Pelosi denounces Trump's dismissal of a State Department supervisor

The dismissal by Donald Trump of the highest supervisor of the US State Department "could be illegal" if it was decided in retaliation for one of his investigations, said Sunday the Democratic President of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi. President Donald Trump removed Inspector General Steve Linick, the fourth supervisor the Republican President of the United States has fired since early April, after his Senate acquittal after trial on Friday impeachment.

"The president has the right to dismiss any federal employee, but the fact is that if it came to be like retaliation for an investigation by the Inspector General, it could be illegal," said Nancy Pelosi on State. of the Union on CNN.

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On Saturday, the top Democratic officials of the House and Senate Foreign Affairs committees launched an investigation into the dismissal of Linick, indicating that they understood that Mike Pompeo had personally recommended the sidelining after the Inspector General opened an investigation into the actions of the Secretary of State. A State Department spokesperson confirmed that Linick had been sacked, without commenting on Pompeo's role in the case.

White House trade adviser Peter Navarro downplayed the decision, saying that what Donald Trump called the "deep state" had caused problems and that the disloyal should leave. "We have had huge problems with what some call the deep state (...) So I'm not crying about this departure," he said in an interview with ABC television. "Many bureaucrats believe they were elected president, not Donald Trump ." Trump and his allies have long argued conspiracy theories about what they denounce as the "deep state" , career officials supposedly apolitical but who, Trump and his allies say, are working to harm the current tenant of the House white.

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Navarro's comments are likely to fuel tensions with the Democratic opposition, which has sounded the alarm over what it considers to be an increasingly pressing habit of Donald Trump to dismiss supervisors whom he sees as a threat to his presidency. In April, Trump sacked a senior supervisor to check federal budget support for the coronavirus health crisis.

Donald Trump also notified Congress that he had decided to dismiss the U.S. intelligence chief Inspector Michael Atkinson, who was involved in initiating the dismissal process. Following Atkinson's departure, a bipartisan group of senators, including Republican Mitt Romney, called on Trump to provide written explanations for his decision. Earlier this month, the White House chief sacked Director of Health Inspector General Christi Grimm's services, accusing him of mounting a "bogus file" on hospitals Americans facing shortages in the fight against the coronavirus epidemic.