USAID Inspector General Fired After Warning on Aid Oversight

The White House fired the inspector general for the US Agency for International Development on Tuesday, officials said, a day after his office warned that the Trump administration's dismantling of USAID had made it all but impossible to monitor $8.2 billion in unspent humanitarian funds. The White House gave no reason for the firing of Inspector General Paul Martin, one of the officials told the AP. The officials were familiar with the dismissal but not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

• Inspectors general are typically independently funded watchdogs attached to government agencies and tasked with rooting out waste, fraud and abuse. The Trump administration earlier purged more than a dozen inspectors general.
• "Look what happens when you write a report critical of this administration: They fire you the next day," Michael Missal, former inspector general at the Department of Veterans Affairs, tells the Washington Post. "This chills independent oversight, and that's exactly what we need right now." Missal was among those fired by Trump last month.

• On Monday, Martin's office issued a flash report warning that the Trump administration's freeze on all foreign assistance and moves to cut USAID staff had left oversight of humanitarian aid "largely nonoperational." That includes the agency's ability to ensure none of the funding falls into the hands of violent extremist groups or goes astray in conflict zones, the watchdog said.
• A lawsuit filed Tuesday alleged that the unraveling of USAID is stiffing American businesses on hundreds of millions of dollars in unpaid bills for work that has already been done. The administration's abrupt foreign aid freeze also is forcing mass layoffs by US suppliers and contractors for USAID, including 750 furloughs at one company, Washington-based Chemonics International, the lawsuit says.

• For Chemonics, one of the larger of the USAID partners, the funding freeze has meant $103 million in unpaid invoices and almost $500 million in USAID-ordered medication, food and other goods stalled in the supply chain or ports, the lawsuit says.
• For the health commodities alone, not delivering them "on time could potentially lead to as many as 566,000 deaths from HIV/AIDS, malaria, and unmet reproductive health needs, including 215,000 pediatric deaths," the lawsuit says. The filing asserts that the administration has no authority to block programs and funding mandated by Congress without approval.

(More USAID stories.)