Fired head of the agency that protects whistleblowers sues Trump, saying he was ousted illegally

AP ^ | 02/10/2025 | ALANNA DURKIN RICHER AND ERIC TUCKER

[mcenedo]

The Office of Special Counsel is responsible for protecting the federal workforce from illegal personnel actions, such as retaliation for whistleblowing. It investigates whistleblower claims of reprisal, can pursue disciplinary action against employees who punish whistleblowers and provides a channel for employees to disclose government wrongdoing.

[irishjuggler]

Does Trump or any president have the right to run the executive branch or not? I don’t understand this “you can’t fire me” shtick.

[lurk]

They say they’re using Trump. They’re actually using the government. No pennies will come out of Trump’s pocket, for a change.

[V_TWIN]

“I don’t understand this “you can’t fire me” shtick.”

The five stages of grief are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.....this dudes still at stage 1.

[Linda Tripp]

Somebody better call the WHAAAmbulance

[AZJeep]

Agency protecting whistleblowers

_________________

From what I can see, he did not do his job too well!

[RetiredTexasVet]

You nailed it. Complete failure. Whistleblowers were fired, harassed, lawfare, etc. under his incompetent command.

[Qiviut]

Every whistle-blower I have seen interviewed (2 from USAID in the last week) have suffered retaliation in major ways & one is involved in a lawsuit that has been ongoing for something like 4 years. “Hamilton” or whoever has held this position prior has, as you noted, not done a good job.

[butterdezillion]

This should be obvious to everyone. Yet he’s complaining to the CIA-funded AssPress that there is no reason to fire him.

[Blood of Tyrants]

They aren’t meant to win, they are just meant to tie Trump up in court forever.

[butterdezillion]

And Trump knows there will be a whole bunch of whistle-blower who need the protection this guy has NOT been providing.

[Qiviut]

I believe you are correct.

[Blood of Tyrants]

Isn’t the entire mission of DOGE whistle blowing for fraud, waste, and abuse?

[Fledermaus]

We have a winner!

[wbarmy]

“I don’t understand this “you can’t fire me” shtick.”

I think the unions were able to get the Federal Agencies, (excluding DoD) to agree to hiring and firing rules. Again, the agencies agreed to this. Not the Executive. The Executive just let them do it because they usually didn't care. The Executive still has the power to fire outside of the Agencies role, which is what Trump is doing. If this was only an internal agency issue, the guy might have a legal leg to stand on.

Anybody DoD has no leg to stand on at all, they are always at the discretion of the CiC.

[RetiredTexasVet]

Technically I think DOGE is basically an impromptu audit.

[cgbg]

In civilian agencies only regular employees are allowed to be union members.

Anyone who supervises or manages anyone else is not eligible and is not covered by a union contract.

That means the subject of this thread can be fired on the spot—zero issue.

[V_TWIN]

I have friends at the DoD facility I worked at that WANT to take the early retirement offer, and from what little they are being told (and that’s not much) the offer isn’t open to them.

It’s kind of a mess really.

[cgbg]

The civilian and military pieces of the government have always had different rules.

This particular buyout is for civilian agencies—not complicated at all.

[wbarmy]

Probably DoD isn’t involved because the vast majority of DoD civilians can probably tell you what they do, and why.