trump administration has a pretty strong argument that the notice provision is unconstitutional. The Court has recognized the president’s “unrestricted removal power” over executive branch officials, subject to only “two exceptions.” The potentially relevant exception here comes from the shriveled and maybe-dead precedent of Morrison v. Olson (1988). There the Court ruled that the removal protections on the old independent counsel didn’t unduly interfere with the functioning of the Executive Branch because “the independent counsel [was] an inferior officer under the Appointments Clause, with limited jurisdiction and tenure and lacking policymaking or significant administrative authority.”
Yet, the 2022 amendment to the Inspector General Act also established stringent guidelines for installing new inspectors general, which Goldsmith argues are constitutional. It restricts Trump’s eventual replacement of interim inspectors general to a pool of longtime government employee candidates, including federal employees at the GS-15 level — the top grade achievable for federal employees — and already confirmed inspectors general, per Goldsmith.
If constitutional, as Goldsmith contends, it would hamper Trump from appointing new inspectors general outside the government bureaucracy. He also reportedly has the option of appointing a government employee who is not a confirmed inspector general but served in a position above a GS-15. Still, there are some stringent requirements for these candidates as well.
In a letter to Director of Presidential Personnel Sergio Gor on Friday, the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency Chairperson Hannibal “Mike” Ware contended that the council “not believe the actions taken are legally sufficient to dismiss Presidentially Appointed, Senate Confirmed Inspectors General.”
Goldmith’s view undermines Ware’s argument.
Breitbart News Senior Legal Contributor Ken Klukowski says that Trump’s removal of inspectors general is “definitely lawful.”
“President Trump’s actions are definitely lawful, because Congress’s Democrat-pushed law in 2022 requiring presidents to further explain their decision before firing an IG is unconstitutional,” Klukowski said. “The president has inherent authority under Article II of the Constitution to terminate at will a civil officer of the United States, and an IG is such an officer.”
“If President Trump’s actions here are challenged, it could bring additional clarity to this area of law if and when the issue reaches the Supreme Court,” Klukowski added. “And a victory on that score would help secure several other actions the president took this past week to make government accountable to the American people.”
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