One week into the Trump administration — Monday, Jan. 27 — [Pete] Marocco arrived at the Reagan building. He said he still believed U.S.A.I.D. employees had deliberately violated the president’s order, and said he was expanding his investigation.
To do that, Mr. Marocco was accompanied by members of the Department of Government Efficiency — the effort set up by Mr. Musk, who had promised to cut $2 trillion in federal spending, though he would ultimately fall far short of that goal. U.S.A.I.D. was one of the first agencies visited by DOGE.
But the people who arrived at U.S.A.I.D. were neither experts in foreign assistance contracts nor trained auditors. Luke Farritor was a 23-year-old computer programmer who had dropped out of college. Edward Coristine was a 19-year-old high school graduate who goes by “Big Balls.” Clayton Cromer was a lawyer and former executive assistant to Ed Martin, Mr. Trump’s then-acting U.S. attorney in Washington, who had sought to investigate the president’s perceived enemies.
despite their relative lack of experience, the DOGE members moved quickly to force changes.
After a few hours interviewing agency officials, DOGE staff presented Mr. Gray with a list of 57 U.S.A.I.D. employees they said were involved in the payments Mr. Marocco had complained about, according to people familiar with the events of that day. DOGE demanded those employees be put on administrative leave — removed from the building, cut off from their computer systems, email accounts and work phones.
The list made little sense, according to people with direct knowledge of the meeting: It included most of the senior career officials across the agency. Even if the payments had somehow violated the president’s order, most of the people DOGE had identified would have had nothing to do with them…. The 57 employees were put on leave that afternoon.
The next day — Thursday, Jan. 30 — marked a turning point. Instead of redirecting U.S.A.I.D., the Trump administration and DOGE began moving to shut it down.
That morning, DOGE members approached top U.S.A.I.D. officials, seeking to back up their assertion that some of the people sent home were involved in improper payments.
That evidence turned out to be thin: It revolved around an email that Luke Farritor sent to his teammates in which he shared the results of his review of U.S.A.I.D. payments since the executive order was signed.
“I could be wrong,” Mr. Farritor wrote in the message, which was reviewed by The Times. “My numbers could be off.”
The members of DOGE also said they would not allow the senior employees who had been put on leave to come back, regardless of the evidence, according to an internal memo reviewed by The Times. They demanded that some of those people be fired.
DOGE made a striking demand, ordering Mr. Gray to consent to locking every U.S.A.I.D. employee worldwide out of the agency’s systems, including phones and emails. Mr. Marocco, who joined some of those conversations by phone, echoed that demand, the people said.
Mr. Gray refused. Mr. Lewin then called Mr. Musk, and handed the phone to Mr. Gray. Mr. Musk repeated the demand, according to the people familiar with what happened.
Again, Mr. Gray refused.
That same night, a parallel struggle was underway for control of U.S.A.I.D.’s computer systems and access to the agency’s headquarters.
Members of DOGE demanded that U.S.A.I.D.’s security team provide them with full control of the agency’s networks, including the power to lock anyone out of the system.
Employees at first declined to give that kind of access to DOGE, most of whom lacked security clearances, according to people familiar with what happened. Members of DOGE got Mr. Musk on the phone, who told U.S.A.I.D. employees to cooperate.
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