Democrats Challenge Trump’s Pentagon Watchdog Pick, After Firing

(Bloomberg) -- Democrats on the Senate Armed Services Committee challenged the independence and experience of President Donald Trump’s nominee to succeed the Pentagon inspector general he ousted.

Jason Abend, Trump’s nominee for the watchdog role at the Defense Department, was asked by Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut what he would to do to ensure his office would be “‘safeguarded against any kind of interference.” Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren cited his “obvious lack of experience.”

Abend, who has worked as an investigator for inspectors general but not in a leadership position, responded that “any request that comes towards me, whether it be from the White House, Congress or the public, will be treated the same way: independently, objectively and through the analytic lens of an inspector general.”

If confirmed by the Senate, Abend would replace Glenn Fine, whom Trump ousted as the Defense Department’s acting inspector general in April in a move that also prevented Fine from serving as chairman of a panel overseeing trillions of dollars in coronavirus relief funds.

Although inspectors general have traditionally been given broad independence, Trump has ousted a number of those he considered insufficiently loyal.

“The kind of turnover we’ve seen -- largely the result of the president firing inspectors general without cause -- has severely undermined effective oversight,” Blumenthal said. Senator Angus King of Maine, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, described the job-life expectancy of an inspector general as “about the same as a squirrel trying to cross Pennsylvania Avenue” in Washington.

Special Operations

At Thursday’s hearings, Democrats also challenged former Navy SEAL Louis Bremer, Trump’s nominee for assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict.

Democratic Senators Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire and Tim Kaine of Virginia demanded that Bremer explain his role on the board of a company that, according to some reports, had trained Saudi nationals who were later responsible for the killing in 2018 of columnist columnist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul.

After being vague about his recollection of an internal investigation into the issue, Bremer said of the board that it was “probably likely that we did do some sort of investigation. I just don’t recall the specifics of that.”

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