Trump Just Broke the Law. Blatantly. And He Might Get Away With It.

That is roughly what Donald Trump did last week when he fired a slew of inspectors general in the executive branch. He broke a law that Congress passed as a reform because of his own earlier behavior as president. What he did flings the door wide open to run-of-the-mill corruption and potentially far worse. He doesn’t care, and it seems unlikely that the broader public will care. And there’s surely more of this kind of thing on the way.

The Washington Post reported Friday night that Trump had fired at least 12 inspectors general, who are independent watchdogs parked in agencies of the executive branch that are charged with monitoring waste and corruption. By Sunday, the number was up to at least 15. The White House didn’t release the names of the terminated, but the Post and others found out. Justice and Homeland Security were the only Cabinet-level departments spared the ax. Some of the fired I.G.s were Trump’s own appointees from his first term.

That’s bad on its face. But once you know a little history, Trump’s purge gets even worse than it seems. Inspectors general came into being in 1978 as a post-Nixon accountability reform intended to prevent—or at least discourage—a president from stacking agencies with cronies, steering contracts to friends, and so on. In other words, it’s a guardrail against the abuse of executive power that was put into place because of the only other law-flouting Imperial President in this country’s modern history besides Trump.