Linick has usefully annoyed State Department officials through two administrations. In December 2013, the year he was appointed, he issued a “management alert” about cybersecurity breaches that roiled State Department officials but proved to be prescient.

In June 2015, to the everlasting regret of former secretary Hillary Clinton, he began investigating “hundreds of potentially classified emails” that had been on Clinton’s private email server. Linick went on to review email security violations by former officials stretching back more than a decade, an investigation one Republican target remembers as a “nightmare.”…

An IG’s job is to be meddlesome. A May 2020 online summary by Linick’s office cites 565 open matters awaiting a recommendation. This year, his office has, among other things: criticized a construction delay in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, that increased the cost of a new embassy building; reprimanded a State Department officer for approving a $28,569 payment to a company that employed the officer’s spouse; and demanded that a contractor pay $629 for unauthorized use of an iPhone and iPad.

The United States isn’t a family business. It’s a multi-trillion-dollar global operation. It needs independent auditors. Mr. President, stop acting like you own the place.