Pentagon watchdog resigns after being blocked from stimulus role by Trump

The Pentagon watchdog who was initially forged to chair the impartial committee overseeing greater than $2 trillion in virus stimulus spending resigned a month after being blocked from that function by President Donald Trump.

Glenn Fine, the principal deputy inspector common on the Pentagon, mentioned in a press release issued Tuesday that the “time had come” for him to step down, whereas praising the accountability federal watchdogs should pursue investigations impartial of political pressures.

“They are a vital component of our system of checks and balances and I am grateful to have been part of that system,” Fine mentioned in a press release despatched by Dwrena Allen, a spokeswoman for the Pentagon Inspector General’s workplace.

Fine — who had served within the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations — had initially been tapped by his friends to steer the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee, however the appointment got here as Trump was more and more taking motion in opposition to inspectors common he sees as insufficiently loyal.

In an sudden transfer in early April, Trump ousted Fine from his job as performing Defense Department inspector common, successfully eradicating him from having the ability to serve on the committee. Afterward, Trump mentioned he didn’t know Fine and didn’t suppose he had ever met him.

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Fine was praised by Jim Mattis, Trump’s first protection secretary, as a “public servant in the finest tradition of honest, competent governance,” Yahoo News reported on the time.

Since then, Fine had returned to the Pentagon to his prior function as principal deputy.

In his interval as performing inspector common on the Defense Department, Fine improved the transparency of his workplace, decreasing a reliance on a “For Official Use Only” label on paperwork that’s steadily used within the Pentagon to restrict distribution of delicate or embarrassing data.

He additionally was credited with bettering morale in his division as he pursued a variety of probes from price overruns on key weapons methods to the the U.S. army struggles in Syria and Iraq.

The former Harvard University basketball level guard was drafted within the 10th spherical by the San Antonio Spurs in 1979 however accepted a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford University as a substitute.

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