In the United States, Office of Inspector General (OIG) is a generic term for the oversight division of a federal or state agency aimed at preventing inefficient or unlawful operations within their parent agency. Such offices are attached to many federal executive departments, independent federal agencies, as well as state and local governments. Each office includes an inspector general and employees charged with identifying, auditing, and investigating fraud, waste, abuse, embezzlement and mismanagement of any kind within the executive department.
The Office of Inspector General for the Department of State (OIG) is an independent office within the U.S. Department of State with a primary responsibility to prevent and detect waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement. OIG inspects more than 270 embassies, diplomatic posts, and international broadcasting installations throughout the world to determine whether policy goals are being achieved and whether the interests of the United States are being represented and advanced effectively.
Glenn Alan Fine is the former principal deputy Inspector General of the Department of Defense and former Acting IG of the Department of Defense. Fine previously served as the Inspector General of the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) from 2000 until January 2011. He was confirmed by the United States Senate on December 15, 2000. Prior to his appointment as the DOJ Inspector General, Fine served as Special Counsel to the DOJ Inspector General from January 1995 until 1996, when he was made Director of the OIG's Special Investigations and Review Unit.
The U.S.Department of Transportation Office of Inspector General is one of the Inspector General offices created by the Inspector General Act of 1978. The Inspector General for the Department of Transportation, like the Inspectors General of other federal departments and agencies, is charged with monitoring and auditing department programs to combat waste, fraud, and abuse.
Michael Richard Pompeo is an American politician who served in the administration of Donald Trump as director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) from 2017 to 2018 and as the 70th United States secretary of state from 2018 to 2021. He also served in the United States House of Representatives from 2011 to 2017.
John Joseph Sullivan is an American attorney and government official who served as the United States Ambassador to Russia from 2020 to 2022, and who previously served as the 19th United States Deputy Secretary of State from 2017 to 2019. A member of the Republican Party, Sullivan served as Acting United States Secretary of State from April 1, 2018, to April 26, 2018, following President Donald Trump's dismissal of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on March 13, 2018, until Tillerson's official successor, Mike Pompeo, was sworn in. Tillerson did not officially leave office until March 31, 2018. Sullivan, however, was delegated all responsibilities of the Secretary of State beginning March 13.
During her tenure as United States Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton drew controversy by using a private email server for official public communications rather than using official State Department email accounts maintained on federal servers. After a years-long FBI investigation, it was determined that Clinton's server did not contain any information or emails that were clearly marked classified. Federal agencies did, however, retrospectively determine that 100 emails contained information that should have been deemed classified at the time they were sent, including 65 emails deemed "Secret" and 22 deemed "Top Secret". An additional 2,093 emails were retroactively designated confidential by the State Department.
A Review of Various Actions by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Department of Justice in Advance of the 2016 Election is the official 568-page report of the actions taken by the FBI and Department of Justice (DOJ) during the 2016 U.S. presidential election connected with Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server, prepared by the Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General (OIG) "in response to requests from numerous Chairmen and Ranking Members of Congressional oversight committees, various organizations, and members of the public."
Thomas Ulrich Brechbuhl is a Swiss-American businessman and former government official, having held the position of Counselor of the United States Department of State from May 1, 2018, to January 20, 2021. He was appointed by and reported to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and replaced Maliz E. Beams. Along with the role of Counselor, he served as the Acting Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs at the Department of State from March to September 2020.
Steven Alan Linick is an American attorney and State Department official who served as Inspector General of the Department of State and led the Office of the Inspector General of the Department of State. In 2013, he was nominated by President Barack Obama and was confirmed by the United States Senate. Linick was removed from office by Donald Trump on May 15, 2020, effective in 30 days per federal law, with Stephen Akard appointed acting inspector general in the interim.
Crossfire Hurricane was the code name for the counterintelligence investigation undertaken by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) from July 31, 2016, to May 17, 2017, into links between Donald Trump's presidential campaign and Russia and "whether individuals associated with [Trump's] presidential campaign were coordinating, wittingly or unwittingly, with the Russian government's efforts to interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election". Trump was not personally under investigation until May 2017, when his firing of FBI director James Comey raised suspicions of obstruction of justice, which triggered the Mueller investigation.
Mari Stull is an American blogger, lobbyist, and former Trump administration political appointee to the United States Department of State's Bureau of International Organization Affairs. She is alternatively known as the Vino Vixen and by her maiden name, Mari Dunleavy.
The Russia investigation origins counter-narrative, or Russia counter-narrative, is a conspiracy theory narrative embraced by Donald Trump, Republican Party leaders, and right-wing conservatives attacking the legitimacy and conclusions of the investigations. The narrative includes conspiracy theories such as Spygate, accusations of a secretive, all-powerful elite "deep state" network, and other false and debunked claims. Trump in particular has attacked not only the origins but the conclusions of the investigation, and ordered a review of the Mueller report, which was conducted by attorney general William Barr – alleging there was a "deep state plot" to undermine him. He has claimed the investigations were an "illegal hoax", and that the "real collusion" was between Hillary Clinton, Democrats, and Russia – and later, Ukraine.
Joseph Vincent Cuffari is an American government administrator who has been the Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security since 2019. He previously held positions in the Air Force Office of Special Investigations and Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General. Cuffari was also a policy advisor to Arizona Governors Jan Brewer and Doug Ducey.
Stephen James Akard is a former American diplomat who was the United States director of the Office of Foreign Missions, a division of the Department of State, and beginning in May 2020 also the acting inspector general of the department after President Donald Trump fired his predecessor, Steve Linick. Akard resigned less than three months later to return to the private sector, according to a department spokeswoman.
Review of Four FISA Applications and Other Aspects of the FBI's Crossfire Hurricane Investigation is a report by the United States Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General which was released on December 9, 2019 by Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz. The report reviewed the Crossfire Hurricane investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), which looked into whether people associated with the Donald Trump 2016 presidential campaign coordinated with Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections.
Matthew Stephen Klimow is an American diplomat who has served as the United States Ambassador to Turkmenistan since 2019. On August 31, 2020, Klimow assumed office as the acting Inspector General of the Department of State and left on December 11.
Christi A. Grimm is an American government official who has served as the Inspector General in the United States Department of Health and Human Services since February 2022.
In April and May 2020, United States President Donald Trump dismissed the inspectors general (IGs) of five cabinet departments in the space of six weeks. The inspectors general removed were Michael K. Atkinson, Intelligence, on April 3; Glenn Fine (acting), Defense, April 7; Christi Grimm (acting), Health and Human Services, May 1; Mitch Behm (acting), Transportation, May 15; and Steve Linick, State, May 15. In four of the cases the announcement was made late on a Friday night in a classic Friday news dump. In several cases the fired IGs had taken an action which Trump disliked, so that the dismissals were widely described as retaliation. In two other cases, questions were raised about whether the dismissals related to ongoing IG investigations into the conduct of the cabinet secretary in charge of that department. The cumulative firings were often described as a "purge" or as a "war on watchdogs".
