Trump Picks White House Lawyer as Watchdog for Virus Bailout
Trump Picks White House Lawyer as Watchdog for Virus Bailout
(Bloomberg) -- President Donald Trump intends to nominate a White House lawyer to a newly created post of inspector general to oversee spending of the coronavirus stimulus.
In a statement on Friday night, the White House said that he has chosen Brian Miller for the job, despite having questioned the authority of the position almost as soon as it was created.
Miller, according to the statement, is now a “special assistant to the president and a senior associate counsel in the the White House Counsel’s office. Before that, he “was an independent corporate monitor and an expert witness.”
He has worked at the Justice Department and was an assistant U.S. attorney in Virginia, the statement added.
The inspector general will work out of the Treasury Department and have subpoena powers.
Creation of the oversight post was a key concession by Senate Republicans during the bill’s hasty development, sought by congressional Democrats to ensure oversight over hundreds of billions of dollars in potential loans and spending.
Under the stimulus legislation, the inspector general will have the authority to seek information from government agencies, and report to Congress any refusal of a reasonable request. Trump said in the statement that he won’t let that happen without his approval.
In a statement issued last week to accompany his signature on the bill, Trump said the Special Inspector General for Pandemic Recovery, or SIGPR, cannot go to Congress if refused information by agencies about loans and investments made by the Treasury secretary.
“I do not understand, and my administration will not treat, this provision as permitting the SIGPR to issue reports to the Congress without the presidential supervision required by the Take Care Clause” in the Constitution, Trump wrote.
Miller will have to be confirmed by the Senate, and is sure to come under scrutiny by Democrats after Trump’s remarks disparaging the inspector general’s role.
The inspector general will have an operating budget of about $25 million for five years and submit quarterly reports to Congress.
The job includes “audits and investigations” of loans and loan guarantees issued by the Treasury and financed under the bill.
The stimulus oversight is modeled on the Troubled Asset Relief Program, a $700 billion bailout for banks passed amid the 2008 financial crisis. Elizabeth Warren, now a Democratic senator from Massachusetts, led the congressional oversight panel created for TARP.
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