This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
With renewed vigor and the 2024 election behind him, President-elect Donald Trump is set to take on the Deep State, and one of his proposals is strongly resonating with service members and veterans alike.
In a video shared on X on Nov. 8, Trump can be seen offering a 10-step "plan to dismantle the Deep State." At the 1:46 mark, making his sixth point, he states: "We will make every inspector general's office independent and physically separated from the departments they oversee, so they do not become the protectors of the Deep State."
For many former and current members of the U.S. military, Trump's point powerfully resonates and is a welcome departure from the past. Lt. Col. Ryan Sweazey (USAF-Ret.), a former F-16 fighter pilot and founder of a Walk the Talk Foundation (WTTF), spoke to WorldNetDaily about Trump's new proposal. Having once served as inspector general in the Air Force and thus possessing a clear, first-hand understanding of exactly how government can fail in oversight, Sweazey has been advocating for an independent Office of the Inspector General outside of the Department of Defense for quite some time.
In November 2023, he launched a petition, calling upon others to support revamping the current Department of Defense Inspector General (DODIG) system that "consistently fails in its role to protect military members from reprisal and fails to impartially investigate complaint allegations which are brought forward at high risk by members of the DOD." To date, over 2,800 have signed the petition.
In June 2024, Sweazey's Walk the Talk Foundation offered a proposal to various members of Congress to form an independent Inspector General entity outside Defense Department influence. Pointing out the failures of the current DODIG system and those involved in it, the report was "referred to as the Lapdog Report," a reference to the widespread view that the current inspector general system plays the role of lapdog to the military institution it's supposedly investigating.
Most recently, Sweazey and his team have drafted an executive order that could be enacted by Trump when his new administration starts in January. He describes the order as a "formalized reiteration of what [the Walk the Talk Foundation] has been pitching all along, in both the petition drive and the 'lapdog report' on the failure of the IG system." WTTF's proposed order not only outlines the problems within the Department of Defense Inspector General system, but also offers remedies for them.
For example, Section 4 reveals, "The ultimate aim of this Order is to establish an independent entity through which members of the Department of Defense can attain recourse in a fair and timely manner free from the threat of retribution and/or reprisal."
According to Sweazey, "That aim is just as the president said in his video: The inspector general, for so long, has been a protectorate of the institution and that's got to stop." In order for the current corrupt system to come to an end, he agrees with Trump that "you've got to separate them from the organizations they allegedly oversee, and inspect, and investigate."
The former fighter pilot is hopeful, having been reassured by "friends who are in the inner circle" that a draft of the executive order has indeed made it to the Trump administration. "For too long," he argues, "the system has been wrought with this seething conflict of interest, in which your 'independent' investigative entity is subordinate to the commander/boss of the organization they supposedly oversee."
But as a hopeful Sweazey told WND, "With the president's proposal to remove that conflict of interest, you're going to have an investigative entity that now is able to carry out its duty and uphold its loyalty to the truth."
