By leaving over 55% of presidentially appointed IG posts vacant, Trump is opening the door for waste, fraud and abuse

One year ago, in the first days of his second term in office, President Trump unlawfully fired 17 inspectors general (IGs) en masse. Since then, another 10 IGs were fired or resigned, and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) originally cut off and later severely constrained funding for the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency (CIGIE). Both as a result of these actions and a lack of commitment to quickly filling IG positions, at the end of 2025, over half—55 percent—of the 38 presidentially appointed federal IG positions remained vacant, and of the total 72 federal IG positions, there were 29 vacancies across the federal government. 

While some of these positions have been vacant since the Biden administration (or even earlier), the vast majority of vacancies began during Trump’s second term in office. As a result, many of the key offices within the executive branch charged with preventing waste, fraud, abuse and mismanagement of federal programs are without a Senate-confirmed leader at the same time that President Trump’s administration has engaged in rampant and unprecedented actions which appear to violate federal law—actions that IGs would and should investigate on behalf of American taxpayers. 

Despite claiming that his administration would focus on government efficiency, through actions such as the establishment of the Department of Government Efficiency, President Trump’s efforts to fill IG vacancies have been lackluster. In 2025, President Trump only sent nine nominees to the Senate. At its height there were 39 vacancies during the course of the last year. At least four of the individuals he nominated—Chris Fox, Cheryl Mason, Anthony D’Esposito, and  John Walk—presented serious questions as to their qualifications, partisanship or ability to impartially serve due to connections with the head of the agency for which they are nominated. Some of Trump’s IG nominees have clear partisan ties and the majority of the newly confirmed IGs nominated by Trump previously worked in other roles in his administration. This raises serious concerns about whether those individuals can be independent, impartial and objective.

Chris Fox, who was confirmed as Intelligence Community Inspector General (ICIG) in October, previously served as a senior advisor to the agency head he now is tasked with auditing, the scandal plagued Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. In April Gabbard claimed that her team was focused on electronic voting systems. Last week she was seen at the FBI’s raid of the Fulton County, GA Elections Hub and Operations Center, which seized Georgia ballots from 2020 elections. As members of Congress and the public rightly question whether the DNI is overstepping her role to relitigate the president’s long-debunked conspiracy theories about the 2020 elections, the ICIG should be conducting robust independent oversight of DNI Gabbard’s curious actions in Georgia. Yet, as Mark Lee Greenblatt, former Interior IG who was fired by Trump in 2025, recently noted, “The notion that someone can go from member of the administration to independent overseer of that very same administration strains credulity.” If the ICIG has a potential conflict of interest then he and his team should recuse and another inspector general office with similar security clearance such as the Central Intelligence Agency Office of Inspector General could be tasked with leading the review. This recusal is especially critical given that last year Gabbard fired a key ICIG lawyer and “appointed a senior adviser within the office who reported directly to [her]”, a move that potentially violated the law.

Anthony D’Esposito, a former member of Congress who was confirmed in December as the Department of Labor IG, may have violated House ethics rules during his time in Congress by reportedly placing his fiancée’s daughter, as well as a woman with whom he was having an affair, on his staff payroll. These abuses follow D’Esposito’s time in the New York City Police Department (NYPD) and as a member of the Hempstead town council where he also was mired in ethics-related controversies. While on the town council, a court held that his failure to abstain from a vote benefitting his family violated the “spirit and intent” of the town ethics code. And the New York Daily News reported that, with the NYPD, D’Esposito was alleged to have lied to a grand jury,  accused of participating in an illegal stop-and-frisk, named as a defendant in a lawsuit over false arrests and detentions and accused of wrongfully seizing a white gold chain during an arrest, leading to an internal affairs corruption investigation that was partially substantiated. Given D’Esposito’s history it is reasonable to be dubious of his service in a position responsible for rooting out waste, fraud and abuse.

Cheryl Mason, who was confirmed in July as the inspector general of the Department of Veterans Affairs, served in multiple roles within the VA during both Trump’s first and second terms. That includes previously serving as a senior advisor to VA Secretary Doug Collins. During Mason’s nomination hearing, Democratic lawmakers questioned her ability to serve as a non-partisan and impartial IG considering her political history and prior connection to Collins. 

Another new IG, John Walk, was nominated by President Trump to the office of the inspector general of the Department of Agriculture (USDA) on July 16. Walk, who was confirmed by the Senate in December, previously served as a judicial officer within USDA and as a senior advisor to the secretary of agriculture. Walk also served as an associate counsel within the White House Counsel’s Office during the first Trump administration. Walk’s prior service raises serious questions as to whether he can be trusted to be independent and unbiased in the IG role.

Setting aside the problematic IG nominees President Trump has put forth, it is also concerning that the president has failed to even put forth any IG nominees at several important departments and agencies, including the Department of Treasury, which has had a vacancy since 2019. Other ongoing IG vacancies, including at the National Security Agency and the Department of State, are particularly concerning given the United States’ new military involvement overseas in Venezuela.

President Trump’s slew of attacks on IGs, including the administration’s unlawful defunding of CIGIE—an independent entity  that supports the work of more than 70 individual IGs and addresses issues that “transcend individual Government agencies”—seem to illustrate the president’s desire to weaken any form of objective and independent oversight within the federal government. In September, CIGIE informed Congress that OMB had made a policy decision that “CIGIE would not receive an apportionment of funding for Fiscal Year (FY) 2026 – despite funds currently being available in its no-year revolving account.” Absent an apportionment from OMB, CIGIE was completely unable to operate and fulfill the critical services it provides to offices of inspectors general and the public, including providing training for inspector general staff, operating and maintaining Oversight.gov, publishing information on inspector general vacancies, hosting dozens of OIG websites and hotlines, sharing best practices for OIGs and receiving and investigating complaints against inspector generals. Members of Congress quickly called out the administration for attempting to defund CIGIE. Senators Chuck Grassley and Susan Collins explained that OMB’s attempt to effectively defund CIGIE both undermined congressional intent and threatened functions critical to the oversight of inspectors general. Since then, OMB has apportioned only a fraction of CIGIE’s funding. 

Inspectors general are critical to rooting out corruption, targeting government inefficiency  and preventing wasteful spending. Nevertheless, despite clear bipartisan support from Congress for these offices, Trump continues to attack and hamper IG offices. By keeping inspector general positions vacant, nominating partisan or unqualified candidates to these offices and interfering with the apportionment of congressionally-appropriated funds to CIGIE, the president is sending a clear message to our country: transparency, accountability and federal oversight are not priorities of this administration.