The behind the scenes chaos which led the Social Security watchdog to resign

Stonewalling federal investigators, retaliation and whistleblowers and levying large fines against the most vulnerable Americans had become commonplace inside the office that was supposed to oversee the Social Security Administration.

It finally came to a head last week.

Gail Ennis, resigned after years of criticism of her management, on Friday from her role as the adminstration’s Office of Inspector General. She was nominated by former president Donald Trump to run the post in 2018 and took office a year later.

The inspector general helps oversee an office and issues reports and corrective measures to address problems. In this case, Ennis oversaw the administration responsible for the monthly checks received by 69 million retired Americans and another 15 million who receive disability payments.

What Ennis inherited from her predecessor was a debacle that would spiral into a scandal due to her actions, eventually leading to her downfall nearly six years later.

Ennis was a vocal supporter of Trump’s 2016 campaign for president and donated thousands of dollars in a relationship that was first exposed by the nonpartisan watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. Her loyalty was rewarded with dual roles — under Trump’s administration, she also served as Inspector General for the Department of Interior for several months.

But her management of the Social Security Administration as it dealt with accusations of improperly levying fines against poor and disabled Americans, in some cases in violation of due process, eventually resulted in her resignation.

Upon taking office as inspector general, Ennis inherited a program that had begun just one year earlier, which was crippling the financial house of elderly Americans, according to a Washington Post investigation.

The office was levying massive fines, sometimes into the hundreds of thousands of dollars, against dozens of Americans who received (and kept) improper Social Security benefit payments.

The improper fines only affected slightly more than 100 Americans, according to the Post’s investigation, but were levied without proper procedures being followed and were done in violation of office regulations. The fines triggered a series of investigations from the Post, which in 2022 reported how the fees had financially devastated those targeted, such as one elderly woman who kept receiving payments from the agency after the death of her husband.

Those payments, she explained, had been mistaken for estate payments.

“I’m going to be dead by [the time I can afford to retire],” Gail Deckman told the Post. “They’re taking away my Social Security. They’re charging me so much. Do they think I can afford a lawyer to fight this?”

It’s unclear still how much of a hand Ennis had directly in what the Post described as a “giant jump” in the size of fines levied under her office, especially given that the practice began before her tenure. But Ennis’s problems do not end there.

As the Post’s investigations triggered interest from Congress and the Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General got involved, Ennis played hardball.

A report from DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz, in March of 2024 accused Ennis of stonewalling his probe by ordering staff to refuse comment to investigators and by withholding documents herself.

In 2022, the Post released a report detailing a culture of retaliation and toxicity within the Inspector General’s office, where those who originally flagged the issue of the excessive and improper fines to Ennis found themselves “begging” for meaningful work at the office.

“They pretend I don’t exist, hoping that eventually I will exhaust my emotional and financial resources and walk away,” longtime SSA-OIG attorney Joscelyn Funnié told the Post.

With reporting of her management increasingly appearing in the Post, Ennis found herself under increasing criticism. Throughout 2023, she faced calls for her resignation, including in a letter sent to Biden last fall by the Project on Government Oversight.

But the real source of her doom was the Senate Finance Committee, chaired by Democrat Oregon’s Ron Wyden. The committee launched an investigation into Ennis and her management of the agency in late 2022, and in 2023 the committee demanded answers from Ennis on a wide range of topics and allegations raised by current and former employees of the office. Among the complaints - misuse of federal funds and retaliation against whistleblowers.

It was Wyden who led for her resignation.

“When Inspector General Ennis appeared before the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance as a nominee, she assured me and my colleagues that she would establish a culture that welcomes debate, collaboration, and transparency, which is why I supported her nomination,” Wyden wrote this winter to President Biden. “Unfortunately, over her five-year tenure as Inspector General, those promises appear to have been hollow.”

“Since taking the helm at SSA OIG, her office has gone from one of the highest performing in government, to one in disarray. Under her leadership, SSA OIG has been plagued by complaints of a hostile work environment, retaliatory civil lawsuits filed against fellow employees, abysmal staff morale ratings, and falling productivity,” his letter continued. “Rather than taking accountability, Inspector General Ennis has provided empty promises, refused to acknowledge her shortcomings and attempted to discredit the whistleblowers she was found to have retaliated against.”

Biden sat on that recommendation for months.

On Friday, a spokesperson for Ennis denied that the incumbent president had been involved in her decision to quit her position at all.

In her resignation letter, Ennis described the agency she had run for five years as “vibrant” and thanked her colleagues. She offered no reason for the timing of her leaving the post.