Noah Feldman, Columnist

Trump Inspector General Firings Take Aim at Rule of Law

The president is using the pandemic as a cover.

April 8, 2020 at 5:30 PM UTC

Noah Feldman is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. A professor of law at Harvard University, he is author, most recently, of “To Be a Jew Today: A New Guide to God, Israel, and the Jewish People."

Not so busy with coronavirus that he can’t find time to say “You’re fired.”
Photographer: Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images

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In the shadow of the coronavirus pandemic, President Donald Trump is taking ever bolder steps to gut the government structures designed to ensure the rule of law in the United States.

In the last week alone, he’s fired two prominent inspectors general: the intelligence community inspector general who received the whistleblower complaint that sparked Trump’s impeachment; and the Defense Department inspector general who had just been named by a group of other inspectors general to oversee the coronavirus bailout effort.