A letter dated July 28, from U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer to House Speaker Mike Johnson reveals that the Department of Justice (DOJ) is prepared to defend the removal of former Voice of America (VOA) Director Michael Abramowitz. The removal was ordered by Acting Chief Executive Officer Kari Lake of the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM).
Solicitor General Sauer explained the restriction against Abramowitz’s termination in a letter, obtained by The Arizona Daily Independent, writing, “The head of Voice of America, an inferior executive officer, is appointed by the Chief Executive Officer of the United States Agency for Global Media. See 22 U.S.C. 6205(e)(l). A federal statute provides that the Chief Executive Officer may remove the head of Voice of America only with the approval of the Independent Broadcasting Advisory Board.”
The Solicitor General then laid out the administration’s legal position that the DOJ “will file in defense of the removal of Michael Abramowitz from that office.”
He wrote, “ Under Article II, inferior executive officers must be removable at will by the President or by a department head acting on the President’s behalf. See Seila Law LLC v. CFPB, 591 U.S. 197, 215 (2020). The Supreme Court has recognized only one narrow exception to that ‘general rule.’ Ibid. That exception extends, at most, to certain domestic inferior officers ‘with limited duties and no policymaking or administrative authority.’ Id at 218. The head of Voice of America falls outside that exception. Among other things, he exercises significant policymaking or administrative authority in supervising Voice of America, and Voice of America’s activities implicate the President’s authority to manage foreign affairs.” Sauer concluded that the legal opinion is supported by precedent set in Seila Law LLC v. CFPB. In that case, the Supreme Court ruled: “In our constitutional system, the executive power belongs to the President, and that power generally includes the ability to supervise and remove the agents who wield executive power in his stead. While we have previously upheld limits on the President’s removal authority in certain contexts, we decline to do so when it comes to principal officers who, acting alone, wield significant executive power. The Constitution requires that such officials remain dependent on the President, who in turn is accountable to the people.” As reported by AZ Free News, Abramowitz’s termination was decided after he declined reassignment to the agency’s Edward R. Murrow Transmitting Station of the International Broadcasting Bureau in Greenville, NC and that the USAGM maintains “the Chief Executive
Officer, acting on the President’s behalf, may lawfully remove the Voice of America Director, an inferior officer.”
In the Solicitor General’s legal opinion, Acting Chief Executive Officer of USAGM Kari Lake, must necessarily have the power to appoint and remove personnel from the agency at will to satisfy the President’s duties under the Constitution as vested by Congress: “the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments.”