WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump has nominated a Republican attorney who was once accused of mishandling taxpayer funds and has a history of launching investigations against abortion clinics to lead the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Inspector General.
If confirmed by the Senate, Thomas March Bell will oversee fraud, waste and abuse audits of the Medicare and Medicaid programs, which spend more than $1 trillion annually.
Bell currently serves as general counsel for House Republicans and has worked for GOP politicians and congressional offices for decades. The president’s nomination is a brazenly political one for a job that has long been viewed as nonpartisan and focuses largely on accounting for and ferreting out fraud in some of the nation’s biggest spending programs.
Bell was terminated from his role at Virginia’s Department of Environmental Quality in 1997 after a state audit showed he improperly authorized a nearly $8,000 payment to the agency’s former spokesman, according to Washington Post reporting at the time.
He was staff director for House Republicans’ 2016 investigation into Planned Parenthood, which offers abortion, contraception and other family planning services at clinics around the country. That controversial panel Bell spearheaded looked into Planned Parenthood’s use of fetal tissue for medical research. During the first Trump administration, Bell’s job at the HHS Office of Civil Rights drew rebuke from Democrats.
When Trump began his second term, he immediately ousted a dozen government watchdogs, including the HHS inspector general. Watchdogs typically stay on when administrations change, and Congress is supposed to receive notice when a president removes them. Eight inspectors general have sued over their mass firing and asked to be reinstated.
Bell referred a request for comment to the White House, which did not immediately respond.
The HHS inspector general also is responsible for investigating hospitals and insurers and ensuring they following regulations. The office has the power to enforce stiff penalties. Inspector generals are viewed as independent from the agencies they police.
