The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) has traditionally been a relatively low-profile federal office. That changed rather dramatically this year after the White House tapped Bill Pulte — a presidential sycophant recently described by The Washington Post as “a prominent Trump sidekick” — to lead the agency.
Indeed, as Donald Trump has focused much of his energy on targeting his perceived political foes, Pulte has appeared eager to weaponize mortgage fraud allegations as part of the broader political campaign.
It’s against this backdrop that Reuters reported:
The internal watchdog for the U.S. Federal Housing Finance Agency is being removed from his role, four people familiar with the matter said, at a time when the housing regulator is playing a role in President Donald Trump’s targeting of perceived political enemies.
According to the Reuters report, which hasn’t been independently verified by MSNBC, Joe Allen, FHFA’s acting inspector general, was notified of his termination by the White House. “His ouster also came about as he was preparing to send a letter to Congress notifying lawmakers that the FHFA was not cooperating with the inspector general’s office,” the article added.
The developments come a month after Reuters also reported that Pulte “skipped over his agency’s inspector general when making criminal referrals” against Trump’s political enemies.
In other words, as the FHFA appears increasingly politicized by its partisan director, the agency’s internal watchdog, who is responsible for keeping the office on the straight and narrow, has been shown the door.
Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts said in response to Allen’s apparent ouster, “Director Pulte has some answering to do.”
Complicating matters is the scope and scale of the broader campaign Team Trump has launched against IGs.
As regular readers know, on the first Friday night of his second term, Trump fired at least 18 inspectors general who were responsible for rooting out corruption, ethical lapses and mismanagement in federal agencies throughout the government. The president didn’t appear to have the legal authority to take such steps, but he did anyway.
In the months that followed, the total number of IG firings reached roughly two dozen, which coincided with the White House defunding the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency, the umbrella organization for 72 inspectors general across the federal government — despite the fact that Congress had already agreed to fund the office.
There’s no great mystery about the motivation behind the broader campaign: Inspectors general exist to ensure that federal agencies abide by applicable laws and institutional rules (among other reasons). The White House often likes to ignore applicable laws and institutional rules, so Trump and his team tend to see inspectors general as annoying hindrances in need of removal. It’s why the president and his team have fired so many of these inspectors general, why they’ve left so many inspectors general offices vacant throughout the federal government and, in some instances, why they’ve nominated controversial loyalists to serve in key offices. There are still some inspectors general doing their jobs, but given recent events, they no doubt realize that their careers are subject to the whims of a president who has already fired many of their peers without cause. The result is a system of inspectors general that is now broken in significant ways, which necessarily opens the door to more corruption, more mismanagement, more ethical lapses and more departments acting beyond legal limits. This post updates our related earlier coverage.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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