President Biden nominates Thomas Monheim as Permanent Inspector General

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US President Joe Biden is looking to keep the watchdog overseeing the US intelligence community and to nominate Thomas Monheim for Senate confirmation as the permanent inspector general. Point to be noted that the inspector general investigates and audits the 18 organizations in the intelligence community and reviews potential whistleblower complaints. This role is most important as a neutral watchdog accumulated heightened attention under Donald Trump. Democrats alleged Trump of politicizing intelligence to suit his goals and beliefs. Michael Atkinson was terminated by the then-president in April 2020 because he forwarded a complaint to Congress that sparked an investigation of Trump’s pressuring Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden. Atkinson was required by law to share the complaint with Congress as he determined it was urgent and credible.

But, the complaint was overruled for weeks by the then-acting director of national intelligence, Joseph Maguire. Charles McCullough served as intelligence community inspector general before Atkinson and he was the first person to hold the job. Monheim was then the general counsel at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and later appointed as the acting inspector general after the termination of Atkinson. The current Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines issued a statement and said, “Monheim had the utmost professionalism and integrity. Tom is an excellent choice, and the Intelligence Community will benefit greatly from his unwavering commitment to an IC Inspector General that is independent and objective in its work”. He admired the history of Monheim with other intelligence and law enforcement agencies and called it a good move for them to promote somebody from within.

However, Monheim has not faced major public controversy since taking the acting role, but both McCullough and Atkinson did. McCullough was drawn into the investigations over whether former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton illegally shared classified information through her personal email system. It is noteworthy that McCullough notified Congress in 2016 that he believed several dozen of her emails had contained highly classified material. A Clinton spokesperson alleged that he had been part of a coordinated leak to hurt her presidential campaign. McCullough said he was notified that had Clinton beaten Trump in 2016, she would have dismissed him. He ultimately left the post in early 2017. On Wednesday, he said, “The stuff that you do tend to be very high profile. It’s not for the faint of heart. But any IG would tell you that”.