Key Intelligence Watchdogs Resign in Wake of Trump’s Win

The top watchdogs for the Central Intelligence Agency and Office of the Director of National Intelligence are leaving their roles in the wake of former President Donald Trump’s re-election, sources tell the Project On Government Oversight (POGO) and their agencies confirm.

These departures come as unease has swept across the federal inspector general community, which anticipates the possibility of a purge of senior watchdog officials by the incoming Trump administration.

Appointed by the president and housed within executive agencies, inspectors general investigate waste, fraud, and abuse of power and are responsible for reporting wrongdoing both to agency directors and to Congress. Oversight by inspectors general has long been considered to be more important when both the executive branch and Congress are under control of the same political party.

One of the departing inspectors general, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s Thomas Monheim, first took his watchdog role after Trump fired his predecessor Michael Atkinson in the spring of 2020. Atkinson had transmitted a whistleblower complaint to Congress that sparked Trump’s first impeachment in 2019.

“It is hard not to think that the President’s loss of confidence in me derives from my having faithfully discharged my legal obligations as an independent and impartial Inspector General,” Atkinson said in a statement at the time.

Installing loyalists in key oversight positions was a recommendation of the conservative Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025. Individuals involved in a training video created as part of the project and obtained by ProPublica and Documented, said the next president should select “their own IGs” so that they “have control of the people that work within that government.” Trump’s presidential campaign distanced itself from Project 2025, but there are numerous ties between that Heritage Foundation effort and the incoming administration.

Monheim and his counterpart at the CIA, Robin Ashton, were both nominated by Biden and confirmed by the Senate in 2021 (Monheim began serving as acting inspector general the year before, during the first Trump administration).

“After more than 38 years of public service, I am retiring from the federal government at the end of this year. It has been the pinnacle of my rewarding career to serve alongside the dedicated officers at CIA for the last three and a half years as the CIA Inspector General,” Ashton said in an emailed statement provided via a CIA spokesperson. “I have every confidence that the exceptional work of the Office of the Inspector General will continue to have positive impact on behalf of the American people.”

Monheim told POGO in an emailed statement that “On November 13, I informed the President of my intent to resign as the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community (IC IG), effective January 3, 2025.”

“Serving as the IC IG has been a tremendous privilege and the pinnacle of my more than 30 years of military and civilian service spanning seven different Presidents,” Monheim said. “I am incredibly proud of the IC IG team’s tireless and selfless efforts to conduct independent, objective, and nonpartisan oversight of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) and across the Intelligence Community (IC). As a result, the ODNI and the IC are better, and the Nation is safer.”

The two vacancies come as Trump has named nominees to run these intelligence agencies. He nominated John Ratcliffe, a former Republican congressman from Texas, to run the CIA, which is responsible for analyzing global national security threats, has a network of confidential human sources, and runs covert operations at the behest of the president.

Ratcliffe earlier served as the Director of National Intelligence at the tail end of Trump’s first term, and he narrowly won Senate confirmation amid criticisms that he would put loyalty to Trump over duty.

Ratcliffe said during his 2020 Senate confirmation hearing that “I will deliver the unvarnished truth. It won’t be shaded for anyone. What anyone wants the intelligence to reflect won’t impact the intelligence I deliver.”

Later that year, however, former CIA director John Brennan accused Ratcliffe of having “totally abused those responsibilities and authorities of the Office of Director of National Intelligence.”  And this year, before Ratcliffe’s appointment, the Supreme Court’s ruling giving presidents legal immunity for official acts prompted Brennan to issue stark warnings: “What if a future president with dictator-like ambitions seeks to quash any real or perceived political opposition by using the broad and unrivaled powers of the presidency, up to and including the use of lethal force?”

Tulsi Gabbard, a former Democratic congresswoman from Hawaii who left the party after leaving the House, is Trump’s current nominee to be Director of National Intelligence — a role created in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks to improve intelligence coordination across numerous intelligence agencies.

Gabbard has come under criticism — including from Trump’s former national security adviser, John Bolton — for amplifying false information spread by nations hostile to the United States, and for her qualifications.

Concerns about the willingness of these nominees to do their jobs well, and apolitically, as well as the underlying importance and sensitivities of these agencies means the watchdog roles at the CIA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence are critical. Whoever fills them is under intense pressure, regardless of the president.

“The stuff that you do tends to be very high profile. It’s not for the faint of heart,” said Charles McCullough, a former inspector general of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, in 2021 remarks provided to the Associated Press. That pressure may run even higher under President Trump, who is not shy about upbraiding watchdogs publicly and who fired a string of top watchdogs in 2020.