Trump Likely Broke The Law By Firing Government Watchdogs In “Midnight Massacre”

On Friday evening, The Trump White House sent emails to 17 inspector generals at various government agencies to inform them that they were being immediately fired. The law requires that an administration give Congress a 30-day notice that these vital watchdogs are being let go, but obviously that didn’t happen. So not only do we have a president who has no regard for the law, but now we have no one left to enforce it. Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins explains what happened.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

What is being referred to as Donald Trump's Friday Night Midnight Massacre, the president of the United States via email fired at least 17 inspectors general, which I believe is how you say the plural of that across the federal government. Not every inspector general was fired, but plenty of them were vital watchdogs to our government agencies. They're the ones who highlight and find waste, fraud, abuse, rule breaking of any kind. And Donald Trump sent out an email saying, you're fired. Get out now. Now, obviously, if you're the kind of person that feels the need to get rid of the people looking over your shoulder, that's a bad sign. That typically is an indication that, listen, we're gonna do some pretty illegal here in the next few years. Uh, we don't want these guys to be the ones who report on it, so I'm gonna fire them and I'm gonna replace them with, uh, these folks over here who aren't gonna say a word about any of it.

That is what that tells us. Like easy. Everybody should be able to pick up on the fact that that is what's happening. I don't have to harp too much on that. I have faith that you all already picked that up. What you may not know, however, is that this move by Donald Trump to fire these watchdogs, these inspectors, general, is illegal by law. Donald Trump is required to provide Congress with 30 day notice if they're going to fire an inspector General. Obviously, Trump didn't do that, hasn't even been president with the authority to do it for 30 days. He just did it because he doesn't care because the convicted felon sitting in the White House obviously has no respect for the rule of law and kind of the icing on the cake here, who's gonna report him, right? Who's gonna put together a report saying, Hey, Donald Trump broke the law when he fired the people that put together these reports.

Uh oh. Kind of seems like we are, uh, steering without a rudder at this point, folks, Donald Trump does something illegal. I mean, it's clear as day in the law. You gotta give 30 day notice if you're gonna let these people go. The notice goes to Congress, not necessarily the people, and he didn't do it. That's a violation of federal law. But how do you hold him accountable when the people he illegally fired are the people that are supposed to tell us when he breaks the law? Right? Bit of a weird catch 22 right there. You can't legally fire these people, but you did. But these people are the ones who are supposed to tell us when you do something illegal, but now they can't.

So maybe Trump knew that maybe he's a moron and just didn't, uh, know he needed to do it. Or maybe the convicted felon in the White House simply didn't care because he doesn't care about the rule of law and he wants to get to the law breaking as quickly as possible. We were not even a week into this presidency when this man violated federal law. Not even a week. Just something to think about.