When President Donald Trump fired State Department Inspector General Steve Linick on May 15, it wasn't the first time he took aim in recent weeks at the work of a government watchdog. In the last six weeks, Trump has fired or replaced four inspectors general, including Linick, part of a broad effort to roll back post-Watergate government accountability measures. In Linick's case, Trump acted on the recommendation of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Congressional Democrats say Linick's office was investigating Pompeo for alleged misuse of Department staffers and Trump's 2019 declaration of a state of emergency to sell $8.1 billion in U.S. arms to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. At a moment when the President is engaged in a rolling purge of government officials, what Pompeo may or may not have done has been eclipsed by the Administration's campaign to free itself from independent oversight. Last month, Trump fired Michael Atkinson, the intelligence community inspector general, and Department of Defense acting inspector general Glenn Fine, a move that also removed Fine from his post as head of the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee that oversees some $2 trillion in emergency coronavirus spending. On May 1, Trump said he would replace the Department of Health and Human Services' senior deputy IG Christi Grimm, who released an April report that said hospitals were experiencing "severe shortages of testing supplies" ... amid the coronavirus pandemic.