Lawfare Daily: Trump Admin Attacks on Inspectors General with Cristin Dorgelo and Rob Storch
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 18 December 2025
⏱️ 49 minutes
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Summary
Lawfare Managing Editor Tyler McBrien sits down with Cristin Dorgelo, a former senior adviser for management at the Office of Management and Budget, and Rob Storch, who served as the inspector general of the Defense Department until the Trump administration fired him and many of his colleagues in January of this year. They discuss those firings, other Trump administration attacks on the offices of the inspector general, and various attempts by the administration to undermine oversight and evade accountability, all covered in a new report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities called “Trump Administration’s Undercutting of Oversight Hurts Taxpayers and Beneficiaries.”
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Those employees and those leaders are working in an environment where the administration is clearly signaling its distrust and its dislike of these oversight processes. |
| 0:15.0 | And that for us raises significant concerns about whether offices of inspectors general are going to be able to act |
| 0:22.9 | assertively and quickly and with cooperation from the administration. |
| 0:28.1 | It's the Lawfare podcast. I'm Tyler McBrien, managing editor of Lawfare, with Kristen Dorgalow, |
| 0:35.2 | former senior advisor for management at the Office of Management and Budget, |
| 0:39.6 | and Rob Storch, who served as Inspector General of the Defense Department until the Trump administration fired him and many of his colleagues in January of this year. |
| 0:48.5 | For oversight to work effectively, it has to be, as I mentioned at the outset, nonpartisan, and it has to be |
| 0:58.5 | independent. Now, how that gets defined may depend upon the nature of the agency and what's being |
| 1:06.6 | overseeing, but it's critically important that there be the independence to essentially, as |
| 1:12.7 | people say, speak truth to power. |
| 1:15.5 | Today we're talking about the Trump administration's attacks on the offices of the |
| 1:19.3 | Inspector General, as well as other attempts to undermine oversight and evade accountability, |
| 1:24.6 | covered in a new report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. |
| 1:28.8 | So, Kristen, I want to start with you to talk a bit about the Center on Budget and Policy |
| 1:34.5 | Priorities recent report that was released at the beginning of November called Trump |
| 1:39.9 | Administration's undercutting of oversight hurts taxpayers and beneficiaries. So I want to start |
| 1:45.5 | with a bit of a background question on what motivated this report? Why did CBPP undertake this project? |
| 1:52.5 | Well, with my colleagues, Devin O'Connor and Kathleen Roebig, we have been looking at what has been |
| 1:58.3 | transpiring in the Trump administration related to oversight. |
| 2:02.5 | We understand that independent oversight is an important process for understanding the |
| 2:07.1 | effectiveness of federal programs. And we were seeing changes happening in terms of the |
| 2:13.0 | administration taking steps really from its first week through more recent months and weeks about its |
... |
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