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 during a press conference 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

State Department

USAID

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>

Mathieu Zahui, chief financial officer of the African Development Foundation

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. 
<a href="https://get.dailywire.com/subscribe/plus/?utm_campaign=summer&amp;utm_content=editorialsummersale&amp;utm_medium=website&amp;utm_source=editorial" target="_blank" rel="noopener">End of Summer Sale – Get 40% off New DailyWire+ Annual Memberships</a>
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

Donald Trump

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

Africa

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

Global Politics

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.

Walter Barnes

USAID’s $800M ‘Root Causes Of Migration’ Plan Included Company That Feds Knew Previously Bribed Agency

Immigration

Kamala Harris

Three government contractors and a USAID official have pleaded guilty to a scheme involving paying bribes in order to steer more than half a billion dollars in foreign aid contracts, the Department of Justice said Friday.
Roderick Watson, a USAID contracting officer, admitted to steering money to multiple companies in exchange for more than $1 million in bribes.
“Watson exploited his position at USAID to line his pockets with bribes in exchange for more than $550 million in contracts,&#8221; Guy Ficco of IRS Criminal Investigation <a href="https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/usaid-official-and-three-corporate-executives-plead-guilty-decade-long-bribery-scheme">said</a> in a statement. &#8220;While he helped three company owners and presidents bypass the fair bidding process, he was showered with cash and lavish gifts.&#8221;
The scheme was possible because of the federal government&#8217;s racial &#8220;set-aside&#8221; laws known as 8(a) contracting, which allow contracting officers to give contracts to companies owned by minorities, women, or veterans without the usual competitive process.
Walter Barnes III, the founder of a Baltimore-area company predicated on taking advantage of those laws, admitted to paying bribes, including a country-club wedding, cash, and a trip to Martha&#8217;s Vineyard.
Barnes&#8217;s company is called Vistant, previously known as PM Consulting Group. It was awarded contracts on the pretense that it was &#8220;disadvantaged&#8221; because Barnes is black, even as it took in tens of millions of dollars. Barnes used a public defender in his court case, drawing a rebuke from the judge that he presumably had ample resources to pay for his own lawyer.
Also pleading guilty was Darryl Britt, the founder of 8(a) contracting firm Apprio Inc., which is received $271 million in federal contracts since 2004. Both companies also admitted criminal liability.
Beginning in 2013, Britt — a member of <a href="https://www.cmu.edu/tepper/the-intelligent-future/our-leadership/business-board-of-advisors.html">Carnegie Mellon</a> University&#8217;s Business Board of Advisers — bribed Watson to award contracts to Apprio. When an 8(a) firm becomes too large, it &#8220;graduates&#8221; from its &#8220;disadvantaged&#8221; status. But minority contracting laws are notoriously exploited, with minority-owned firms existing simply to win contracts, then subcontracting out the work to other firms. That is often done openly, and above board, with “joint ventures.”
That&#8217;s what happened in this case once Apprio could no longer receive contracts without competition. Beginning in 2018, it enlisted Barnes to have sole-source contracts be awarded to his company, Vistant, which would then subcontract to Apprio.
To obscure the money trail, bribes would often be passed through Paul Anthony Young, a friend of Barnes’ in Maryland who was president of another subcontractor, and who also pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit bribery of a public official.
Between 2013 and 2023, Britt, Barnes, and Young “bribed [Watson], a public official, repeatedly—in fact, through hundreds of monthly payments and other things of value, including laptops, cellular phones, jobs for relatives, and other gifts and favors” in exchange for “USAID contracts valued at hundreds of millions of dollars,” a statement of facts accompanying Britt’s plea deal said.
That included a $25.5 million contract for “professional management” awarded in late 2018 to Vistant, which was subcontracted out to the other companies. Initially, Britt said to give “only cash to you know who,” but eventually, Young put the USAID contracting officer on the payroll of a company.
On March 28, 2018, Watson put in paperwork for a &#8220;sole source, noncompetitive contract&#8221; to Vistant. The next day, Young spent $3,000 renting a suite for Watson to watch the Washington Wizards play basketball, according to court filings.
Minority-owned &#8220;disadvantaged&#8221; businesses typically can only get contracts under $4 million without competition, but in June 2018, Watson sought an exception from the Small Business Administration to award a contract north of $20 million.
In August, Watson grumbled that he could make much more money as an 8(a) contractor than he could as a government employee. Young encouraged him to start a firm, but Watson said he wanted to wait until he was more &#8220;thoroughly entrenched with [US]AID and now the State Department&#8221; so he could use his connections to get contracts.
<div id="attachment_934517" style="width: 1034px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-934517" class="size-large wp-image-934517" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/06/contracts-1024x523.jpg" alt="" width="1024" height="523" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/06/contracts-1024x523.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/06/contracts-300x153.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/06/contracts-768x392.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/06/contracts-1536x785.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/06/contracts.jpg 1640w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" />Department of Justice</div>
The contracts totaled $544 million between 2013 and 2022, according to Barnes&#8217; <a class="c-link" href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mdd.582064/gov.uscourts.mdd.582064.11.1.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-stringify-link="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mdd.582064/gov.uscourts.mdd.582064.11.1.pdf" data-sk="tooltip_parent">plea agreement</a>. They began with a $4.8 million &#8220;staffing contract&#8221; in 2013 and a $37 million &#8220;institutional support&#8221; contract in 2014 and escalated to a $95 million contract for &#8220;technical support&#8221; in 2022. The awarded contracts amounted to $257 million, plus there were three potential contracts totaling $287 million near the end of the scheme that were not ultimately awarded.
Two USAID contracts awarded to Apprio, for $4.4 million and $1.8 million, are listed in spending records as for “education/training-lectures.” A $30 million USAID contract to Vistant is listed as “for the innovation design and advisory services team to obtain access to specialized buy-in support to a variety of technical design firms through the management of a PMO.” A $25 million contract is listed as simply “to obtain professional management services from an 8(a) small business contractor.”
A mark of how minority set-aside contractors routinely game the system is how small companies receive contracts for widely divergent fields of work — a sign that they are simply having others do it or hiring staff afterwards with little knowledge of the subject area. Apprio’s contracts with government agencies range from developing websites to medical care to human resources to “ebola efforts.”
Other USAID contracts to Vistant include a $15 million contract “to help protect cyberspace and communications network domains to block the spread of insecure information.” A $28 million USAID contract was for “lab institutional contractor – mega bridge contract,” and a $40 million contract was for “creation of the PDEX award.” A $204,000 contract was for a “senior advisor to the Belarus country director.”
The Trump administration shuttered USAID following concerns that much of its foreign aid was wasted or diverted to politically connected Americans. That contention was met by outrage on the part of Democrat lawmakers, who stormed its office and called it a conspiracy theory. Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI) said on Thursday that there was only <a class="c-link" href="https://puck.news/senator-brian-schatz-on-immigration-lies-medicaid-cuts-grift/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-stringify-link="https://puck.news/senator-brian-schatz-on-immigration-lies-medicaid-cuts-grift/" data-sk="tooltip_parent">$50 million in waste in total</a> at USAID
The Department of Justice said that Apprio should have to pay a $52 million penalty and Vistant should have to pay $86 million, but that the companies did not have the funds to pay. It agreed to accept $500,000 from Apprio and $100,000 from Vistant, and to defer criminal prosecution of both companies. USAID official Watson faces up to 15 years in prison, while the company owners face up to five years in prison.

Darryl Britt (left) and Walter Barnes III

USAID Official, Three Contractors Plead Guilty To Half-Billion Dollar Bribery Scheme

The GOP-led House moved on Thursday to cut billions in funding for foreign aid and public broadcasting, aligning with the Department of Government Efficiency&#8217;s (DOGE) recommendations to cut programs Republicans deem to be wasteful and ideologically driven.
A <a href="https://docs.house.gov/billsthisweek/20250609/SCALIS_004_xml[6].pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">rescissions bill</a> that seeks to take back $9.4 billion in discretionary spending allocated toward foreign aid projects and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which provides funds to NPR and PBS, passed in a <a href="https://x.com/HouseDailyPress/status/1933251522961313997" target="_blank" rel="noopener">vote</a> of 214-212 <a href="https://x.com/CraigCaplan/status/1933254246561935683" target="_blank" rel="noopener">mostly along</a> party lines.
&#8220;President Trump promised to root out waste, fraud, and abuse in the federal government, and today House Republicans took a strong step in delivering on that promise,&#8221; House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-MN) told The Daily Wire. &#8220;By solidifying savings found by DOGE, we’re reining in reckless spending and getting our fiscal house in order.&#8221;
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA) <a href="https://www.majorityleader.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=4551" target="_blank" rel="noopener">introduced</a> the bill after President Donald Trump&#8217;s administration <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/dei-insect-powder-and-trans-resilience-trump-unveils-woke-spending-cuts-request" target="_blank" rel="noopener">submitted</a> a rescissions package seeking the cuts last week. Under the Impoundment Control Act, lawmakers have 45 days to act on the request, and it requires only a simple majority in the House and Senate — meaning the filibuster threshold can be ignored.
The legislation proposes cutting $8.3 billion from U.S. Agency for International Development and the State Department programs, including funding for &#8220;Net Zero Cities&#8221; in Mexico, Iraqi &#8220;Sesame Street,&#8221; and global LGBTQ+ initiatives, and $1.1 billion from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, targeting NPR and PBS following choices such as <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/news/npr-ceo-admits-outlet-was-mistaken-in-refusing-to-cover-hunter-biden-laptop-story/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">ignoring</a> the Hunter Biden laptop story and trans-focused programming.
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While the House debated the bill, Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) <a href="https://x.com/DailyCaller/status/1933236626433716523" target="_blank" rel="noopener">held up</a> a doll of Elmo from &#8220;Sesame Street.&#8221; He bemoaned how lawmakers were debating legislation that &#8220;targets Elmo, and Big Bird, and Daniel Tiger, and &#8216;Sesame Street'&#8221; rather than a bill &#8220;designed to make this country and our economy more affordable.&#8221; Scalise <a href="https://x.com/search?q=jeffries%20elmo&amp;src=typed_query&amp;f=top" target="_blank" rel="noopener">delivered</a> a rebuttal in which he affirmed &#8220;Sesame Street&#8221; is &#8220;doing just fine&#8221; after being <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/19/business/media/sesame-street-netflix-pbs.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">picked up</a> by Netflix. &#8220;What will go away is some of the far-Left, radical views that are being espoused,&#8221; he added.
A continuation of the cuts is possible if they make it into fiscal 2026 legislation. Sources on Capitol Hill and the White House expect more requests to implement the so-called DOGE cuts to follow, assuming the first bill manages to pass through both chambers of Congress. It&#8217;s part of a wider effort to reduce the deficit, including income from tariffs and reining in the budget with the &#8220;One Big, Beautiful Bill&#8221; and the appropriations process.
In a post on Truth Social before the vote, Trump <a href="https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/114671982391481893" target="_blank" rel="noopener">called</a> the rescissions bill a &#8220;NO BRAINER&#8221; and encouraged Republicans to vote for it to &#8220;&#8216;claw back&#8217; $9.4 BILLION DOLLARS in funding for wasteful Foreign Aid, used for Radical &#8216;DEI&#8217; and the Green New SCAM, and the &#8216;Corporation for Public Broadcasting,&#8217; which funds the highly biased NPR and PBS.&#8221;

House Republicans, including Mike Johnson, Steve Scalise, and Tom Emmer

House Passes DOGE Cuts Targeting Foreign Aid, NPR, And PBS

Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)

Hakeem Jeffries

National Public Radio (NPR)

Public Broadcasting Service (PBS)

Spending Bill

Steve Scalise

U.S. House of Representatives

White House

A Washington, D.C., judge on Tuesday threw out a lawsuit challenging President Donald Trump&#8217;s control of the African Development Foundation, a small federal agency that locked its doors to prevent Trump&#8217;s staff from entering and had to be physically taken over by U.S. Marshals.
The suit was brought by Ward Brehm, a former member of the agency&#8217;s board of directors, which is appointed by the president. On February 24, the White House notified Brehm that he was fired. But Brehm later insisted he was not just on the board, but had become president of the agency — not Pete Marocco, the architect of the USAID demolition, who Trump also named as president of the similar African aid group.
Senior Judge Richard J. Leon <a href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.278118/gov.uscourts.dcd.278118.41.0_1.pdf">ruled</a> that Brehm &#8220;never lawfully held the position, and the Court is not at liberty to unilaterally install him as president. The Court therefore finds that summary judgment is warranted for the defendants.&#8221;
&#8220;The &#8216;President may remove anyone he appoints,&#8217; unless Congress &#8216;wishes to restrict the President&#8217;s removal power,&#8217; which it &#8216;must make clear in a statute,'&#8221; he wrote, citing precedent.
The White House removed all five board members on the same day, but ADF staff would not share contact info for the board members with Trump staff, and notifications to members besides Brehm were sent to invalid email addresses.
On February 28, the White House wrote to the African Development Foundation&#8217;s Chief Financial Officer, Mathieu Zahiu, that the agency had become &#8220;Board-less&#8221; and Trump had temporarily appointed Marocco as acting chair.
Zahui consulted with the fired board members, then told the White House that agency staff would not recognize Marocco as their boss because &#8220;a board nomination requires Senate confirmation.&#8221;
On March 3, the old board held a meeting that purported to appoint Brehm as the chair. They notified Congress that they had seen the February 28 email, but that Brehm was the new president.
Marocco then held a board meeting with only himself and terminated Brehm. &#8220;Since then, both Brehm and Marocco claim to be USADF&#8217;s president,&#8221; the judge wrote.
Judge Leon, a George W. Bush appointee, wrote that Brehm could not be president of the agency because he had been fired from the board before it supposedly elected him president. Even the other board members, whose emailed termination notices were bungled, knew they had been fired, he said.
&#8220;President Trump removed the board prior to Brehm&#8217;s appointment, and thus Brehm was not lawfully appointed! Brehm&#8217;s removal claims must therefore fail.&#8221;
He noted that chief financial officer Zahui consulted with the previous board members before refusing the accept the White House&#8217;s appointee, and that &#8220;Zahui effectively notified the Board members of their terminations.&#8221;
A <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/this-foreign-aid-agency-locked-its-doors-to-keep-doge-out-now-we-know-why">Daily Wire investigation</a> found that, according to the USAID Inspector General, Zahui received secret payments to his personal bank account after improperly steering contracts to a friend. One of the contracts was for travel during COVID, when no one was traveling. A search warrant was executed on Zahui&#8217;s phone in November, but as of now, he has not been criminally charged.
The Daily Wire&#8217;s investigation found that the African Development Foundation affirmed many of the fears that critics expressed about USAID, particularly that money advertised as going to poor people in third-world countries was being rerouted to D.C. bureaucrats and their friends.
The African Development Foundation sent &#8220;grants&#8221; to African groups on the condition that they send part of the money to American groups affiliated with agency officials and even wire money directly to the personal bank accounts of Foundation employees in Washington, the investigation found.
By law, the group is only permitted to give aid to African groups, and the maneuvering allowed Congress to think it was a low-overhead charity sending the bulk of its money to Africans, when in reality, it was essentially cooking the books.
“The grant was provided to an African organization … a grant can pay for people,” Zahiu told the Daily Wire about one instance of the agency forcing an African group to use part of its grant to pay the salaries of D.C. staff. “Yeah, granted, they were in D.C.” He also said that after DOGE changed the office&#8217;s locks, he gained access through a back door.
One longtime employee said the agency&#8217;s staff locked DOGE out because “the contracts don’t make sense, and they know [DOGE] will find lots of wrongdoing and illegal activity.”
“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,” she said.
Another employee, program manager Kate Ristroph, explained in a videotaped internal investigative interview obtained by The Daily Wire how an agency official gave a grant to an African group on the condition that it route some of the money to his former employer in D.C. “We’re in that murky territory of like, is this legal?” she said.
Mateo Dunne, the agency&#8217;s former lawyer, said he was summarily removed from his job by CEO Travis Adkins after sounding the alarm about lawbreaking.
One piece of misconduct he raised involved one of the now-fired board members, John Agwunobi.
Agwunobi was the CEO of Herbalife, a company accused of being a pyramid scheme, and used the federal agency to push the multi-level marketing firm in Africa months after it paid a $122 million settlement to the Department of Justice to settle charges that it violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. ADF misrepresented the partnership as being with a nonprofit when it was actually with the for-profit company, and connected Africans with the company&#8217;s reps, he said.
Adkins also bragged about concealing operations from Brehm and other board members, saying “them white motherf***ers, they don’t need to know … I don’t think I should tell them s***,” his former assistant told The Daily Wire.
The assistant, who is black, said in a sworn affidavit that “On at least three occasions, 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.”
Related: <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>

African Development Foundation locked the doors when DOGE tried to gain access

D.C. Judge Sides With Trump In Lawsuit Over Control Of Corrupt Foreign Aid Agency

Courts

WASHINGTON—The State Department is destroying $13 million worth of contraceptives, The Daily Wire has learned, in addition to saving nearly $31 million by canceling contraceptive orders placed by President Joe Biden&#8217;s administration.
The contraceptives — including everything from hormonal birth control pills to birth control implants — were set to be distributed abroad through the U.S. Agency for International Development. But the State Department now says the Biden administration purchased much of these contraceptives in violation of the Kemp-Kasten Amendment, which prevents U.S. funds from going to organizations that support or participate in programs of coercive abortion or involuntary sterilization.
There were some interested buyers, a State Department official said, but they were deemed ineligible since they support organizations involved in coercive abortion and sterilization. Those buyers reportedly included the Gates Foundation, the Children&#8217;s Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF), and the United Nations Population Fund. None of these organizations immediately responded to requests for comment.
A State Department official noted that it would cost the department several million dollars to sell the materials to other vendors, given that the department would have to rebrand some of these materials. Destroying the contraceptives, meanwhile, would cost taxpayers around $167,000, the official said. Doing so also avoids potential further violations of the Kemp-Kasten Amendment and ensures the materials don&#8217;t fall into the wrong hands — something that has happened before with USAID, according to the State Department.
The move is part of President Donald Trump&#8217;s January 2025 presidential directive that <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/memorandum-for-the-secretary-of-state-the-secretary-of-defense-the-secretary-of-health-and-human-services-the-administrator-of-the-united-states-for-international-development/">stops support</a> for organizations that are involved in coercive reproductive practices, according to a State Department memo shared with The Daily Wire. It is the Trump administration&#8217;s latest effort to curtail USAID, a once-sprawling operation that has been radically reined in and placed firmly under the auspices of the State Department.
An inventory of USAID-Funded Contraceptive Commodities held at a distribution center in Belgium shows that USAID had formerly funded millions of dollars&#8217; worth of birth control implants (including $3,850,540 for levonorgestrel rod implants and over $3,500,000 for etonogestrel rod implants).
USAID was also funding hundreds of thousands of dollars&#8217; worth of birth control pills, hormones, and IUDs, according to data reviewed by The Daily Wire.
The Belgian distribution center, Belgium RDC, was holding a total of $9,734,251 contraceptive commodities, and $3.4 million in commodities are still being held by its supplier, according to the State Department memo.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio testifies on the 2026 Budget In House Hearing

EXCLUSIVE: State Department To Destroy $13 Million In Biden Era Contraceptives

Abortion

Contraception

The most radical thing Washington can do right now is stop spending. President Trump’s proposed $9.4 billion rescissions package won’t accomplish that on its own, but it at least, finally, moves us in the right direction.
For decades, members of both parties have treated spending growth as a measure of success. The assumption has been that government must grow, and that any program, once funded, must be permanent. That mindset has left us with a bloated federal bureaucracy that has replaced free-market policy and individual freedom with centralized control and pushed the country to <a href="https://www.usdebtclock.org/">nearly $37 trillion in debt</a>.
Still, most sitting lawmakers have never voted to cut a single dollar of federal spending. This package gives them that chance. More than that, it gives them an opening to start restoring the habits of a functioning legislature.
It’s also the first time the Department of Government Efficiency has had its work put into legislative form. Elon Musk built and led DOGE under the simple premise to stop wasting taxpayer money. Musk has since returned to the private sector, but he and the president have made clear that the mission remains. The rescissions package, which would codify spending cuts proposed by DOGE, reflects that mission. It targets corrupt USAID programs, taxpayer subsidies for ideologically biased public broadcasters NPR and PBS, and other programs that fail even a basic test of necessity in a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/05/02/us/trump-budget-2026">$1.7 trillion discretionary budget</a>.
Fiscal conservatives, especially those complaining this package doesn’t go far enough, should not let the perfect be the enemy of the essential. Fiscal discipline, like any discipline, requires a starting point. You don’t run a marathon by starting with 20 miles, you start with one. This bill is that first mile.
Congress should treat it as such: start small, bank the win, and keep cutting wherever the rules allow. That means more rescissions, which require only a simple majority to pass. It also means using the appropriations process and, when necessary, continuing resolutions, to keep pushing the issue. Not every tool requires a supermajority, but even the ones that do are worth using to force the debate. Progress in this fight can come steadily if congressional Republicans stay united and focused.
It also means that if passed, this package should be the first of a longer series of cuts. Each one can go further, targeting programs that stray from constitutional purpose or national interest. Repetition in this case can build momentum and credibility.
It can also build legislative muscle memory. Too many lawmakers now assume the only way forward is through bipartisan overspending. A successful rescission would challenge that assumption. It would remind Congress that not every federal dollar is sacred and that cutting even a fraction of the budget is still possible with political will.
Moreover, follow-through matters just as much as passage. House and Senate Republicans must ensure these cuts aren’t restored elsewhere. Cuts that DOGE has made or proposed shouldn’t be backfilled through continuing resolutions or omnibus bills, especially those that are widely popular across America. What gets cut should stay cut. The goal is a permanent shift in direction.
DOGE’s broader purpose has always been to realign government toward greater efficiency and accountability. That vision reflects a basic expectation of public service – that government should function effectively, that leaders should make responsible decisions rather than defer them, and that taxpayers should have confidence their money is being used with care, not lost to inefficiency or corruption.
Congressional Republicans should also keep in mind that a win here sets the tone for the 2026 midterm elections. It signals that the Trump administration’s second-term agenda, as well as the party’s broader movement, is not just about executive action but real, legislative reform. Therefore, they should view these cuts not as the finish line, but as the starting point.
The stakes are about whether the federal government serves the American people or the other way around; whether Congress retains the capacity to exercise restraint, or whether inertia has become the default; and whether a new generation of lawmakers can relearn the forgotten skill of saying no.
This rescissions bill offers the chance to begin answering those questions. Conservatives should take it, and then keep going.
* * *
Paul Teller is the Executive Vice President of Advancing American Freedom.
John Shelton is a policy director for Advancing American Freedom. 
The views expressed in this piece are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

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