A top official for the U.S. Agency for International Development said he’s handing control of the depleted agency to an official with the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.
Pete Marocco, the USAID acting deputy administrator who executed the dismantling of the U.S. foreign aid agency, sent an internal email to a number of colleagues Tuesday notifying them that the agency is now “under control, accountable and stable.”
In his email, which was obtained from multiple sources by CBS News, Marocco said he’d return to his post as director of the State Department’s Foreign Assistance bureau and that he is now handing over Secretary of State and Acting USAID Administrator Marco Rubio’s authority over the foreign aid agency to DOGE official Jeremy Lewin. According to the Associated Press, Lewin has worked on the DOGE cost-slashing efforts led by Elon Musk at USAID and other federal agencies.
Marocco also said phase 3 of the 90-day review on all U.S. foreign aid is underway. The review was ordered by President Trump in an executive action signed on his first day in office.
In a separate statement provided to CBS News by the State Department, Marocco said of USAID that his team found “crisis-level issues” that were “far worse than we anticipated.” He added that “we identified tens of billions of dollars that were haphazardly pushed through 27 different payment systems to an ‘industrial aid complex’ that no longer served our national interests.”
Marocco identified roughly 1,000 programs at USAID that were deemed to be essential, a State Department spokesperson said.
In his email, Marocco also said was appointing “Ken Jackson to perform the duties of USAID Deputy Administrator for Management and Resources” and to be the agency’s CFO.
DOGE had announced via X on Monday night that Kenneth Jackson is also now the acting president of the U.S. Institute of Peace by the institute’s board, which includes ex officio members Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
Rubio will continue to be USAID’s acting administrator, and the two political appointees will be deputy administrators.
Congress founded the U.S. Institute of Peace in 1984 to help prevent violent conflicts and broker peace deals. Its stated mission is to project U.S. influence and support partner countries in regions “destabilized by China and other U.S. adversaries,” USIP’s website says.
Last Friday, the USIP said that several members of DOGE arrived unannounced and accompanied by two FBI agents. The institute’s outside counsel informed them that USIP is a non-executive branch agency that is private and independent, and the DOGE representatives then left.
They returned Monday, and George Moose, who was USIP’s president and CEO, said, “DOGE has broken into our building.” White House press aide Anna Kelly wrote on X that by then, Moose had already been removed, and Jackson had taken over and was “accessing the agency he now runs.”
Kelly also said the institute had failed to comply with an executive order signed by Mr. Trump in February reducing the USIP to its statutory minimum.
The institute asked a court Tuesday for a restraining order to keep the Trump administration from taking it over while a legal challenge to President Trump’s actions targeting USIP moves forward, but its request was denied Wednesday.
The Institute of Peace is the latest organization to come under scrutiny by the Trump administration and DOGE as part of the president’s initiative to scale down the size of the federal government. Many of these actions have since been challenged in the federal courts as unlawful.
A federal judge on Tuesday found that Elon Musk and DOGE likely violated the Constitution when they unilaterally acted to shut down USAID.
Margaret Brennan,
Melissa Quinn,
Jacob Rosen and
Fin Daniel Gómez
contributed to this report.
