Cruz 'confident' Trump will nominate 'serious' new inspectors general
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said he’s confident President Trump will hire “serious” inspectors general to replace the roughly 17 agency watchdogs that he ousted from their posts on Friday night.
In an interview on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Tuesday, Cruz defended the firings and repeatedly sidestepped questions about whether Trump violated the law by not giving Congress 30 days advance notice of the watchdogs’ terminations.
“What I'm saying is the President has the authority to terminate people in the executive branch,” Cruz said. “And I also think inspectors general are incredibly important for ensuring that agencies are following the law.”
“And I'm confident the President is going to nominate serious, qualified people to be inspector general that will do exactly that,” he continued.
Trump on Friday night fired at least 17 inspectors general (IGs) at agencies within the Defense Department, State Department, Energy Department, Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and others.
Democrats and some Republicans have raised concerns about the move, specifically pointing to a law that requires the president to give Congress notice of IG terminations at least 30 days before they are effective, a step Trump did not take prior to his Friday move.
“We write to express our grave concern about your recent attempt to unlawfully and arbitrarily remove more than a dozen independent, nonpartisan inspectors general without notice to Congress or the public and in the dead of night,” House Democrats wrote in a Saturday letter to the president.
“Your actions violate the law, attack our democracy, and undermine the safety of the American people,” they added.
Cruz said multiple times in the interview that the president has the authority to fire people in the executive branch, but CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin pushed Cruz to address specifically the 30-days’ notice requirement.
“What about that part of the law?” Sorkin pressed. “You think that’s not a real law, then?”
“I think at the end of the day, I'm looking at this first week of the administration, and I'm excited. I have never seen an administration with so much, so much energy and such a mandate from the voters,” Cruz responded.
Sorkin pushed Cruz again.
“I’m not disagreeing with any of those things,” Sorkin said, speaking over Cruz. “I’m just asking about the law itself. Because there’s actually, there’s an actual law and then what’s happening, which is different.”
“Well, look, Andrew, under our Constitution, Congress and the president are designed to struggle back and forth, and so we can pass laws putting constraints on the executive, but it is not new for the executive to press back on Congress, and that back-and-forth was designed by the framers," Cruz said.
"That's part of the checks and balances. What's clear under Article II, is the President, all executive power, is vested in the president, and that's what he's exercised."
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