CREW -- Trump is attempting to get rid of CIGIE
- Wed, Aug 5 2026 at 10:41 AM
Mark, the Trump administration is attempting to quietly eliminate the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency, which performs key oversight functions.
That cannot stand, which is why we’re urging Congress to take action.
CREW sent a letter to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform urging it to reject the “Restoring Integrity and Efficiency to Inspector General Oversight Act,” which would abolish the CIGIE, transfer certain CIGIE functions to the Office of Management and Budget and eliminate the Integrity Committee.In other words, it would significantly impair independent oversight.
Inspectors general are crucial to uncovering and combating waste, fraud and abuse in the federal government. CIGIE’s mission includes ensuring Offices of Inspectors General have highly skilled workforces to carry out those essential functions.
To support that mission, CIGIE publishes OIG reports on a central website, tracks IG vacancies, runs a training institute and maintains an Integrity Committee to facilitate investigations of allegations of wrongdoing against IGs.
CIGIE is an “independent entity” in the executive branch. However, OMB—the agency to which the bill would transfer some of CIGIE’s responsibilities—sits in the Executive Office of the President and lacks the institutional expertise in standards for independent audits and investigations that is crucial to CIGIE’s functions.
Rather than transferring these functions to OMB, the committee should focus on ensuring that OMB does not constrain CIGIE’s ability to perform these and other duties.
Despite OMB having spent most of the last year attempting to prevent CIGIE from effectively supporting the IG community, the bill proposes to transfer these responsibilities to the OMB Director.
The committee should reject this effort to further politicize IGs, which would hinder the effectiveness and efficiency of the IG community and violate the principles of independence that serve as its foundation.
Transferring this authority to the OMB Director is particularly concerning given that both the president and OMB have demonstrated hostility toward these independent offices.
Since the start of his second term, Trump has systematically disrupted, weakened or outright eliminated the guardrails meant to protect against waste, fraud and abuse within the executive branch, including by firing 17 IGs within days of returning to office.
OMB has also attempted to undercut the independence of the IG community, including by limiting OIG budget requests and, critically, unlawfully restricting CIGIE’s funding.
The Integrity Committee within CIGIE is the watchdog of the watchdogs. Several of the individuals who have been confirmed as IGs previously served in the president’s administration—including at the agencies they now audit. Others have demonstrated a lack of independence from the agencies they were established to investigate.
The risk of politicization in these offices makes it all the more important for whistleblowers and other interested individuals and organizations to raise allegations of wrongdoing against IGs themselves with the Integrity Committee. This would not be possible if CIGIE were abolished.
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