# Inspector General Oversight Tree An ASCII-art map of the federal government's **internal-watchdog layer** as an actual structure rather than a talking point: the roughly 74 statutory Offices of Inspector General sorted by how their heads are appointed (presidentially appointed and Senate-confirmed vs. appointed by the agency head), the powers the Inspector General Act gives every one of them, the council they govern themselves through ([[Inspectors General]] carries the institutional history and the purge timeline), the special IGs and what survives of them, and — the whole design and the whole vulnerability — the reporting line that runs to **both** the agency head and Congress at once. Time-slice: **September 6, 2026**; named officeholders web-verified as of that date. Companion to the [[Executive Branch Org Chart]] (which shows the agencies these offices sit inside) and the [[DOJ Component Tree]] (which shows the department that receives their criminal referrals). This map is additive to the [[Inspector General]] concept page: that page argues *why* the office matters; this one shows *how it is built* and where the 2025–26 removals landed. > [!note] How to read this chart > **★** marks an *establishment* IG — nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate. **◇** marks a *designated federal entity* IG — appointed and removable by the head of the agency. **(acting)** marks a seat with no confirmed IG. Arrows (`──▶`, `→`) show reporting and process lines. Bracketed notes flag 2025–26 changes and any figure that is a reported count rather than an official one. Sub-offices are shown as institutions; individuals are named only where a current holder was verified this week. `§` cites are to Title 5, U.S. Code, chapter 4, where the Inspector General Act of 1978 was recodified in 2022. ``` INSPECTOR GENERAL OVERSIGHT TREE — THE INTERNAL-WATCHDOG LAYER (as of September 6, 2026) │ Inspector General Act of 1978, as amended (5 U.S.C. §§ 401–424) · ~74 statutory IGs │ ★ = presidentially appointed, Senate-confirmed ◇ = appointed by the agency head │ (acting) = no confirmed IG [bracketed] = 2025–26 change-notes ──▶ = reporting line │ ■ THE DESIGN — ONE OFFICE, TWO MASTERS │ Every IG sits INSIDE the agency it audits and reports OUTSIDE it at the same time. │ │ ┌──────────────────────────────────┐ │ │ OFFICE OF INSPECTOR GENERAL │ │ └──────────────┬───────────────────┘ │ ┌──────────┴──────────┐ │ "general supervision" semiannual reports · 7-day letters │ ▼ ▼ │ AGENCY HEAD CONGRESS (both chambers; oversight │ (may not prevent or prohibit any and appropriations committees) │ audit or investigation — § 403(a)) │ ├─◆ THE TWO APPOINTMENT TYPES (roughly half and half) │ ├─ ★ ESTABLISHMENT IGs (~37) — nominated by the President, confirmed by the Senate │ │ Removal: by the President only · 30 days' written notice to BOTH chambers with a │ │ case-specific, substantive rationale (Securing IG Independence Act, Dec 2022) · │ │ no fixed term · no for-cause protection │ │ Seats: the 15 Cabinet departments (Treasury has two: Treasury OIG + TIGTA) · EPA · │ │ NASA · SSA · GSA · OPM · SBA · NSF · NRC · Intelligence Community (ICIG, 2010) · ... │ └─ ◇ DESIGNATED FEDERAL ENTITY IGs (~37) — appointed and removable by the entity head │ Same 30-day notice-to-Congress rule since 2022 · Amtrak · FEC · FCC · FTC · NLRB · │ SEC · Peace Corps · Smithsonian · National Archives · CPB · EEOC · Legal Services · │ Federal Reserve Board + CFPB (one office, appointed by the Fed Chair) · ... │ ├─◆ THE POWERS (what makes the office more than an internal auditor) │ ├─ Access to "all records" of the agency ............ § 406(a)(1) · IG Empowerment Act 2016 │ ├─ Subpoena power over documents — not testimony ..... § 406(a)(4) │ ├─ Law-enforcement authority for criminal agents ...... § 406(f) · refer prosecutions to DOJ │ ├─ Semiannual report ──▶ agency head ──▶ Congress within 30 days, transmitted UNALTERED │ ├─ 7-day letter — "particularly serious or flagrant" ──▶ agency head ──▶ Congress in 7 days │ └─ Whistleblower intake — OIG hotline · a Whistleblower Protection Coordinator in every OIG │ (retaliation claims run to Office of Special Counsel ──▶ Merit Systems Protection Board) │ ├─◆ CIGIE — COUNCIL OF THE INSPECTORS GENERAL ON INTEGRITY AND EFFICIENCY (statutory, 2008) │ │ The community's own body: all ~74 IGs + OMB Deputy Director for Management + OGE + OSC │ │ + OPM + an FBI designee. Elects its chair from among the IGs. │ ├─ Chair ................... Cheryl Mason (VA IG) — elected 3/24/26, serves 4/6/26 – 12/31/26 │ │ [Tammy Hull (USPS IG) was acting chair Jan 2025 – Apr 2026; the race was uncontested] │ │ [next election late 2026 for the two-year term beginning 1/1/2027] │ ├─ Integrity Committee ..... investigates misconduct allegations against IGs THEMSELVES │ │ (IG members + FBI designee + OGE + OSC) ──▶ findings to the President or agency head │ ├─ Standards & peer review . Quality Standards for Federal OIGs ("Silver Book") · peer review │ ├─ Training Institute · Oversight.gov (single public portal for every OIG report) │ └─ Funding ................. assessments on member OIGs, routed through OMB │ [OMB withheld FY26 funds; restored Nov 2025 after Sens. Grassley and Collins objected; │ CIGIE must now request its own money from OMB quarterly] │ ├─◆ SPECIAL & TEMPORARY IGs (created by statute for one program; sunset with it) │ ├─ SIGAR — Afghanistan Reconstruction (2008) ......... CLOSED — final report Dec 2025 │ ├─ SIGPR — Pandemic Recovery (CARES Act, 2020) ....... SUNSET March 2025 │ ├─ SIGTARP — Troubled Asset Relief Program (2008) .... [status unconfirmed as of 9/6/26] │ └─ PRAC — Pandemic Response Accountability Committee . a CIGIE committee, 2020 │ [still operating; new chair appointed Feb 2026] │ ├─◆ SELECTED OFFICES (a slice, not the roster; heads named only where verified this week) │ ├─ DoD OIG ★ — the largest OIG, ~1,600 staff ...... IG: Platte Moring (confirmed 12/22/25) │ │ [Robert Storch fired 1/24/25; Steven Stebbins acting through 2025] │ ├─ DOJ OIG ★ ................................... IG: Don Berthiaume (confirmed 8/7/26, 51–47) │ │ [Michael Horowitz left 6/30/25 for the Fed/CFPB OIG; Berthiaume acting Oct 2025 – │ │ Jan 2026 until the acting clock ran out; deputy William Blier then held the duties] │ ├─ DHS OIG ★ ................................... IG: Joseph Cuffari (since 2019) │ │ [told Congress in 2026 that DHS officials "systematically obstructed" his office] │ ├─ VA OIG ★ ............................. IG: Cheryl Mason (confirmed 2025, party-line vote; │ │ former senior adviser to VA Secretary Doug Collins) — also CIGIE chair, above │ ├─ Labor OIG ★ ................................. IG: Anthony D'Esposito (former Rep., NY-04) │ ├─ USDA OIG ★ .................................. IG: John Walk (confirmed Dec 2025) │ ├─ Fed Board / CFPB OIG ◇ ...................... IG: Michael Horowitz (appointed June 2025) │ ├─ Intelligence Community IG ★ .......... [Michael Atkinson fired Apr 2020 — 1st-term precedent] │ ├─ HHS ★ · State ★ · Treasury ★ · TIGTA ★ · Interior ★ · Energy ★ · Education ★ · HUD ★ · │ │ Transportation ★ · Commerce ★ · EPA ★ · SSA ★ · NASA ★ · GSA ★ · OPM ★ · SBA ★ ... │ │ [most of these seats were emptied on 1/24/25; the fill-rate is in the removal track below] │ └─ Legislative-branch OIGs (outside the IG Act's removal rules): GAO · Library of Congress · │ U.S. Capitol Police · Architect of the Capitol · Government Publishing Office │ ├─◆ THE REMOVAL TRACK — HOW AN IG ACTUALLY LEAVES (statute vs. 2025–26 practice) │ │ │ │ STATUTE: President decides ──▶ 30-day written notice to both chambers, with case- │ │ specific reasons ──▶ removal ──▶ acting IG must be the first assistant or a │ │ senior official of another OIG (2022 Act) ──▶ nomination ──▶ confirmation │ │ │ │ PRACTICE: 1/24/25 — 17 IGs removed overnight by e-mail citing "changing priorities"; │ │ no notice, no reasons ──▶ Storch v. Hegseth (D.D.C.) ──▶ 9/24/25 Judge Ana │ │ Reyes: the firings were UNLAWFUL; reinstatement DENIED (no irreparable harm — │ │ the President could re-fire them after 30 days' notice) │ │ ──▶ 19 IGs fired by Mar 2026 [Government Executive count]; acting IGs swapped │ │ at 5 agencies; ★ vacancies peaked at 39 [CREW]; 28 ★ seats open in Oct 2025 │ │ with nominations pending for only 5 │ │ ──▶ fill-rate: 5 confirmed en bloc 53–43 (Dec 2025) · 8 total by Apr 2026 · │ │ DOJ in Aug 2026 makes at least 9 — most had served in a Trump administration │ │ ──▶ FY27 budget request: Cabinet OIGs −12% vs FY24 on average; Interior and │ │ DOJ OIGs −28%; staffing −9% projected on top of −10% in 2025 [Partnership for │ │ Public Service] · IG workforce down ~12% overall [Public Citizen, Mar 2026] │ │ │ └─ THE PAYOFF: the 30-day rule is a NOTICE requirement, not a CAUSE requirement. The court │ found the violation and supplied no remedy; the emptied seats were refilled from inside │ the administration; the council's money now runs through OMB one quarter at a time. │ The office survives with the same statute, a smaller staff, and a different master. │ └─◆ THE OUTER RING (the bodies the IG system was built to feed) ├─ Government Accountability Office — Congress's own auditor, outside the executive entirely ├─ Office of Special Counsel — retaliation cases; Special Counsel Charles Baldis (conf. 8/7/26) │ [Hampton Dellinger, the Biden-appointed incumbent, removed Mar 2025 mid-term] ├─ Merit Systems Protection Board — adjudicates retaliation; Chair James Woodruff (conf. 8/7/26) │ [Democratic member Cathy Harris fired 2025; SCOTUS June 2026 allowed removal w/o cause] ├─ Congressional committees — House Oversight · Senate HSGAC · both Judiciary · appropriators └─ DOJ — where an OIG's criminal referrals go, or don't (see the DOJ Component Tree) ``` ## Notes Officeholder and status changes captured above (verified September 6, 2026): - **CIGIE chair** — [[Cheryl Mason]], the Veterans Affairs IG, was elected chair on March 24, 2026 and took office April 6 to finish the current term through December 31, 2026; a new election for the two-year term beginning January 1, 2027 is due late this year. Tammy Hull (USPS IG) had been acting chair since January 2025 and did not seek the post; the race was uncontested. Good-government groups objected that Mason had been a senior adviser to VA Secretary Doug Collins before her party-line confirmation in 2025, and Sen. Tammy Duckworth has introduced a bill to bar former political appointees of a sitting administration from IG posts. - **Justice OIG** — [[Don Berthiaume]], a career OIG official and former DEA whistleblower, was confirmed August 7, 2026 in a 51–47 en bloc vote. [[Michael Horowitz]] had left the post June 30, 2025 to become IG for the Federal Reserve Board and CFPB. Berthiaume served as acting IG from October 2025 to January 2026 until the acting-service limit ran out; deputy William Blier then performed the duties. Berthiaume told the Judiciary Committee he intends to finish the OIG's audit of DOJ's compliance with the Epstein Files Transparency Act within a year. - **Defense OIG** — [[Platte Moring]], a first-term DoD deputy general counsel, was confirmed December 22, 2025, replacing acting IG Steven Stebbins. Robert Storch, the confirmed IG fired January 24, 2025, is the lead plaintiff in [[Storch v. Hegseth]]. - **The court ruling** — On September 24, 2025 Judge [[Ana Reyes]] (D.D.C.) held that the January 2025 firings violated the Inspector General Act's notice-and-rationale requirement but declined reinstatement, reasoning that the plaintiffs had not shown irreparable harm because the President could lawfully re-fire them after giving 30 days' notice. No appellate disposition had been found as of this writing; the D.D.C. ruling stands as the current state of the law. - **Counts** — Government Executive counted **19** IGs fired by March 2026, plus acting IGs replaced at five agencies; the vault's [[Inspectors General]] page carries **at least 21** fired or forced out, a figure that includes resignations. CREW reported a peak of 39 vacant presidentially appointed IG seats (more than 55 percent of them) and, as of October 17, 2025, nominations pending for only 5 of 28 vacant Senate-confirmed posts. The Senate had confirmed eight Trump IG nominees by April 2026 — five of them in a single 53–43 en bloc vote in December 2025 — and the DOJ confirmation in August brings the total to at least nine. - **Money** — OMB withheld CIGIE's fiscal 2026 funding and reversed in November 2025 after Sens. [[Chuck Grassley]] and [[Susan Collins]] objected; the council must now request its funds quarterly. The fiscal 2027 budget request would cut Cabinet-department OIGs by an average of 12 percent against fiscal 2024, with Interior and Justice cut 28 percent each (Partnership for Public Service analysis, April 2026). Public Citizen put the overall IG workforce reduction at about 12 percent as of March 2026. CIGIE's own FY2024 report claimed an $18 return per dollar spent. - **Special IGs** — SIGAR closed after its final report in December 2025; SIGPR sunset in March 2025 as the CARES Act provided; PRAC (a CIGIE committee) was still operating in February 2026 when a new chair was appointed. SIGTARP's status has not been confirmed and is bracketed in the map rather than asserted. - **The outer ring** — Charles Baldis was confirmed as Special Counsel and James Woodruff as MSPB chair in the same August 7, 2026 en bloc vote. The prior Special Counsel, Hampton Dellinger, was removed in March 2025 before the end of his five-year term; MSPB Democratic member Cathy Harris was fired in 2025, and the Supreme Court held in June 2026 that the President may remove members of such boards without cause (see [[Trump v. Slaughter]]). Structural notes: - **Why two appointment types.** The 1978 Act covered the big departments with presidentially appointed IGs; the 1988 amendments extended the model to "designated federal entities" — smaller agencies, boards and commissions — with IGs appointed by the entity head. The 2022 Securing Inspector General Independence Act applied the same 30-day notice-and-rationale rule to both types and required that an acting IG be the office's first assistant or a senior official of another OIG. None of this is for-cause protection: the statute regulates *how* an IG is removed, never *whether*. - **The dual reporting line is the design.** An IG's semiannual reports go to the agency head, who must forward them to Congress within 30 days without alteration; a "7-day letter" on a particularly serious problem must reach Congress within a week. The agency head may not prevent or prohibit an audit or investigation (§ 403(a)), though the Secretaries of Defense, Treasury, Homeland Security and a few others hold a narrow written-notice exception for national-security matters. This is what made the office threatening under a strong [[Unitary Executive Theory]] — a subordinate officer with a statutory duty to report past the President to another branch — and it is exactly the line the 2025 removals cut. - **The special IGs are the model at full strength.** SIGAR and SIGTARP show what an IG with one program, a dedicated appropriation and a sunset clause can do; they are also the easiest to end, because ending them is a legislative act everyone can agree on once the program is gone. PRAC, as a CIGIE committee rather than a stand-alone office, is the one pandemic-era body that has persisted. - **What this map does not do.** It does not roster all ~74 offices or name every current IG; the community changes weekly, and an unverified name is worse than none. The full membership is on ignet.gov and every OIG report is at Oversight.gov. It does not re-narrate the purge — that is [[Inspectors General]] — and it does not argue the concept, which is the job of [[Inspector General]]. ## See also - [[Inspectors General]] · [[Inspector General]] — the institutional page and the concept page this map hangs between - [[Executive Branch Org Chart]] — the agencies these offices sit inside - [[DOJ Component Tree]] · [[Special Counsel Appointment and Removal Flow]] — where an OIG's criminal referrals go, and the parallel independent-investigator mechanism - [[Federal Workforce Structure Tree]] · [[How a Federal Agency Is Dismantled]] — the personnel and capacity maps the IG cuts belong beside - [[Federal Law Enforcement Agencies Tree]] — the armed side of this layer: OIG criminal investigators are 42 of the 89 agencies in the federal law enforcement census, and 5 U.S.C. § 406(f) puts their arrest authority in the Attorney General's hands, rescindable office by office or agent by agent, under a determination no court may review - [[Committee Oversight Crosswalk]] — which congressional committees receive which OIG's reports - [[Government Accountability Office]] · [[Office of Special Counsel]] · [[Merit Systems Protection Board]] — the outer ring - [[Legislative Support Agencies Tree]] — GAO in its own branch - [[Confirmation Pipeline]] — how the ★ seats get filled, and why en bloc packages matter - [[Trump v. Slaughter]] — the June 2026 removal-power ruling that frames the whole question - [[Schedule F]] · [[DOGE]] · [[Unitary Executive Theory]] · [[Checks and Balances]] - [[Federal Agencies Hub]] · [[Federal Government Hub]] - [[Federal Whistleblower Protection Crosswalk]] — what an IG can and cannot do for a complainant: § 407 protects your identity until the IG alone decides disclosure is unavoidable, and supplies no forum, no order and no remedy for retaliation