Trump taps longtime GSA watchdog as coronavirus relief inspector general
President Donald Trump plans to tap Brian Miller, a White House lawyer and former federal watchdog, to oversee the new $500 billion coronavirus relief fund housed in the Treasury Department.
Miller, who joined Trump's office of White House counsel after a stint in the private sector, spent nearly 10 years as the inspector general of the General Services Administration, where he handled a string of high-profile waste, fraud and abuse cases — including an investigation of a lavish Las Vegas conference hosted by the GSA in 2010.
Miller was nominated to the GSA watchdog post by President George W. Bush in 2004 and won Senate confirmation the next year. He'll need Senate confirmation again to become the new special inspector general for pandemic recovery, a position established in the new $2 trillion coronavirus response law Trump signed last week.
The new post is one of three layers of spending oversight created by the new law. The others include a five-member congressional commission that will be appointed by leaders of the House and Senate, and a two-dozen member committee of current federal inspectors general headed by Pentagon watchdog Glenn Fine.
Upon confirmation, Miller's role will be watched closely because he's tasked with the most direct role in monitoring Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin's decision to dole out the $500 billion to distressed industries, businesses, and local governments. Congress included a provision requiring the new inspector to report directly to lawmakers if he's "unreasonably" blocked from accessing information. But Trump indicated he intends to ignore that provision, calling it an unconstitutional imposition by Congress on the Executive Branch.
Rather, Trump said, the decision to share such information with Congress would be up to him.
Though inspectors general technically serve as Executive Branch officials, they typically occupy an independent lane insulated from politics. Trump's pick of a current White House lawyer, despite his history as an inspector general, quickly raised alarms for some worried about Miller's independence from the president.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi sharply rejected Miller’s selection, saying the new watchdog must have independence from the White House.
“The President’s nomination of one of his own lawyers clearly fails that test,” Pelosi said Saturday in a statement.
“Clearly and sadly, the President intends to double down on his signing statement promise to disregard key oversight provisions that hold the Administration accountable to the law,” Pelosi continued, adding that it redoubled her urgency to create a House committee solely focused on real-time oversight of the coronavirus funds.
"No one who has served in this WH or any WH should be eligible to serve in this role," said Michael Bromwich, a former Justice Department inspector general. "The job requires complete independence from politics. This nomination should be dead on arrival."
One government watchdog group, the Project on Government Oversight, praised the pick.
“This is GOOD NEWS,” tweeted Danielle Brian, the group’s executive director. “Brian is serious.”
Prior to becoming the GSA inspector general, Miller was a senior adviser to the deputy attorney general in the Bush Justice Department, and he also was an assistant U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia.
Trump used his late Friday announcement to fill out the ranks of the inspectors general in his administration, indicating his intent to appoint new watchdogs for the CIA, Department of Education. Tennessee Valley Authority and Pentagon, where Fine — a former longtime Justice Department inspector general — had been serving in an acting capacity.
Trump's pick for the CIA, Peter Thompson, is a white-collar criminal defense attorney who previously worked as a Justice Department prosecutor for more than two decades. His pick for the DOE, Andrew De Mello, is currently a trial attorney for the Justice Department's Tax Division and has been detailed to the Homeland Security Department's inspector general since last year.
The president's pick to succeed Fine at the Pentagon, Jason Abend, is a senior policy adviser to Customs and Border Protection. And Trump's pick for the TVA, Katherine Crutzer, is currently an acting deputy assistant attorney general in DOJ's Office of Legal Policy.
