{"id":9872,"date":"2020-05-17T06:59:04","date_gmt":"2020-05-17T13:59:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=9872"},"modified":"2020-05-17T07:09:36","modified_gmt":"2020-05-17T14:09:36","slug":"mitt-romney-calls-trumps-ig-firings-a-threat-to-accountable-democracy-cnn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=9872","title":{"rendered":"“Mitt Romney calls Trump’s IG firings ‘a threat to accountable democracy'”, CNN International"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Kelly Mena,\u00a0<\/span>May 16, 2020<\/p>\n

Washington, DC (CNN)<\/cite>Republican Sen. Mitt Romney on Saturday denounced President Donald Trump’s firings of internal government oversight officials, calling it a “threat to accountable democracy.”<\/p>\n

Romney’s comments came in response to Trump’s Friday firing of State Department Inspector General Steve Linick<\/a> — the latest in a series of dismissals<\/a> of independent government watchdogs that have come in the wake of the President’s acquittal on two articles of impeachment earlier this year.<\/p>\n

“The firings of multiple Inspectors General is unprecedented; doing so without good cause chills the independence essential to their purpose. It is a threat to accountable democracy and a fissure in the constitutional balance of power,” the Utah Republican tweeted.<\/p>\n

Romney is the only Senate Republican who voted to convict Trump of abuse of power earlier this year.<\/p>\n

Linick’s dismissal drew immediate condemnation from top Democrats who accused the President of engaging in a pattern of retaliation against public servants charged with oversight of his administration. Sen. Bob Menendez, the top Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, called it “another Friday night massacre”<\/a> on CNN Saturday night after announcing earlier in the day that he and his House counterpart, Foreign Affairs Chairman Eliot Engel, had launched a probe into the firing.<\/p>\n

The letter that announced Linick’s firing, first reported by Politico<\/a>, stated that the dismissal will take effect in 30 days unless members of Congress intervene to pressure or convince the President to reverse course.<\/p>\n

Though Republicans have been mostly quiet about the firing, earlier in the day, Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley, a longtime proponent of inspectors general, expressed some concern about Trump’s rationale for firing Linick.<\/p>\n

“As I’ve said before, Congress requires written reasons justifying an IG’s removal. A general lack of confidence simply is not sufficient detail to satisfy Congress,” Grassley said in a statement.<\/p>\n

Late Saturday night, Maine Sen. Susan Collins also responded to the firing in a series of tweets that suggested Linick’s dismissal didn’t meet the standard required by law.<\/p>\n

“The President has not provided the kind of justification for the removal of IG Linick required by this law,” said Maine Sen. Susan Collins, referencing a law she co-authored in 2008, as part of a Twitter thread<\/a>.<\/p>\n

CNN’s Jeremy Diamond, Zachary Cohen and Manu Raju contributed to this story.<\/em><\/p>\n

CNN International<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Kelly Mena,\u00a0May 16, 2020 Washington, DC (CNN)Republican Sen. Mitt Romney on Saturday denounced President Donald Trump’s firings of internal government oversight officials, calling it a “threat to accountable democracy.” Romney’s comments came in response to Trump’s Friday firing of State Department Inspector General Steve Linick — the latest in a series of dismissals of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1001004,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9872"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1001004"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9872"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9872\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9875,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9872\/revisions\/9875"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}