Trump: ‘I Have the Absolute Right as President to Terminate’ the Inspector Generals
EXCERPT:
TRUMP: "I don’t know him at all. I never even heard of him. But I was asked to by the State Department, by Mike. I offered most of my people — almost all of them. I said, you know, these are Obama appointees. If you'd like to let him go, I think you should let him go, but that’s up to you. He is an Obama employee. I understand he had a lot of problems with the DoD, there was an investigation on him, on the Inspector General. I don’t know anything about it. So I don’t know him. Never heard of him. But they asked me to terminate him. I have the absolute right as president to terminate. I've said, who appointed him, and they said President Obama. I said look, I will terminate him. I don’t know what’s going on other than that. But you'd have to ask Mike Pompeo. But they did ask me to do it, and I did it. I have the right to terminate the inspector generals. I would've suggested, and I did suggest in pretty much all cases, you get rid of the attorney generals. Because it happens to be very political whether you like it or not. And many of these people were Obama appointments. So I just got rid of him."