He was told to be independent. Trump fired him for it [Los Angeles Times :: BC-TRUMP-INSPECTOR-GENERAL:LA] WASHINGTON — Michael Atkinson says he did what the law required, nothing more. “I did what I had to do,” he said. “If I had kept quiet, I would have spent the last year, probably the rest of my life, not sure I could live with myself.” Atkinson can trace his test of conscience to a precise moment: just before noon on Thursday, Aug. 15, 2019, at his L-shaped desk in a nondescript office overlooking a highway in northern Virginia. That’s when he stopped dead at the second paragraph of a whistleblower’s complaint: “The president of the United States is using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election.”