WASHINGTON — A former top foreign aid official was sentenced Wednesday to prison after admitting to accepting bribes and lying to federal investigators.
Mathieu Zahui, former chief financial officer of the African Development Foundation, cried in the courtroom and said, &#8220;I stand before the court with shame,&#8221; before being sentenced to four months in prison by Judge James Boasberg.
Zahui awarded more than $600,000 in no-bid contracts to a friend&#8217;s company based in Africa, which did no actual work. The friend paid him $12,000 in bribes for the contract, Zahui acknowledged in court papers. The African Development Foundation is a federal agency that is the &#8220;little brother&#8221; of USAID.
The case seems to prove a theory of President Donald Trump and Elon Musk correct: That money appropriated to agencies like USAID was enriching insiders in the Washington, D.C., suburbs, who essentially laundered it through third-world countries. Zahui used the Africa-based company as a pass-through to pay agency bills, making it seem like the agency was fulfilling its mission by sending most of its money to Africa, while the foreign company simply used the money to write checks to D.C. bureaucrats and others at Zahui&#8217;s direction. The friend, Maina Gakure, kept $136,000 as his cut.
The criminal charge and guilty plea came after a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/this-foreign-aid-agency-locked-its-doors-to-keep-doge-out-now-we-know-why" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Daily Wire investigation</a> in May 2025 revealed corruption at the agency, including that Zahui had taken bribes from Gakure. Court papers do not name Gakure or his company, Ganiam Ltd., referring to them only as CC-1, for &#8220;co-conspirator.&#8221;
READ MORE: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/this-foreign-aid-agency-locked-its-doors-to-keep-doge-out-now-we-know-why">This Foreign Aid Agency Locked Its Doors To Keep DOGE Out. Now We Know Why.</a> 

The Daily Wire interviewed Zahui for more than an hour prior to the criminal charge, and he struggled to explain why Gakure&#8217;s company was being paid. One of the contracts was for &#8220;travel&#8221; during COVID, when no travel was occurring.
Prosecutors <a href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.288887/gov.uscourts.dcd.288887.14.0.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a> sentencing guidelines called for 15 to 21 months in prison on the felony counts of &#8220;receiving a gratuity as a public official&#8221; and &#8220;making false statements to federal law enforcement.&#8221;
They asked for the high end of that range, saying, &#8220;the public could reasonably question the legitimacy and stewardship of the organization when a senior official entrusted with financial oversight instead manipulates the system for the benefit of himself and his friend. A meaningful sentence is therefore necessary to make clear that individuals who abuse positions of trust and misuse public funds for personal gain will be held accountable, and to deter others,&#8221; prosecutors said.
But Boasberg — the D.C. federal court&#8217;s chief judge, and a notorious liberal who was behind many of the injunctions that have hamstrung the Trump administration — gave a far lower sentence than the guidelines. The four months in prison will be &#8220;followed by 12 months of supervised release. I will not order any restitution but I will order forfeiture of $12,000. I will waive any imposition of a fine,&#8221; he said.
Six <a href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.288887/gov.uscourts.dcd.288887.17.13.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">current</a> and former employees of the federal agency wrote letters to Boasberg supporting and praising him. Paul Olson, a current employee, <a href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.288887/gov.uscourts.dcd.288887.17.12.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">wrote</a> that he does &#8220;not condone the conduct&#8221; of Zahui but also that &#8220;he is an enjoyable person with whom to travel, socialize, and celebrate.&#8221; Prosecutor Sungtae Kang said that one government contractor who wrote a letter asking for a light sentence, Afia Frempong, was actually paid for her work via the pass-through scheme, which enabled Zahui and his friend to skim off the top.
Zahui&#8217;s lawyer <a href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.288887/gov.uscourts.dcd.288887.17.0_1.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">argued</a> that he should receive no prison time because Zahui, who is from the Ivory Coast, &#8220;was born and raised in a culture where communal living was essential &#8230; Both Mr. Zahui and [Gakure] immigrated to the U.S. from Africa &#8230; Zahui felt an affinity with [Gakure] because of their shared experience and cultural values,&#8221; and they &#8220;helped each other.&#8221;
The lawyer, Karen D. Williams — who previously represented the wife of former Sen. Bob Menendez, who took gold bar bribes from foreign nationals —also urged Boasberg to impose no jail time because The Daily Wire and Republicans &#8220;[used] this case as political fodder in support of efforts to <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/corrupt-foreign-aid-agency-lives-on-after-11-republicans-vote-against-defunding" target="_blank" rel="noopener">defund</a> and eliminate ADF altogether.&#8221;
Like Zahui, Gakure immigrated to the United States and was hired by the federal government to administer contracts. Gakure later quit the government to create his own Virginia-based company designed to get government contracts via minority contracting laws. He also created an Africa-based version of the company, which was funded by the African Development Foundation. Zahui told The Daily Wire that Gakure moved from Virginia back to Africa, although records show his company took PPP loans, aimed at mitigating United States job losses during the coronavirus, during the same period.
By mid-2024, during the Biden administration, the USAID inspector general had already seized Zahui&#8217;s phone and found the electronic kickback payments. Not only was he not charged by the Biden Department of Justice, but he was later promoted to be part of a three-person committee that was running the agency.
In that role, Zahui blocked DOGE from entering the building to review its finances. Democrat politicians and media outlets lauded it as an act of heroism at the time. Virtually no legacy media outlets reported on his subsequent guilty plea.
After Trump assumed the presidency, he fired the agency&#8217;s board and named Pete Marocco, who presided over the demolition of USAID, as its acting chair. Marocco terminated staff and contracts.
But another D.C. judge <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/judge-orders-foreign-aid-agency-resurrected-after-african-company-sues" target="_blank" rel="noopener">blocked Trump</a> from controlling the federal agency, saying all actions taken by Marocco are null and void. The ruling came after an <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/judge-orders-foreign-aid-agency-resurrected-after-african-company-sues" target="_blank" rel="noopener">African for-profit company sued</a>, saying depriving it of United States grants would be a financial hardship because ADF was its only customer.
Without a presidentially appointed and Senate-confirmed board chair, the agency now operates in a bizarre limbo, being run by the remaining members of the committee, who worked closely with Zahui and are openly hostile to the president.
The lawsuit on behalf of the African for-profit company was brought by a law firm of Democrat operatives that was pressing for Zahui&#8217;s committee, not the president&#8217;s appointee, to be in charge of the agency, even after The Daily Wire revealed Zahui&#8217;s corruption.
Zahui <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/foreign-aid-official-suspected-of-bribery-is-back-at-work-after-court-ruling" target="_blank" rel="noopener">remained</a> in a top role at the agency for more than a year after prosecutors filed court papers detailing the bribes. After the agency&#8217;s then-general counsel confronted Zahui over legal and financial issues, the African Development Foundation&#8217;s then-CEO, Travis Adkins, placed the general counsel on leave. Adkins is now suing The Daily Wire. His most recent filing is focused on keeping the case in D.C. court, rather than a different jurisdiction.
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/this-foreign-aid-agency-locked-its-doors-to-keep-doge-out-now-we-know-why" target="_blank" rel="noopener">This Foreign Aid Agency Locked Its Doors To Keep DOGE Out. Now We Know Why.</a>

Mathieu Zahui and Judge Boasberg

Ex-Top Foreign Aid Official Cries As He Is Sentenced To Prison For Bribes

Foreign Funding

James Boasberg

Minority Contracting

USAID

Hours after the African Development Foundation&#8217;s chief financial officer admitted to bribery, the Senate voted on whether to abolish the obscure federal aid agency. The vote only required a simple majority, yet it <a href="https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_votes/vote1192/vote_119_2_00017.htm" target="_blank" rel="noopener">failed</a> 42-58 after 11 Republicans joined all Democrats to &#8220;table&#8221; the amendment.
&#8220;Republicans acting alone could have defunded it — and should have done so after USADF’s acting chairman and CEO called for it to be defunded, based on what he described as a culture of chronic fraud, waste, and abuse within USADF,&#8221; the amendment&#8217;s sponsor, Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), <a href="https://x.com/BasedMikeLee/status/2017377363856654624" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a>. &#8220;I look forward to hearing my colleagues explain their votes.&#8221;
The Daily Wire asked all 11 senators for their rationale over the weekend, and none replied. The Republicans are:
<ul class="ul-list" data-mark="*">
<li class="md-list-item">John Boozman (AR)</li>
<li class="md-list-item">Shelley Capito (WV)</li>
<li class="md-list-item">Susan Collins (Maine)</li>
<li class="md-list-item">Kevin Cramer (ND)</li>
<li class="md-list-item">Lindsey Graham (SC)</li>
<li class="md-list-item">John Hoeven (ND)</li>
<li class="md-list-item">Mitch McConnell (KY)</li>
<li class="md-list-item">Jerry Moran (KS)</li>
<li class="md-list-item">Lisa Murkowski (Alaska)</li>
<li class="md-list-item">Thom Tillis (NC)</li>
<li class="md-list-item">Roger Wicker (MS)</li>
</ul>
The African Development Foundation staff locked its doors to prevent Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) staffers from auditing it, making the agency a cause célèbre of the Left. But its chief financial officer, Mathieu Zahui, this week agreed to <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/top-official-of-usaid-linked-foreign-aid-agency-to-plead-guilty-to-taking-bribes" target="_blank" rel="noopener">plead guilty</a> to taking bribes and lying to law enforcement. One of the African groups to which the agency steered money was run by Zahui&#8217;s friend — a fellow former federal employee — who got contracts for doing no work, and wired some of it to Zahui&#8217;s personal bank account.
The Daily Wire broke the story of the African Development Foundation&#8217;s corruption, including Zahui&#8217;s bribes, in a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/this-foreign-aid-agency-locked-its-doors-to-keep-doge-out-now-we-know-why" target="_blank" rel="noopener">May expose</a>. The story showed how many of those who have seen the agency operate up-close believe it should be abolished, even though they almost all identify as liberals.
The agency would give money to African groups as &#8220;grants,&#8221; so it looked like it was complying with its mission, then require the African groups to pay bureaucrats in Washington, D.C. For example, the story said:
<blockquote>In one instance, the African Development Foundation awarded a grant to a Kenyan journalism group called Africa 24 and directed that group to, in turn, pay the salaries of Americans at the federal agency’s D.C. headquarters.</blockquote>
It recounted how the agency allegedly retaliated against its own general counsel after he told officials to stop breaking the law. The general counsel, Mateo Dunne, found that its then-CEO, C.D. Glin, had omitted his affiliation with an outside group, Root Capital, from his legally required ethics disclosures, while ADF directed money to that group.
In another example, agency program manager Kate Ristroph said in a videotaped internal investigative interview that:
<blockquote>The agency gave grants to the Association of Ghana Industries on the condition that it pay Pyxera Global, a D.C. organization where Glin previously worked as director of business development, to “do a study of the artisan sector in Ghana.” &#8230;  “We’re in that murky territory of like, is this legal?” she said. “The CEO specifically directed it.”
She said the agency trains African grantees to avoid third-world style corruption by only giving out contracts that have been competitively bid at arms length, yet she was forced to tell them that the Americans were ordering them to do the opposite. “It puts me in a compromising position,” she said.</blockquote>
Dunne found that the African Development Foundation appeared to be pushing the for-profit pyramid scheme Herbalife on African peasants because Herbalife&#8217;s then-CEO was on the agency&#8217;s board.
READ MORE: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/this-foreign-aid-agency-locked-its-doors-to-keep-doge-out-now-we-know-why" target="_blank" rel="noopener">This Foreign Aid Agency Locked Its Doors To Keep DOGE Out. Now We Know Why.</a>
Glin was so abusive that one white junior employee soiled herself after Glin made her afraid to leave her desk to use the bathroom, Dunne&#8217;s investigation found.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
When USADF blocked DOGE from accessing their building last year, Democrats applauded.
Now we know it is because USADF was hiding bribes, kickbacks, and fraud.
I have filed the Terminate Unaccountable Spending, Abuse, Deception, and Fraud (USADF) Act to defund these crooks. <a href="https://t.co/UoQ0qW1OYc">https://t.co/UoQ0qW1OYc</a>
— Mike Lee (@SenMikeLee) <a href="https://twitter.com/SenMikeLee/status/2017326311916683537?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 30, 2026</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Employees warned the public through the employee review site Glassdoor about how dysfunctional the agency was:
<blockquote>Brandi James, the agency’s chief of staff, said in an internal email that she tried to use government funds to pay GlassDoor to remove negative posts, but the site refused, leaving them available for anyone who cared to look.</blockquote>
Glin was later replaced by Travis Adkins, who arrived in 2021 after a stint at USAID as a political appointee in the Biden administration. Adkins&#8217; assistant, who is black, filed a sworn affidavit saying “Mr. Adkins told me that he wanted his entire team (to include the General Counsel) to consist only of Black people. He wanted all of his direct reports to be Black.” Adkins has denied the allegations.
“The contracts don’t make sense, and they know [DOGE] will find lots of wrongdoing and illegal activity,” the assistant said. “I’m not a fan of DOGE, but some of the things they’re doing need to be done. They have been operating like this for years, and no one did anything about it.”
It is impossible to know why Democrats and 11 Republicans are defending the agency, since they won&#8217;t say. But if it is because they believe misconduct was limited to just Zahui, Dunne told The Daily Wire that “this is not the story of one rotten apple. It is the story of an agency that is corrupt, root and branch.&#8221;
After Dunne raised issues of misconduct, he has said, a broad spectrum of the agency&#8217;s brass began viciously retaliating against him, with Acting CEO Elisabeth Feleke even calling the police on him. Adkins placed Dunne on leave for six months, despite a law limiting &#8220;investigative leave.&#8221;
<blockquote>The evidence of insubordination was that he had investigated apparent spending on luxuries and personal items by top staff, when Acting CEO Elisabeth Feleke said, “I have not given Mateo direction or mandate to investigate credit card fraud.”</blockquote>
Adkins was forthright with the board’s chair, Jack Leslie, about what was really going on:
<blockquote>He wrote to Leslie that Dunne was placed on leave for his “efforts to damage USADF’s reputation via the Office of Inspector General.”</blockquote>
The Office of Inspector General investigation led to Zahui&#8217;s guilty plea.
A left-wing law firm has been suing to <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/judge-orders-foreign-aid-agency-resurrected-after-african-company-sues">prevent</a> President Donald Trump&#8217;s appointee as acting chairman, Pete Marocco, from leading the agency.
“The U.S. African Development Foundation provides no value to the American people, and every one of the Senators know it–even the ones who vote in favor of it,” Marocco, who led the abolition of USAID, said.

Lindsay Graham, John Boozman

Corrupt Foreign Aid Agency Lives On After 11 Republicans Vote Against Defunding

Mike Lee

The chief financial officer of the African Development Foundation, a federal agency affiliated with USAID, will plead guilty to steering grants and contracts in exchange for bribes.
The previously-obscure African Development Foundation became a darling of the Left when its CFO, Mathieu Zahui, locked its doors to prevent Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency from entering. Democrat <a href="https://x.com/SenBrianSchatz/status/1898391541594419261?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1898391541594419261%7Ctwgr%5Eb36e7fac996898f9c03eceb09da0e0874f916802%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&amp;ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.dailywire.com%2Fnews%2Fthis-foreign-aid-agency-locked-its-doors-to-keep-doge-out-now-we-know-why" target="_blank" rel="noopener">politicians</a> framed it as an act of moral courage, and left-wing media called the group &#8220;the little agency that could.&#8221;
But on Friday, the Department of Justice said Zahui admitted that he was doing exactly what conservatives have suspected is common in foreign aid: Laundering money through poor nations and then back to D.C. insiders, who used it to enrich themselves.
According to <a href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.288886/gov.uscourts.dcd.288886.1.0_1.pdf">court papers</a> filed Friday, the African Development Foundation sent $800,000 to a Kenya-based company run by Zahui&#8217;s friend. The friend paid Zahui a kickback of $12,000, and the company kept $134,886 for doing no work.
The rest of the money was simply a &#8220;pass-through&#8221; where the Kenyan company paid bills that the agency owed to other people. That made it appear that more money was going to African aid as opposed to bureaucratic overhead, and added a layer that concealed where the agency&#8217;s money was actually going.
&#8220;For example, when USADF needed to pay a past-due debt to a staffing vendor, Zahui directed the vendor to invoice Company-1 instead of USADF. Company-1 then invoiced USADF for the vendor’s past-due amount, but added a mark-up of over $20,000 to the amount owed. Zahui approved Company-1’s invoice even though he knew that Company-1 had provided no services related to the vendor’s work,&#8221; federal prosecutors in the office of U.S. Attorney for D.C. Jeanine Pirro said.
Zahui has agreed to plead guilty to accepting gratuities and making a false statement to a federal law enforcement officer, after he lied to the USAID Office of Inspector General about having received the kickbacks. He could face up to seven years in prison.
“The USADF Director of Financial Management’s fraudulent acts betrayed the trust of the American people,” the USAID Office of Inspector General&#8217;s acting Assistant Inspector General for Investigations Sean M. Bottary said in a statement.
<h3>&#8220;When they show up, we didn&#8217;t let them in&#8221;</h3>
The Daily Wire broke the story of Zahui&#8217;s crimes in May after uncovering a search warrant for Zahui&#8217;s phone, granted by a D.C. judge in November 2024, during the Biden administration. The series, titled, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/this-foreign-aid-agency-locked-its-doors-to-keep-doge-out-now-we-know-why" target="_blank" rel="noopener">This Foreign Aid Agency Locked Its Doors To Keep DOGE Out. Now We Know Why.</a> included details that are redacted in charging papers, which refer to the company only as &#8220;Co-Conspirator 1.&#8221;
Zahui steered contracts and grants to a firm called Ganiam, which was run by a friend named Maina Gakure. Gakure and Zahui previously worked together for the Department of Veterans Affairs in California, where Gakure was in charge of contracts. Gakure later created his own company designed to exploit the government&#8217;s &#8220;8(a)&#8221; law, which allows minority-owned companies to get <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/alaska-republicans-secretly-working-to-protect-fraud-plagued-dei-program?author=Luke+Rosiak&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=3&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=Alaska+Republicans+Secretly+Working+To+Protect+Fraud-Plagued+DEI+Program" target="_blank" rel="noopener">no-bid contracts</a>.
He also established an Africa-based version of the company, to which Zahui steered money. (One of the contracts was ostensibly for &#8220;travel&#8221; during COVID, when travel was shut down.) Each time Zahui awarded Gakure&#8217;s company a contract, Gakure would send Zahui kickbacks to his personal bank account, the disgraced CFO admitted in federal court.
The flow of money to Africa made it seem — to Congress, the public, and auditors — that the agency was fulfilling its mission. But Ganiam was actually used as a slush fund, with Gakure serving as an intermediary to pay bills elsewhere — including in D.C.
The Daily Wire interviewed Zahui at his home for nearly two hours in May, where the African immigrant spoke with indignation that his federal job might be ending.
&#8220;When they show up, we didn&#8217;t let them in,&#8221; he said of DOGE auditors. Eventually, the Trump administration changed the locks on the building, but Zahui gained access. &#8220;They forget, or they didn&#8217;t know there was a back door that they didn&#8217;t lock,&#8221; he said.
Zahui said that the agency had money scattered in bank accounts across Africa, and that he would frequently travel to tend to it. Some money that appeared on balance sheets as being sent to Africa was later redirected back to D.C., he acknowledged, saying, &#8220;a grant can pay for people, even if it&#8217;s not in Africa.&#8221;
&#8220;Ganiam was not a grant, it was a contract,&#8221; he said, before later acknowledging that Ganiam also received a grant. When asked how he knew Gakure, he said, &#8220;He was in D.C., it was bid, it was in the U.S. Then he returned home as a [sic] Africa diaspora, returning home, that&#8217;s it.&#8221;
&#8220;He has moved a long time ago. Very, very long time ago, okay, even before COVID,&#8221; he added. (Gakure&#8217;s Virginia-based minority contracting company received a COVID bailout from the federal government.) Zahui was hired as the CFO of a federal agency even though he declared personal bankruptcy, a fact he first denied, then admitted in the interview.
Gakure did not return a request for comment in May.
Sen. James Risch (R-ID), the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, had for years documented serious irregularities at the African Development Foundation and pleaded for officials to reform the agency, saying that if they did not clean house, it risked the public losing faith in foreign aid more broadly. They failed to heed his warning, and his prediction came to pass, with the Trump administration abolishing USAID, the larger foreign aid agency, outright.
“This is a tremendous win for law and order,&#8221; Risch told The Daily Wire of Zahui&#8217;s guilty plea.
&#8220;What started in 2023 as a simple inquiry from my committee into questionable dealings at USADF will now become justice served,&#8221; he told The Daily Wire. &#8220;Corruption like we have seen at the USADF will not stand.&#8221; Risch has introduced a bill to abolish the agency.
<h3>Lawfare</h3>
After Trump&#8217;s election, the agency&#8217;s CEO, Travis Adkins, quit, leaving Zahui in charge as part of a three-person executive committee. President Donald Trump fired the board and named Pete Marocco, who oversaw the demolition of USAID, as chairman of the African Development Foundation.
But Zahui notified the White House that the federal agency would not be recognizing the Trump administration&#8217;s authority.
Remarkably, even after the Biden-era criminal investigation into Zahui was revealed by The Daily Wire, left-wing lawyers used the D.C. courts to ensure that Zahui remained in charge.
In June, a judge <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/d-c-judge-sides-with-trump-in-lawsuit-over-control-of-corrupt-foreign-aid-agency" target="_blank" rel="noopener">tossed out</a> a lawsuit filed by an ousted board member, finding that Trump had the right to fire the board. Lawyers from the same left-wing firm, Democracy Forward, then filed suit with a different plaintiff: a for-profit company in Zambia that said the U.S. government is its only customer.
The lawyers argued that abolishing ADF would be unfair to the company. In July, a judge ruled in their favor, imposing an<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/judge-orders-foreign-aid-agency-resurrected-after-african-company-sues" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> injunction</a> that blocked Marocco from controlling the agency. Zahui was brought <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/foreign-aid-official-suspected-of-bribery-is-back-at-work-after-court-ruling" target="_blank" rel="noopener">back to work</a> as part of the three-person executive committee.
Because of a Supreme Court ruling limiting the breadth of injunctions, the ruling was later modified to only require that the specific Zambian firm, Rural Development Innovations Ltd., be paid, with Marocco free to otherwise axe the agency. This month, the Democracy Forward lawyers have been pleading with the judge that the ADF staff must be restored to work, so that the Zambian firm can call them for advice.
On Monday, the Trump administration filed court papers in that lawsuit saying that the Democracy Forward lawyers are seeking to &#8220;restore all 353 grants and forty-three contracts that Marocco cancelled as acting chair and rehire all sixteen employees that Marocco terminated.&#8221;
In December, a law firm run by a founder of Democracy Forward <a href="https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/72053925/adkins-v-daily-wire-llc/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">sued The Daily Wire</a> and one of its alleged sources. The plaintiff is Adkins, who quit as the agency&#8217;s CEO after Donald Trump&#8217;s election. The lawsuit was leaked to The Daily Beast, which ran with the <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/federal-official-says-doge-and-maga-shattered-his-life-in-new-lawsuit/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">headline</a>, &#8220;Federal Official Shows How DOGE and MAGA Shattered His Life In New Lawsuit.&#8221;
Though Adkins voluntarily quit before the Daily Wire stories, Adkins is seeking money, citing damages that he has not found a job willing to pay him $500,000 a year as he expected.
An email, provided by Adkins&#8217; attorneys, shows that after Zahui directed Gakure to wire $17,000 to Adkins&#8217; personal assistant, Adkins replied, &#8220;Thanks for this Mathieu &#8211; let us know what needs to be done next to fully resolve this matter.&#8221;
The alleged Daily Wire source being sued by Adkins is a black former ADF staffer who filed a sworn affidavit saying Adkins told her he “wanted all of his direct reports to be Black.” Atkins denies the allegations.
The agency&#8217;s onetime general counsel, Mateo Dunne, was placed on leave by Adkins after Dunne pointed out rampant misconduct.
“As General Counsel, I led an internal investigation that revealed substantial fraud, waste, and abuse. When I reported my findings, the agency retaliated and sought to destroy my career and reputation. Today I am fully vindicated. This is an indictment of an agency culture that facilitated corruption, punished integrity, and silenced dissent,” Dunne said.
A federal official familiar with ongoing investigations into USADF said USAID IG’s investigation said that &#8220;this case is the tip of the iceberg,&#8221; citing “corruption at the highest level in an agency entrusted to support impoverished communities in Africa.&#8221;
Marocco, who was put in charge of the ADF, told The Daily Wire that the agency &#8220;is a scam that delivers no value to the American taxpayer, and its budget should be zero.”
“We are investigating many alarming behaviors that demonstrate the agency’s defiance of the President, disregard for the taxpayers, arrogance and entitlement by bureaucrats and foreigners with no semblance of accountability, ridiculous waste, systemic abuse and crime,&#8221; Marocco said.
“USADF should be abolished, and there must be a post-mortem on this degenerate enterprise that operated under the guise of government ‘philanthropy,’” he said.
Though USAID has been abolished, its inspector general, which specializes in rooting out fraud in foreign grants, has 350 open investigations. Congress voted to give it purview over foreign aid disbursed by the State Department and other agencies.
UPDATE: Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) said &#8220;When USADF blocked DOGE from accessing their building last year, Democrats applauded. Now we know it is because USADF was hiding bribes, kickbacks, and fraud. I have filed the Terminate Unaccountable Spending, Abuse, Deception, and Fraud (USADF) Act to defund these crooks.&#8221;
House Committee on Foreign Affairs Chairman Brian Mast (R-FL) said “For years Democrats labeled programs as aid and development, but it was really just fraud, grift, and as pure waste of American tax dollars. The Director of Financial Management for USADF, Mathieu Zahui’s guilty plea is just the tip of the iceberg.”
READ MORE: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/this-foreign-aid-agency-locked-its-doors-to-keep-doge-out-now-we-know-why" target="_blank" rel="noopener">This Foreign Aid Agency Locked Its Doors To Keep DOGE Out. Now We Know Why.</a>

Mathieu Zahui, chief financial officer of the African Development Foundation

Top Official Of USAID-Linked Foreign Aid Agency To Plead Guilty To Taking Bribes

Africa

Brian Schatz

The State Department will officially terminate foreign assistance to Somalia after the African nation&#8217;s government demolished a warehouse containing 76 metric tons of food donated by America, a senior administration official told The Daily Wire. 
On January 3, &#8220;at the direction of President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud (HSM) and the Federal Government of Somalia (FGS), authorities at Mogadishu Port demolished the World Food Programme (WFP) Emergency Response Warehouse with no prior notification or coordination with international donor countries, including the United States,&#8221; a diplomatic cable from the United States Embassy in Somalia dated January 6 said.
The move &#8220;likely resulted in the destruction of these emergency food supplies,&#8221; and was approved by Somali&#8217;s president over the objections of the World Food Programme, the cable said. The apparent cause, it said, was corruption: the Mogadishu Port is managed by a Turkish company that wanted to expand, and Somalia&#8217;s Minister of Ports &#8220;acts as [Turkey&#8217;s] primary agent in Somalia.&#8221; Turkey has increasingly played a large role in Somalia industries, &#8220;often operating under corrupt contracts that uniformly favor Turkish interests,&#8221; the cable said.
An additional 1,650 metric tons of additional commodities were scheduled to arrive in early January, and had to be stored in an alternative warehouse. The World Food Programme, a project of the United Nations, said it will notify Somalia that the &#8220;demolition constitutes a breach of UN diplomatic protocols,&#8221; the cable said.
The embassy in Somalia requested that the Secretary of State &#8220;strongly consider pausing, canceling, or postponing U.S. assistance to [Somalia] until it returns or compensates the United States and other international donors for the stolen food assistance items,&#8221; the cable said.
The State Department announced on January 7 that it has &#8220;paused all ongoing U.S. assistance programs which benefit the Somali Federal Government. Any resumption of assistance will be dependent upon the Somali Federal Government taking accountability for its unacceptable actions.&#8221; But the administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, went further, saying that all aid will be permanently and officially ended by May.
The ports minister issued an eviction notice to the WFP in December, but the Somali government had later said the warehouse could still be used while a final decision was pending. The port manager claimed that the food was moved to two containers and remained accessible, but WFP said that was not true, and that it is likely ruined because it requires specialized storage.
The food was donated by Americans under the Title II &#8220;Food for Peace&#8221; program and International Disaster Assistance, while the World Food Programme administers its distribution. Hunter Biden served as chairman of the World Food Programme USA, which supports its work, from 2011 to 2015.
The disappearance of the Food for Peace food due to apparent Somali corruption comes as Somalis who migrated to the United States by claiming refuge status have themselves defrauded the U.S. government, including by asking to be paid by the government to watch their own children or their neighbors&#8217; children, and <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/were-putting-america-first-trump-admin-ends-temporary-protected-status-for-thousands-of-somalis">plunged</a> cities like Minneapolis into their own instability.
A member of Somalia&#8217;s parliament and its Foreign Affairs committee, Abdillahi Hashi Abib, wrote to United States officials saying that 90% of Somalia&#8217;s humanitarian assistance comes from America, and that the Somali Disaster Management Agency (SoDMA) has been &#8220;defrauding&#8221; it because &#8220;the funds have been captured and monetized by a single-family network and its clan affiliates.&#8221;
For example, three brothers of the agency&#8217;s chairman, Mohamud Macallin Abdulle, each receive $15,000 a month salaries, paid through their wives, he said, and the Finance Department and Training Unit are both run by the his uncles. 
He said that &#8220;food donations from the US, EU, UAE, Qatar, and China are systematically sold in Magadishu markets after staged photo-ops,&#8221; in which starving people are paid $5 to pay for photos with the food, before it is taken away from them.
By diverting aid for 8,000 to 12,000 families, the clan generates half a million dollars a month for itself, he said. Foreign aid money has also been wasted as Somalis inflate the cost of items, charging $300,000 for ambulances and fire trucks that cost only $100,000, he said.
&#8220;The President of the Federal Republic of Somalia, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, and his extended family are beneficiaries of a system that has systematically looted U.S.-funded humanitarian assistance&#8221; by &#8220;installing a close relative&#8230; at the apex of Somalia&#8217;s humanitarian system,&#8221; he wrote.

Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud

EXCLUSIVE: State Department To Permanently End Aid To Somalia After Warehouse Of Food Disappears

Somalia

State Department

The Trump administration is ramping up its America First Global Health Strategy in its latest efforts to ditch the traditional USAID model by delivering billions in aid directly to several countries in Africa.
Under the new model so far, which bypasses the propping up of the “NGO industrial complex,” the United States has signed six memoranda of understanding (MOUs) with six African countries totaling over $4 billion in direct U.S. investment matched by over $1.6 billion from signatory countries.
According to a senior State Department official, the old USAID system was unsustainable, “enriched beltway bandits,” and was designed to perpetuate itself rather than help countries become self-reliant.
“Now, under the Trump administration, we are committed to ensuring that every tax dollar spent overseas delivers real results by ensuring aid gets directly to its intended recipients and creating a structure that helps partner countries move toward self-reliance,” the official told The Daily Wire.
Countries that have signed so far include Kenya, Rwanda, Liberia, Uganda, Lesotho, and Eswatini, while Mozambique and Ethiopia are expected to sign similar MOUs next week.
According to the senior official, the Trump administration&#8217;s goal is to sign a dozen agreements before the end of the year.
The five-year MOU signed with Eswatini, a country in southern Africa, on Friday focuses on improving public health data systems, modernizing disease surveillance and outbreak response technology, and HIV prevention and treatment. In Eswatini, <a href="https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.DYN.AIDS.ZS?locations=SZ">where 23.4% of people</a> aged 15–49 live with HIV, the government plans to boost domestic health spending by $37 million over the five-year, $242 million MOU, according to the State Department.
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Last week, when announcing the new initiative, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the previous system was inefficient by funneling aid through foreign or U.S.-based NGOs that absorbed funding through overhead and administrative costs while limiting host-country control.
“We would go to a country and say we are going to help you with health care needs and then we would drive over to northern Virginia somewhere and find an NGO, one of these organizations, and give them all the money and tell them to go to this country and do their health care program for them,” Rubio said. “By the time it got down to it, the host country had very little influence … and only a percentage of the overall money ever actually reached the patients.”
Rubio added that he hopes to sign 50 such agreements with other countries.
“If we’re trying to help countries, help the country. Don’t help the NGO to go in and find a new line of business,” he said.
Top executives at health NGOs backed by American taxpayer dollars frequently have very high salaries. In 2024, the president of Research Triangle Institute earned over <a href="https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/560686338/202412259349302301/full">$1.4 million</a>, and two of its vice presidents earned more than $850,000 each. At Johns Hopkins University’s Jhpiego Corporation, one executive earned over <a href="https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/237424444/202501339349305895/full">$1.08 million</a>. Other top salaries included <a href="https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/42482188/202443559349300519/full">$598,348</a> at Management Sciences for Health, <a href="https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/237413005/202542269349302344/full">$545,290</a> at Family Health International, and <a href="https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/132702768/202502279349303495/full">$506,371</a> at Pact Inc.
In 2023, the president of the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation earned <a href="https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/954191698/202413199349312336/full">$577,275</a>, and the president of PATH earned <a href="https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/911157127/202442559349300319/full">$703,405</a>.

President Trump Meets With Visiting Crown Prince Of Bahrain

State Department Ditches Old USAID Model, Sends $4 Billion Directly To African Nations

Donald Trump

Global Politics

World

In the final months of 2022, President Joe Biden was dealing with one foreign policy crisis after another.
The crisis dominating headlines and requiring the administration’s immediate attention that year was Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But there was another conflict brewing, around 200 miles south of Russia’s border.
In December 2022, Azerbaijan set up environmental protests as a false flag to illegally block the Lachin Corridor, the only road connecting Armenia to Nagorno-Karabakh, a region inside of Azerbaijan that had been the home of ethnic Armenians for thousands of years. In the months that followed, the Azerbaijani regime in Baku ramped up its attack on Nagorno-Karabakh, as Armenian soldiers and civilians were killed in intense fighting.
Azerbaijan also cut off electricity and prevented food and aid from reaching the region, forcing around 120,000 ethnic Armenians to flee the place they had called home since the 7th century B.C.
One senior Biden administration official appeared to be the ideal person to address the growing humanitarian crisis in Nagorno-Karabakh and come to the aid of Armenians. Samantha Power, Biden’s Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), spent decades raising awareness for human rights issues, including highlighting the violence that Armenians have faced for decades. Power, a longtime journalist, gained more notoriety after publishing a book titled “A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide,” in which she highlighted the Armenian genocide, among other genocides that she argues the U.S. government failed to stop.
“She was not your average Biden administration official,” Democratic political strategist Eric Hacopian told The Daily Wire. “Because she has this halo over her head about human rights.”
Her human rights activism and writing landed Power a coveted post in the Obama administration when she was tapped to be the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Power had <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yNt7XsV-Dg" target="_blank" rel="noopener">thrown her support</a> behind Obama’s 2008 campaign, arguing that he had an “unshakable conscientiousness about human rights on the issue of genocide prevention.” Power also highlighted then-candidate Obama’s support for recognizing the Armenian genocide and “his willingness as president to commemorate it and certainly to call a spade a spade and to speak truth about it.” That recognition never came under Obama, something for which Power <a href="https://x.com/SamanthaJPower/status/856561854520467457" target="_blank" rel="noopener">apologized</a>.
Power then became one of the most influential people within the Biden administration when it came to human rights, especially with Armenia. Then the conflict with Azerbaijan exploded.
Azerbaijan’s attacks in late 2022 and 2023 were not a surprise: President Ilham Aliyev’s regime had long hinted that it would push to take control of the region. Professor Nerses Kopalyan told The Daily Wire that the Biden administration’s “inaction” on preparing for such an attack was “shocking.”
“The fact that the United States&#8217; foreign policy establishment was privy to this information, their general inaction was quite shocking purely from the lens of humanitarianism, considering the fact that Samantha Power and the entire wing in the foreign policy structures in the Biden administration had for such a long time been very vocal and a strong proponent of humanitarian issues,” Kopalyan said.
“When it came time to walk the walk, Samantha Power and that branch of the Biden administration basically disappeared,” Kopalyan added. “So we realized that it was all talk and no action, and the blockade continued until the ethnic cleansing.”
Between November 2022 and September 2023, then-Secretary of State Antony Blinken held three rounds of peace talks with Armenia and Azerbaijan, with the Biden administration <a href="https://www.foreign.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/6667fb89-a975-4fab-d8b8-e8875312e37e/09%2014%2023%20--%20Assessing%20The%20Crisis%20in%20Nagorno-Karabakh.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">claiming</a> that the talks “yielded results.” But whatever was discussed during the meetings was not enough to stop Azerbaijan from proceeding with its plan to uproot over 100,000 Armenians from their home. Top Biden officials also <a href="https://www.foreign.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/6667fb89-a975-4fab-d8b8-e8875312e37e/091423_Kim_Testimony.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">signaled</a> that the administration would not tolerate the ethnic cleansing of Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh, a line that the Aliyev regime crossed without any consequences.
Internally, some officials in the Biden administration urged the White House to draw a red line for Azerbaijan, according to a former government official with knowledge of the situation who spoke to The Daily Wire on the condition of anonymity.
“We were certainly pushing for more fortitude on the part of the White House and the State Department in making it clear to Aliyev that there would be consequences for moving militarily on Nagorno-Karabakh,” the official said. “Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case.”
The source said that in the months prior to Azerbaijan’s offensive, “there was a sense” in the Biden administration that Baku would move militarily on Nagorno-Karabakh, adding that “there was outreach from Washington to Baku at a high level to dissuade that kind of action.”
“But that messaging was not married up with real consequences,” the former official added.
Despite Power’s apparent sympathy for the Armenian position, many Armenians believe that she left them out to dry. In the weeks and months leading up to Azerbaijan’s blockade, Power did not visit Armenia or make any major statements on aiding the Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh.
Hacopian, who is also an Armenian political commentator, told The Daily Wire that Power and USAID were “entirely insincere” in their efforts “early on in the process” before Azerbaijan launched its major offensive.
“They were never working to get aid into that region during the illegal Azerbaijani blockade,” Hacopian said. “They simply wanted to deal with the effects of the ethnic cleansing.”
He added that it was obvious that the Biden administration wanted to take a hands-off approach to the conflict, and that Power was “not willing to take a stand.”
“She, essentially, cynically went along for the ride, not saying a word,” Hacopian said. “And the moment the ethnic cleansing started, she showed up.”
“She’s wildly reviled here because of that,” he added.
Some of that disdain for Power was captured on camera after she arrived in Armenia in September 2023. During a press conference near the Azerbaijan border, Power was heckled in Armenia by someone who shouted, “Sanction Azerbaijan or go back to your country. You don’t care. Stop the lies.”
<iframe loading="lazy" title="US Response to Calls for Sanctions in Azerbaijan: Samantha Power&#039;s Armenia Visit" width="422" height="750" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Kk6KTtTh1KA?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Power did not respond to a request to be interviewed for this piece.
The former Biden official who spoke to The Daily Wire on the condition of anonymity said that once Azerbaijan had forced the Armenians out of Nagorno-Karabakh, discussions in the administration were “less about how do we punish Azerbaijan right now and more about what do we do to support Armenia in this moment.”
“We could’ve walked and chewed gum at the same time, but we didn’t,” the official said. “But I do think there was an effort to try to show up for Armenia.”

Biden Admin – Armenia/Azerbaijan

The Human Rights Activist Who Couldn’t Save Her Cause: How A Top Biden Official Failed Armenia

Armenia

Azerbaijan

Biden Administration

Staff at the African Development Foundation, a USAID-affiliated federal agency, have returned to work after a D.C. judge overturned the Trump administration&#8217;s abolition of the agency — even as a new inspector general&#8217;s report blasted the agency for misleading Congress.
A USAID inspector general&#8217;s report released Thursday lists Mathieu Zahui as one of the agency&#8217;s current top employees, even though the IG told a D.C. judge last year that it had seized Zahui&#8217;s phone and found evidence that he took secret payments from a company to which he steered suspicious contracts.
Early in the Trump administration, Zahui told the White House that the agency would not recognize Trump&#8217;s appointment of Peter Marocco, who successfully disbanded USAID, as acting chairman of the African agency. Staff subsequently locked the doors to physically prevent DOGE auditors from entering.
The Trump administration ultimately took control of the building with the assistance of U.S. Marshals and laid everyone off. But after an <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/judge-orders-foreign-aid-agency-resurrected-after-african-company-sues" target="_blank" rel="noopener">African company sued</a> on the basis that all of its profits came from the U.S. agency, complaining that shutting down the agency would cause it irreparable harm, a D.C. judge granted an injunction temporarily invalidating Marocco&#8217;s moves. D.C.- and Africa-based staff and contractors were all immediately reinstated to their jobs and canceled grants were restored, despite the fact that a ban on new foreign grants remains in effect, significantly reducing the amount of work for them to do.
Thursday&#8217;s <a href="https://oig.usaid.gov/sites/default/files/2025-08/Final%20OIG%20Report%20-%20Evaluation%20of%20USADF%20Partnerships%20and%20Grants%20Administration.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">IG report</a> made that reversal all the more remarkable, finding that the agency had only raised a quarter of the money from African partners that it publicly took credit for, that nearly half of its grants had insufficient documentation, and that the agency did not conduct any &#8220;due diligence&#8221; before entering into financial agreements with African entities.
The African Development Foundation is funded by about $50 million a year in taxpayer money, but it is supposed to leverage that with funds raised from African governments and other groups, giving them skin in the game. The agency never actually collected three-quarters of the money that it implied to Congress it had raised between 2022 and 2024, according to the IG probe.
In its 2023 Annual Report, the African Development Foundation, or USADF, reported that &#8220;$45.6 million in leveraged partner funds was secured,&#8221; but in reality, it only received $9 million that year, the IG report said. &#8220;Similarly, in its FY 2024 Congressional Budget Justification, USADF reported that it anticipated leveraging more than $15 million in external funding that year. Yet, by the end of FY 2024, USADF had received just $2.5 million in partnership funding.&#8221;
In all, records showed that &#8220;32 partners pledged up to $69 million between FYs 2022 and 2024. However, of these pledges, USADF only received $17 million,&#8221; the IG found. African governments only actually &#8220;provided about $8.2 million of $41 million (20 percent) pledged.&#8221;
The agency told the IG that it had no mechanism to force African governments and other groups to follow through on their commitments. The IG said this was because it drafted agreements that &#8220;were not legally binding,&#8221; and &#8220;did not conduct any pre-award assessments or due diligence on prospective partners.&#8221;
For some partnerships, it had no documentation at all, the report found: &#8220;Based on our reviews of USADF’s website, partner funding receipts, and other public reporting, we determined that USADF may have had up to 17 additional active partnerships. For example, USADF’s website identified a payment card company foundation, a clean energy investment company, and a development nonprofit as strategic partners. However, USADF could not provide MoUs or any other documentation to confirm the status of these partnerships.&#8221;
A <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/this-foreign-aid-agency-locked-its-doors-to-keep-doge-out-now-we-know-why" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Daily Wire investigation</a> previously reported that one such partnership was with Herbalife, a multi-level marketing scheme whose then-CEO sat on the government agency&#8217;s board. The partnership involved providing Africans with “product donations, and Herbalife Nutrition staff as global volunteers in their businesses,” marketing materials said. It came two months after Herbalife paid $122 million to the Department of Justice to settle charges that it violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. The Daily Wire&#8217;s investigation also showed that the agency misled Congress and the public about how much money went to Africa as opposed to administrative costs by having African grantees and contractors re-route money back to D.C.
The IG report said &#8220;we discovered that USADF officials knew of suspected misuse of Foundation funds and equipment purchased from Foundation grants but failed to report this information to OIG as required.&#8221; It said that the agency failed to keep track of where its money was going: Forty percent of grants had incomplete project development documentation and the same number lacked evidence that it had trained the grantee on keeping track of finances. The agency pays African &#8220;partners&#8221; to inspect grantees on the ground, but for most grants, the agency&#8217;s database was missing these site visit reports.
Thursday&#8217;s inspector general report was limited to certain aspects of the agency&#8217;s business and its methodology was established last year, before the dramatic changes at the agency. But USAID OIG confirmed that its investigations into matters relating to the foundation are active and ongoing. That raises the prospect that although CFO Zahui was reinstated after being laid off, the back-and-forth might end in his being hauled out of the office in handcuffs.
A November 2024 <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/foreign-aid-official-who-resisted-doge-took-secret-payments-after-steering-africa-money-to-friend" target="_blank" rel="noopener">search warrant application</a> unearthed by The Daily Wire laid bare a criminal probe involving the agency&#8217;s mysterious payments to Ganiam Ltd., a company owned by Zahui&#8217;s friend Maina Gakure. In February 2024, agents seized Zahui’s work phone and found “text messages showing at least eight instances of wire transfers or electronic payments from Gakure to Zahui’s Bank of America account, totaling over $10,000. These payments coincide with USADF’s awarding of sole-source contracts to Ganiam,” they wrote. As of now, Zahui has not been charged with a crime.
The agency&#8217;s other top current employee, according to the report, is Elisabeth Feleke. Feleke was accused by former general counsel Mateo Dunne of ordering him to <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/this-foreign-aid-agency-locked-its-doors-to-keep-doge-out-now-we-know-why" target="_blank" rel="noopener">stop an investigation</a> into rulebreaking at the agency. Dunne filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission alleging retaliation and anti-white racial discrimination, but an EEO judge dismissed it, and he is appealing.
A former official with the USAID inspector general&#8217;s official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told The Daily Wire that the African Development Foundation &#8220;treated federal dollars like Monopoly money&#8230; it was a culture of reckless indifference to accountability and oversight.&#8221;
Included in the report is an acknowledgment of the IG&#8217;s findings by the foundation.
&#8220;USADF appreciates the work of the USAID Office of Inspector General in conducting this evaluation of our strategic partnerships and grants administration,&#8221; says a management response to the findings. &#8220;We concur with the overall findings and recommendations and acknowledge the opportunities to strengthen our internal 
policies, procedures, and reporting practices.&#8221;
Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jim Risch (R-ID) <a href="https://x.com/senateforeign/status/1961164384535024077" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a> on X that the new report provides further evidence that the agency &#8220;is beyond repair&#8221; and should be abolished.
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/this-foreign-aid-agency-locked-its-doors-to-keep-doge-out-now-we-know-why" target="_blank" rel="noopener">This Foreign Aid Agency Locked Its Doors To Keep DOGE Out. Now We Know Why.</a>
PART ONE: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/foreign-aid-official-who-resisted-doge-took-secret-payments-after-steering-africa-money-to-friend?author=Luke+Rosiak&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=0&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=Foreign+Aid+Official+Who+Resisted+DOGE+Took+Secret+Payments+After+Steering+Africa+Money+To+Friend" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Foreign Aid Official Who Resisted DOGE Took Secret Payments After Steering Africa Money To Friend </a>
PART TWO: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/african-aid-agency-used-foreign-pass-throughs-to-hide-money-that-went-to-d-c-staff-friends?author=Luke+Rosiak&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=0&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=African+Aid+Agency+Used+Foreign+Pass-Throughs+To+Hide+Money+That+Went+To+D.C.+Staff%2C+Friends" target="_blank" rel="noopener">African Aid Agency Used Foreign Pass-Throughs To Hide Money That Went To D.C. Staff</a>
PART THREE: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/aid-agency-pushed-officials-for-profit-pyramid-scheme-on-poor-africans?author=Luke+Rosiak&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=0&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=Aid+Agency+Pushed+Official%E2%80%99s+For-Profit+Pyramid+Scheme+On+Poor+Africans" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Aid Agency Pushed Official’s For-Profit Pyramid Scheme On Poor Africans</a>
PART FOUR: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/them-white-motherf-ers-racist-agency-framed-its-lawyer-after-he-discovered-lawbreaking-he-says?topStoryPosition=undefined&amp;author=Luke+Rosiak&amp;category=Investigation&amp;elementPosition=0&amp;row=1&amp;rowHeadline=Top+Stories&amp;rowType=Top+Stories&amp;title=%E2%80%98Them+White+Motherf-ers%E2%80%99%3A+Racist+Agency+Framed+Its+Lawyer+After+He+Discovered+Lawbreaking%2C+He+Says" target="_blank" rel="noopener">‘Them White Motherf-ers’: Racist Agency Framed Its Lawyer After He Discovered Lawbreaking, He Says</a>

Foreign Aid Official Suspected Of Bribery Is Back At Work After Court Ruling

DOGE

President Donald Trump moved to cut another $4.9 billion in foreign aid spending through an executive maneuver last used nearly 50 years ago. 
In a Thursday letter to House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), which was posted on social media on Friday, Trump stated that he is clawing back funding from programs run by the State Department, the United States Agency for International Development, and International Assistance Programs. Much of the funding is related to programs pushing climate and gender activism. 
The cuts will be carried out through a pocket rescission—a process allowing the president to revoke previously approved spending just before the fiscal year ends, leaving Congress no time to reauthorize the funds under federal law. Any future funding would require separate congressional approval.
On a background call with The Daily Wire, a White House official said a pocket rescission was a tool that the Trump administration had “dusted off.”
“Last night, President Trump CANCELLED $4.9 billion in America Last foreign aid using a pocket rescission,” the Office of Management and Budget posted on X on Friday. “[President Trump] will always put AMERICA FIRST!”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
🚨 Last night, President Trump CANCELLED $4.9 billion in America Last foreign aid using a pocket rescission.<a href="https://twitter.com/POTUS?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@POTUS</a> will always put AMERICA FIRST! <a href="https://t.co/1DvXYGdy3B">pic.twitter.com/1DvXYGdy3B</a>
— Office of Management and Budget (@WHOMB) <a href="https://twitter.com/WHOMB/status/1961410044907458780?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 29, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Secretary of State Marco Rubio applauded the move from Trump. 
“Since assuming office, President Trump has been committed to rooting out fraud, waste, and abuse from the U.S. government, saving American workers billions of dollars,” Rubio said. “Now, for the first time in 50 years, the President is using his authority under the Impoundment Control Act to deploy a pocket rescission, cancelling $5 billion in foreign aid and international organization funding that violates the President’s America First priorities.”
Rubio said that some of the programs that were cancelled included $2.7 million for “inclusive democracy” in South Africa and $4 million for “global LGBTQI+ awareness” 
“None of these programs are in America’s interest, which is why the President is taking decisive action to put America and Americans first,” Rubio said. 
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A White House official added that the cuts also included hundreds of millions of dollars in climate projects, such as building a greenhouse gas calculator, promoting vegan food in Zambia, developing insect powder for children in Madagascar, and purchasing electric buses in Rwanda.
There is an ongoing legal battle over the use of “pocket recissions,” and some lawmakers have argued that the move is unconstitutional. 
“Given that this package was sent to Congress very close to the end of the fiscal year when the funds are scheduled to expire, this is an apparent attempt to rescind appropriated funds without congressional approval,” Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) said, joining Senate Democrats who spoke out against the move. &#8220;Any effort to rescind appropriated funds without congressional approval is a clear violation of the law.&#8221;
A White House official said Friday afternoon that they believed it had &#8220;a very firm legal footing&#8221; to make the cuts, and that “we will be making that case.”

President Trump Holds Cabinet Meeting

Trump Slashes $5 Billion In Foreign Spending Using Rare Executive Maneuver

Budget

Congress

Executive

Marco Rubio

Politics

spending

This week, the House Judiciary Committee held a hearing titled “How Leftist Nonprofit Networks Exploit Federal Tax Dollars to Advance a Radical Agenda,” a look into how USAID, which was partially defunded by Congress this week, has been abused for radical causes abroad.
Nearly 20 years ago, one such scandal inspired an online database to try to weed out the worst offenders. American contractors funded by the State Department and local police staged a daring raid on a brothel in India, rescuing a number of young girls from sexual slavery. But within days, a prostitute union funded by USAID pressured the girls to stop cooperating with investigators and return to the brothel, where they were once again subjected to rape for profit.
The ensuing scandal so outraged Congress that USAID was forced to cancel the prostitute union’s funding — but unfortunately, nothing was done to curb USAID’s grotesque culture of corruption, globalist meddling, and left-wing activism.
Finally, two decades later, President Donald Trump has taken decisive action to cut off USAID’s funding. But with liberal federal judges interceding on behalf of the Washington swamp, the battle is far from over. The only permanent solution is for Congress to shut down this rogue agency for good.
USAID was created in 1961 as part of President John F. Kennedy’s effort to win developing countries to America’s cause in the Cold War against the Soviet menace. Despite such lofty intentions, USAID was quickly captured by left-wing ideologues. The agency has spent decades funneling billions of dollars into dubious projects that advance a radical agenda under the guise of “development” aid.
Recent examples of USAID’s depravity include financing a <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/articles/2025/02/at-usaid-waste-and-abuse-runs-deep/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">“transgender opera” in Colombia, producing a “DEI musical” in Ireland</a>, and providing <a href="https://foreignaffairs.house.gov/press-release/chairman-mast-exposes-outrageous-usaid-and-state-department-grants/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">$15 million for condoms to the Taliban</a>. These are not anomalies — they are the logical outcome of an irredeemable agency that has long prioritized social engineering over economic development and national security.
Perhaps the most egregious example remains the sex trafficking scandal in India uncovered in 2005. Despite clear evidence that USAID-funded organizations were facilitating child prostitution, agency officials not only denied involvement but actively obstructed congressional investigators. It was only through relentless congressional oversight that investigators exposed the truth.
And yet, even after the revelations, USAID faced no meaningful consequence — no bureaucrats were prosecuted or fired, no structural reforms were enacted, and the agency continued to operate as usual right up to the present day.
The Trump administration has correctly recognized that USAID is beyond reform. By cutting funding, the White House has struck a major blow against this globalist slush fund. But unless Congress acts, USAID will remain an open wound festering in the federal budget, waiting to be revived by activist judges or the next Democratic administration.
USAID has proven, time and again, that it is unaccountable, wasteful, hostile to American ideals, and antithetical to American interests. It is a weapon of ideological warfare masquerading as a humanitarian agency, using taxpayer money to fund left-wing activism abroad while ignoring real global crises that threaten national security.
The solution is simple: Congress must dismantle and permanently abolish USAID. Foreign aid should be administered through highly targeted programs closely monitored by the State Department, ensuring that assistance truly aligns with strategic interests rather than ideological whims.
President Trump has led the way by shining a light on USAID’s corruption and attempting to turn off the spigot of taxpayer dollars. Now, it’s time for Congress to finish the job and eliminate this agency once and for all.
J. Marc Wheat is the general counsel of Advancing American Freedom.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

TOPSHOT-US-POLITICS-USAID-TRUMP

Why Congress Needs To Permanently Dismantle USAID

A Washington, D.C., judge on Tuesday said President Donald Trump did not have the authority to name the leader of a small, USAID-like agency after an African company sued, citing the hardship of having to lay off its workers.
Judge Richard J. Leon ruled that Trump appointee Pete Marocco, who oversaw the demolition of USAID, was not validly appointed to the African Development Foundation, where he played a similar role, and, therefore, had no authority to terminate grants.
The ruling came in response to a lawsuit brought by a consulting firm in Zambia, called Rural Development Innovations Limited, represented by lawyers from the left-wing American group Democracy Forward.
Trump fired the entirety of the African Development Foundation&#8217;s board, and the agency locked its doors to prevent Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) employees from gaining access to its books. One of the fired board members sued, but Judge Leon tossed that lawsuit, affirming that the president had the right to fire board members.
In this second lawsuit, though, Leon indicated that Trump likely did not have the power to determine who runs the agency in the board members&#8217; absence. Under the legislation establishing the Foundation, the president nominates board members, but they must be confirmed by the Senate.
Marocco had been named &#8220;acting&#8221; chairman of the board. The chief role of the board is to appoint a president who runs day-to-day operations, and Marocco appointed himself.
The Trump administration <a href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.280789/gov.uscourts.dcd.280789.12.0.pdf">argued</a> that &#8220;because the Federal Vacancies Act does not apply to the Foundation, the President has the inherent authority under Article II of the Constitution to designate acting members of the Foundation Board until the Senate confirms his nominees to fill full terms&#8230; The President must be able to designate acting officials to fulfill his duty.&#8221;
It is unclear how Leon believes the management of the federal agency should be chosen, since he acknowledges that the agency has no board. The African Development Foundation&#8217;s previous president, Travis Adkins, who was accused of anti-white racism and abuse of employees, resigned before the DOGE takeover.
After Adkins&#8217;s resignation, the role was filled by a committee of the agency&#8217;s three top employees, including Chief Financial Officer Mathieu Zahui. The USAID inspector general presented evidence in court in November 2024 that Zahui steered contracts to a friend in exchange for kickbacks, but he has so far not been criminally charged.
If the group&#8217;s staff is reinstated and its top management structure restored, that would put the subject of a criminal investigation in charge of an agency, instead of the president&#8217;s appointee.
Rural Development Innovations Limited &#8220;offers clients broad expertise in financial management, enterprise development, organizational capacity development, strategy development and implementation, project management, marketing and market access development,&#8221; its lawyers <a href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.280789/gov.uscourts.dcd.280789.1.0_1.pdf">wrote</a>.
Yet it doesn&#8217;t actually have any clients except the United States government. They added: &#8220;RDI receives 100% of its funding from USADF and has been awarded a USADF grant that continues through 2028. Yet in April 2025, RDI received notice from Pete Marocco that its grant was being terminated immediately because RDI somehow no longer satisfied USADF’s priorities. As a result, RDI will be forced to shut down entirely by the end of June 2025.&#8221;
Judge Leon wrote that &#8220;RDI has shown irreparable injury&#8230; Traditionally, &#8216;economic loss does not, in and of itself constitute irreparable harm,'&#8221; but an &#8220;exception exists when &#8216;the loss threatens the very existence of the movant&#8217;s business.&#8221; That exception applied because RDI had no customers other than the United States government. RDI argued that America had an obligation not to terminate its funding because Zambian law requires the payment of severance to laid-off employees, which it could not afford to do.
Two African Development Foundation employees were also plaintiffs in the lawsuit. But, unlike the African company, the American workers had no recourse, the judge <a href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.280789/gov.uscourts.dcd.280789.26.0.pdf">ruled</a>.
Leon wrote that &#8220;RDI requests that the Court preliminarily enjoin all defendants&#8211;including the President of the United States.&#8221; The court does not have the power to enjoin the president, he wrote, but the <a href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.280789/gov.uscourts.dcd.280789.27.0.pdf">injunction</a> blocks Marocco &#8220;from taking actions as the acting chairperson of the United States African Development Foundation&#8217;s board of directors and president,&#8221; and White House, Treasury, and Department of Government Efficiency officials, from &#8220;implementing or giving effect to directives from Marocco.&#8221;
An injunction is a temporary order that gives relief to one side while a final resolution is pending. It is given when the judge believes a party is likely to win the case and will suffer harm in the meantime if it has to wait months.
Typically, a party seeking an injunction is supposed to post a monetary bond that would be used to compensate the opposing party if that party ultimately wins the case. The Trump administration has highlighted the role that such bonds would play in preventing groups from seeking endless injunctions by giving them skin in the game.
But courts have &#8220;discretion&#8230;to determine the appropriate amount of an injunction bond,&#8221; Judge Leon wrote, and he would require no bond at all from the African group, since the Trump administration has &#8220;not argued that they will suffer monetary loss if the Court were to issue an injunction.&#8221;
A four-part Daily Wire series documented significant ethical and financial problems at the African Development Foundation, which former employees said was likely the reason it was so opposed to scrutiny by DOGE:
PART ONE: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/foreign-aid-official-who-resisted-doge-took-secret-payments-after-steering-africa-money-to-friend?author=Luke+Rosiak&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=0&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=Foreign+Aid+Official+Who+Resisted+DOGE+Took+Secret+Payments+After+Steering+Africa+Money+To+Friend%C2%A0">Foreign Aid Official Who Resisted DOGE Took Secret Payments After Steering Africa Money To Friend </a>
PART TWO: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/african-aid-agency-used-foreign-pass-throughs-to-hide-money-that-went-to-d-c-staff-friends?author=Luke+Rosiak&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=0&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=African+Aid+Agency+Used+Foreign+Pass-Throughs+To+Hide+Money+That+Went+To+D.C.+Staff%2C+Friends" target="_blank" rel="noopener">African Aid Agency Used Foreign Pass-Throughs To Hide Money That Went To D.C. Staff</a>
PART THREE: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/aid-agency-pushed-officials-for-profit-pyramid-scheme-on-poor-africans?author=Luke+Rosiak&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=0&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=Aid+Agency+Pushed+Official%E2%80%99s+For-Profit+Pyramid+Scheme+On+Poor+Africans" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Aid Agency Pushed Official’s For-Profit Pyramid Scheme On Poor Africans</a>
PART FOUR: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/them-white-motherf-ers-racist-agency-framed-its-lawyer-after-he-discovered-lawbreaking-he-says?topStoryPosition=undefined&amp;author=Luke+Rosiak&amp;category=Investigation&amp;elementPosition=0&amp;row=1&amp;rowHeadline=Top+Stories&amp;rowType=Top+Stories&amp;title=%E2%80%98Them+White+Motherf-ers%E2%80%99%3A+Racist+Agency+Framed+Its+Lawyer+After+He+Discovered+Lawbreaking%2C+He+Says" target="_blank" rel="noopener">‘Them White Motherf-ers’: Racist Agency Framed Its Lawyer After He Discovered Lawbreaking, He Says</a>

Judge Orders Foreign Aid Agency Resurrected After African Company Sues

Judges

The Trump administration has officially shuttered the United States Agency for International Development after rolling its operations into the State Department.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the end of the independent agency on Tuesday. Rubio said USAID funds would be better managed and more effective under State Department oversight than they have been in decades.
“USAID had decades and a near-infinite taxpayer budget to advance American influence, promote economic development worldwide, and allow billions to stand on their own two feet,” Rubio wrote in a <a href="https://statedept.substack.com/p/making-foreign-aid-great-again">statement</a>. “Beyond creating a globe-spanning NGO industrial complex at taxpayer expense, USAID has little to show since the end of the Cold War.”
For months, the Trump administration has audited USAID, shrinking its operations and moving it underneath Rubio’s effective control. The Department of Government Efficiency has led the probe into USAID funding, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/06/22/us/politics/usaid-foreign-aid-trump.html">cutting</a> thousands of spending programs worth tens of billions of taxpayer dollars.
What spending is left will be reallocated and closely watched for measurable returns toward the United States’ national interest, according to Rubio. Of the regions and communities that have received funding from USAID in recent decades, American objectives have “rarely been met.” At the same time, “instability has often worsened, and anti-American sentiment has only grown,” Rubio said.
“[I]n 2023, sub-Saharan African nations voted with the United States only 29 percent of the time on essential resolutions at the UN despite receiving $165 billion in outlays since 1991. That’s the lowest rate in the world,” Rubio wrote. “Over the same period, more than $89 billion invested in the Middle East and North Africa left the U.S. with lower favorability ratings than China in every nation but Morocco.”
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“[USAID’s] expenditure of $9.3 billion in Gaza and the West Bank since 1991, whose beneficiaries included allies of Hamas, has produced grievances rather than gratitude towards the United States,” he continued. “The only ones living well were the executives of the countless NGOs, who often enjoyed five-star lifestyles funded by American taxpayers, while those they purported to help fell further behind.”
USAID funding has elicited complaints from some allies to the United States. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said in February that non-governmental organizations in his country that have been partly funded by USAID have pushed leftist priorities and sought to “topple” his government.
“Now is the moment when these international networks have to be taken down, they have to be swept away,” Orban <a href="https://apnews.com/article/orban-hungary-eliminate-ngos-usaid-aff22b9f9003f4c6c3115a9798c18af6">said</a>. “It is necessary to make their existence legally impossible.”
Under the State Department, international aid will be directed toward “prioritizing trade over aid, opportunity over dependency, and investment over assistance,” said Rubio.
“USAID viewed its constituency as the United Nations, multinational NGOs, and the broader global community — not the U.S. taxpayers who funded its budget or the President they elected to represent their interests on the world stage,” he wrote.
“That ends today, and where there was once a rainbow of unidentifiable logos on life-saving aid, there will now be one recognizable symbol: the American flag. Recipients deserve to know the assistance provided to them is not a handout from an unknown NGO, but an investment from the American people,” he added.

Rubio: USAID Closed After Decades Of Funding Posh Lifestyles Of ‘Countless’ NGO Execs

U.S.

President Joe Biden’s USAID awarded a contract for up to $800 million in potential work to a joint venture even after it had substantial evidence that one of its biggest partners, Vistant, had been involved in a bribery scheme to win contracts from the foreign aid agency.
The contract was for addressing “issues affecting the root causes of irregular migration from Central America to the United States” — the work that Biden <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/after-dnc-platform-was-printed-the-program-it-touts-as-top-border-success-was-shut-down-for-fraud">assigned</a> to Vice President Kamala Harris, but which she never appeared to address, a Daily Wire investigation found.
The Department of Justice <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/usaid-official-three-contractors-plead-guilty-to-half-billion-dollar-bribery-scheme">announced Friday</a> that Walter Barnes III, the founder of government contractor Vistant (previously known as PM Consulting Group, or PMCG) and Roderick Watson, a USAID contracting official, pleaded guilty to a bribery scheme in which Barnes and two others conspired to pay Watson $1 million in exchange for $544 million in contracts.
The DOJ said Vistant as a corporation was guilty, and granted it a deferred prosecution agreement “for clearly accepting responsibility for its criminal conduct and cooperating with the investigation.” The department said that “although Vistant’s cooperation was initially delayed and limited, Vistant began to fully cooperate thereafter,” and removed Barnes as CEO.
What has not been reported is that the Biden administration continued to steer contracts to Vistant/PMCG even after it knew of the massive corruption: the migration contract, even larger than the $544 million in the indictment, and others that are still active.
The up-to-$800 million contracting opportunity went to a joint venture between Vistant and CollaborateUp, a tiny consultancy run out of a suburban home in Falls Church, Virginia, where its CEO, Richard Crespin — who runs the company while also working at a think tank — lives. The Virginia home was the address listed on the contract.
In <a href="https://collaborateup.com/central-america-regional-support-services-carss-idiq/">announcing</a> its selection for the work in late 2024, CollaborateUp said it would address the “irregular migration from Central America to the United States” by addressing “climate change.” Its <a href="https://collaborateup.com/services/our-work/">website</a> also touts its work “advancing DEIA” and combating “misinformation.”
<div id="attachment_934911" style="width: 309px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-934911" class="wp-image-934911 size-large" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/06/hq-299x576.jpg" alt="Contracting records list this home as the headquarters of an entity that was chosen for up to $800 million in contracts to reduce illegal immigration." width="299" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/06/hq-299x576.jpg 299w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/06/hq-156x300.jpg 156w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/06/hq.jpg 730w" sizes=" (max-width: 299px) 100vw, 299px" />Contracting records list this home as the headquarters of an entity that was chosen for up to $800 million in contracts to reduce illegal immigration.</div>
In 2025, it added Mark A. Green, a former Republican congressman who served as Donald Trump’s appointee to lead USAID during his first term, as a <a href="https://collaborateup.com/who-we-are/our-team/">“senior advisor,”</a> according to its website.
Though a previous version of this article said that Green was put on CollaborateUp’s payroll, after publication, representatives for Crespin said that Green had never been paid for his work with the company, but was added as the pair was considering &#8220;chasing business together.&#8221;
<div id="attachment_934909" style="width: 408px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-934909" class="wp-image-934909 size-large" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/06/green-398x576.jpg" alt="" width="398" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/06/green-398x576.jpg 398w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/06/green-207x300.jpg 207w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/06/green-768x1111.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/06/green-1062x1536.jpg 1062w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/06/green.jpg 1206w" sizes=" (max-width: 398px) 100vw, 398px" />A screenshot of Mark Green listed as a senior advisor CollaborateUp&#8217;s website.</div>
Crespin did not return a request for comment before publication, but said afterward in a statement that “CollaborateUp and I had no idea what [Barnes] had done&#8230; Once we learned about it, we worked with our partner, Vistant, to assure it would no longer be connected to” its founder and CEO. Crespin says that after Barnes was removed from his position before the joint venture pressed forward with its efforts to receive an award from USAID, and says neither CollaborateUp nor Crespin were implicated in Barnes’ wrongdoing.
Vistant’s criminal scheme relied on joint ventures to exploit a DEI policy called 8(a) contracting, which lets the government award contracts with no or limited competition when the recipient is a racial minority or a small business. It formed a joint venture with a larger company —which was bribing Watson and would actually do the work — so Watson could use Barnes’ status as a black man to steer the contracts to him, rather than being obligated to go through an open competitive process.
Barnes’ company ultimately received hundreds of millions of dollars, stripping his “disadvantaged” status, and the CollaborateUp joint venture relied on CollaborateUp’s status as a small business to win a contract with limited competition, while relying on Barnes and other larger firms to actually do most of the work.
CollaborateUp says it &#8220;co-developed&#8221; USAID&#8217;s <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Yo_qnb-WmfPY9YExhZ2FiqIqkOeAYubY/view">&#8220;procurement reform&#8221;</a> policies &#8220;alongside former Administrator Mark Green&#8221; when he led USAID in Trump’s first term. Then it sought business in 2025 working alongside Green when he was no longer with the agency, after learning that it was working with entities that had criminally corrupted the USAID contracting process. Again, CollaborateUp says it was unaware of the criminal activity by Barnes and Vistant, and also that it had distanced itself from Barnes before working with Green.  
The bribes by Barnes and his co-conspirators laid out in charging papers — which included cash, fake payroll payments, a country club wedding, a trip to Martha’s Vineyard, a down payment on a house, and basketball tickets — took place between 2013 and 2022. USAID inspector general investigators knew of the corruption. On November 9, 2023, the government barred Vistant and Barnes from contracting based on “evidence of conduct indicating a lack of business honesty or integrity.” 

That same day, it notified the Vistant-CollaborateUp joint venture, called PMCG CollaborateUp JV LLC, that it had been chosen for the “root causes of migration” contract vehicle.
A USAID contracting official believed the award was “legally questionable” and told the contractors later that month that he was refusing final sign-off. He said that even though CollaborateUp owned 51% of the joint venture, according to the proposal, almost all the work would be done by Vistant or subcontractors. That meant, in that official’s view, CollaborateUp brought little to the table except being a middleman, while the contract’s “driving force” was banned for lack of integrity, according to civil court papers.
After they disassociated themselves from Barnes, the contractors took the government to <a href="https://ecf.cofc.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/show_public_doc?2024cv0079-35-0">court asking</a> a judge for a permanent injunction “prohibiting USAID from rescinding its award.”
On June 10, 2024, Paul Young, a go-between who paid Watson to obscure the paper trail to Barnes, was <a href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mdd.561574/gov.uscourts.mdd.561574.1.1.pdf">indicted</a> for his role in bribing Watson to influence &#8220;the award of USAID contracts valued at hundreds of millions of dollars.&#8221; The indictment refers to Vistant and Barnes as Company 3 and CC-3 and says, &#8220;Young began making payments from CC-3 to CC-1 [Watson].&#8221; It describes how, for example, in October 2022, CC-3 sent a down payment for Watson&#8217;s home to him through Young.
Two days later, on June 12, 2024, Judge Charles F. Lettow issued “a limited injunction,” punting the decision about the $800 million contract back to USAID to reevaluate. By that time, Vistant had been removed from the list of banned contractors, though the ban on its founder, Barnes, remained.
On August 22, 2024, USAID awarded the <a href="https://www.usaspending.gov/award/CONT_IDV_72051924D00017_7200">“indefinite quantity” contract of up to $800 million</a> for “USAID Central America Regional Support Services” to PMCG CollaborateUp JV LLC. It made an initial payment of $10,000 that day.
Further demonstrating that the government knew at the time that Vistant/PMCG had gotten its previous USAID contracts through bribery, one week later, prosecutors offered a <a href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mdd.567709/gov.uscourts.mdd.567709.13.2.pdf">plea deal</a> to a co-conspirator of Barnes, Darryl F. Britt, that laid out the findings of a long-running investigation from USAID&#8217;s inspector general. The plea deal referred to Vistant as Company 2, and Barnes as CC-2.
“Indefinite delivery” contracts are open-ended contracts that allow the government to send repeated work to a company over a period of time up to a maximum amount, meaning the government could pay PMCG CollaborateUp as much as $800 million, but could also pay less. A handful of other companies were also eligible for work under the same contract.
The migration contract was terminated in February 2025 — not because of Vistant’s involvement,but because the Trump administration was shuttering USAID over suspicion that graft and insider deals were common, which liberals decried as a conspiracy theory.
Yet the Biden administration&#8217;s General Services Administration, which oversees government-wide contracting, also gave PMCG CollaborateUp JV LLC two contracts lasting five years each, despite the government’s knowledge that Barnes had gotten contracts through bribery.
On November 6, 2024 — the day after the presidential election — GSA awarded the joint venture an indefinite delivery <a href="https://www.usaspending.gov/award/CONT_IDV_47QRCA25DSD24_4732">contract through 2029</a>, whose cap was listed as $999,999,999,999.00. It paid $2,500 as the opening salvo.
On December 19, shortly before the Biden administration left office, GSA gave it <a href="https://www.usaspending.gov/award/CONT_IDV_47QRCA25DSD24_4732">another</a> indefinite delivery contract with similar terms. According to its GSA Price List, the company rents administrative assistants to the government for <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Yo_qnb-WmfPY9YExhZ2FiqIqkOeAYubY/view">$93.68</a> an hour.
The half-billion dollar bribery scheme is just one instance of fraud at USAID that was known about during the Biden administration, but not prosecuted until the Trump administration.
Stephen Paul Edmund Sutton, a British citizen who worked for a USAID contractor, <a href="https://www.justice.gov/usao-dc/pr/former-contractor-usaid-funded-program-extradited-united-states-convicted-and-sentenced">pleaded</a> <a href="https://www.justice.gov/usao-dc/pr/former-contractor-usaid-funded-program-extradited-united-states-convicted-and-sentenced">guilty</a> on May 19 to taking kickbacks related to an electric program in Pakistan. Sutton and a co-conspirator who worked for him were in charge of giving out subcontractors to Pakistani vendors to perform work.
In 2015, the pair created two companies and had the contractor pay them for forklift and crane services. Then, those companies hired Pakistanis for half the amount. Prosecutors said the agency was defrauded of $100,000. Sutton was ordered to be handed over to immigration authorities instead of jail.
The Daily Wire previously revealed that USAID’s inspector general told a federal court in November that another foreign aid contracting official, Matthieu Zahui of the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/foreign-aid-official-who-resisted-doge-took-secret-payments-after-steering-africa-money-to-friend">African</a> <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/foreign-aid-official-who-resisted-doge-took-secret-payments-after-steering-africa-money-to-friend">Development Foundation</a>, had steered contracts to a friend who secretly paid him personally. USAID had credible tips about Zahui for years, but didn’t take his phone until February 2024. The phone, it said, contained evidence that he was receiving wire transfers to his personal bank account from the owner of a contractor he had steered government funds to.
But USAID did not ask a judge for a search warrant to conduct further investigation until November 4, the day before the election. Zahiu has not been criminally charged as of now.
Editor’s note: This piece has been updated with additional information provided after publication by CollaborateUp.

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