President Donald Trump’s administration could consider criminal charges against U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) staffers following a bombshell investigation by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) that uncovered severe abuses within foreign aid programs.
On Wednesday, Pete Marocco, USAID’s deputy administrator-designate, briefed members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee on the ongoing review of the agency’s spending and operations, conducted under Trump’s directive.
The Capitol Hill meeting sought to provide lawmakers with an update on the review of foreign aid policies implemented under Trump. During discussions, Marocco suggested that the ongoing investigation—which has been shaped by findings from Elon Musk’s DOGE initiative—could result in criminal referrals related to misconduct at USAID.
Apparently, there’s still judicial action that has even come out as late as this morning,” Rep. Keith Self, (R-TX), who attended the meeting, told DailyMail in an interview. “They intend to refer USAID officials to DOJ,” he added, highlighting that fraud “is a criminal act.”
The congressman stated that Morocco did not rule out the possibility of both USAID employees and grant recipients being implicated in criminal activities.
“If they are detecting outright fraud, not just bad programs, not just ignoble programs, not just programs that don’t support the national interest of the United States, if they’re finding fraud, then, absolutely” the perpetrators should face prosecution, Self said.
He added that criminal charges would only result from a robust “paper trail” of evidence.
“You’re going to have to have a paper trail to prove that,” Self added. “And I doubt that they would refer anyone without a very strong paper trail.”
Another person who attended the briefing confirmed the seriousness of the allegations in an interview with DailyMail.com.
“Marocco briefed the full House Foreign Affairs Committee, Democrats and Republicans, that the waste, fraud, and abuse at USAID was more severe than initially presumed,” the source told the outlet.
“He told lawmakers that multiple referrals to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution were being considered,” they continued. “The conduct in question arose because of USAID’s decentralized accountability system that often left grantees on the ground using American tax dollars in ways that were both inappropriate and potentially illegal.”
USAID has been undergoing a dramatic overhaul following intervention by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). The agency, tasked with streamlining government operations and eliminating waste, has already implemented sweeping changes that have disrupted USAID’s structure and operations.
Several high-ranking officials, including the agency’s security director, have been placed on administrative leave, while USAID’s website has been taken offline. Additionally, programs focused on democracy-building and free speech initiatives have been significantly scaled back or put on hold.
On Wednesday, the U.S. Supreme Court, in a narrow 5-4 decision, declined to overturn a lower court ruling that unfroze federal spending contracts at USAID, dealing a setback to President Trump and frustrating conservatives.
The ruling denied Trump’s request to keep billions in aid payments frozen while the administration conducts an audit to investigate waste and fraud.
The order wasn’t signed, but four conservative justices—Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh—didn’t agree with it.
Alito wrote in a strong dissent that he was “stunned” by the court’s decision to let the lower court judge order the administration to unfreeze the foreign aid that was at issue in the case.
“A federal court has many tools to address a party’s supposed nonfeasance. Self-aggrandizement of its jurisdiction is not one of them,” he wrote.
Steve Vladeck, a CNN Supreme Court analyst and professor at Georgetown University Law Center, described the order as “extremely modest.”
“The unsigned order does not actually require the Trump administration to immediately make up to $2 billion in foreign aid payments; it merely clears the way for the district court to compel those payments, presumably if it is more specific about the contracts that have to be honored,” Vladeck said.
“The fact that four justices nevertheless dissented – vigorously – from such a decision is a sign that the Court is going to be divided, perhaps along these exact lines, in many of the more impactful Trump-related cases that are already on their way,” he added.