The U.S. Agency for International Development falsely claimed that documents detailing foreign aid to Ukrainian businesses were classified when Senator Joni Ernst (R., Iowa) tried obtaining access to them last year.
USAID has come under scrutiny from Republican lawmakers and the White House in recent days as Elon Musk, who leads the Department of Government Efficiency, works to cut back on the federal government’s wasteful spending and potentially shut down the aid agency. Ernst, the Senate chair of the DOGE Caucus, is on board with that mission given her past interactions with USAID.
In September 2024, Ernst’s office requested access to data on foreign aid to Ukraine. USAID stipulated that the review be conducted in a sensitive compartmented information facility at its headquarters, suggesting to the senator’s staffers that the aid documents were classified when, in reality, they were not.
“The documents my staff reviewed, on their face, failed to comply with standard classifications protocols. Only after demanding to speak to your USAID Office of Security, my staff uncovered that this data was, in fact, unclassified,” Ernst wrote in a Tuesday letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
“In a desperate attempt to limit congressional oversight of public information, USAID demonstrated intentional abuse of a system designed to keep our nation’s secret information secure.”
Upon her staff’s review of the requested data, the Senate Republican discovered that more than 5,000 Ukrainian businesses received foreign assistance funded by American taxpayers through several USAID programs. These included the Competitive Economy Program and the Investment for Business Resilience. Up to $2 million was provided to each Ukrainian business, per the letter.
Ernst’s account marks another blatant example of the independent agency’s “demonstrated pattern of obstructionism,” she wrote, when responding to congressional requests on taxpayer-funded spending.
Rubio, who is now the acting administrator of USAID, said that was also the case for him when he served in the Senate for 14 years.
“It’s a completely unresponsive agency. It’s supposed to respond to policy directives with the State Department, and it refuses to do so,” Rubio told reporters on a visit to El Salvador on Monday. “Every dollar we spend and every program we fund, that program will be aligned with the national interest of the United States. USAID has a history of sort of ignoring that.”
While he was named the temporary head of USAID, Rubio delegated agency duties to Peter Marocco, director of foreign assistance at the State Department, in a recent letter to bipartisan lawmakers. Marocco is responsible for conducting a review and leading a potential restructuring of USAID’s foreign aid programs.
Pending the review, USAID announced Tuesday night that it placed all direct hire staff on administrative leave globally except for “designated personnel responsible for mission-critical functions, core leadership and specially designated programs.” The administrative leave period for most employees starts Friday night.
There have been discussions of folding USAID into the State Department as a way to cut back on wasteful spending, which seems likely now that Rubio and Maracco are in charge of the agency.
President Donald Trump and Musk have led the way to dismantle USAID with support from Republicans, while Democrats claim the White House and DOGE are illegally wielding their executive authority to shut down USAID. Because the agency was approved by Congress in 1961, Democrats argue a law is needed to fundamentally alter USAID.
When asked if Congress is the only one that can “do away” with USAID, Trump suggested that may not be the case if USAID is found to have engaged in fraud.
“I don’t know, I don’t think so. Not when it comes to fraud,” the president told reporters. “These people are lunatics, and if it comes to fraud, you wouldn’t have an act of Congress. I’m not sure that you would anyway, but we just want to do the right thing. It’s something that should have been done a long time ago.”