Top security officials at aid agency put on leave after denying access to Musk team

The two top security officials at the US Agency for International Development were put on administrative leave Saturday night after refusing to give representatives of Elon Musk access to internal systems, according to three US officials with knowledge of the matter.

And the agency's chief of staff, Matt Hopson, a Trump administration political appointee who had started his job days ago, has resigned, two of the officials said.

The employees working for Musk's task force who clashed with John Voorhees, USAID's director of security, and his deputy were seeking to enter a secure area of the agency's offices to get at classified material, two U.S. officials with knowledge of the incident said. It is not clear exactly what exchange took place between them and Voorhees, who could not immediately be reached for comment. Hopson also could not be immediately reached.

Voorhees and his deputy are the latest senior officials at the agency to be put on administrative leave. Last week, Trump administration appointees suspended about 60 senior officials and fired hundreds of contractors. There has been talk among current and former agency employees and lawmakers that USAID, which receives its funding from Congress, could be subsumed within the State Department in a drastically reduced form as President Donald Trump continues to slash foreign aid.

Trump, returning to Washington from his home in Palm Beach, Florida, on Sunday evening, disparaged the agency, telling reporters traveling with him that it was run by "radical lunatics."

He also praised Musk as "very smart."

Musk has posted a series of messages in recent days expressing fury at the aid agency and voicing conspiracy theories about it.

"USAID is a criminal organization," Musk wrote Sunday in a social media post that many aid workers saw as confirmation the agency would soon be absorbed into the State Department and that some viewed as a potential threat to their personal safety. "Time for it to die."

Multiple people who identified themselves as representatives of Musk's so-called Department of Government Efficiency were on-site at USAID last week, demanding access to the agency's financial and personnel records, according to two US officials with direct knowledge of the activity and the agency's inner workings.

The cost-cutting effort led by Musk, the world's richest man, is not a department but rather a task force that nevertheless has been granted unusual power. An executive order signed by Trump gives its workers unfettered access to government agencies. But in theory, the employees would still need to get proper security clearances to access classified material.

Katie Miller, an employee of the Musk initiative, responded Sunday to the reports of security officials being put on leave. "No classified material was accessed without proper security clearances," she said on X, the social media platform owned by Musk. The clash involving Voorhees was first reported by CNN on Sunday.

More employees from the agency were put on paid leave over the weekend, but exact numbers are unclear, the officials said. A sense of despair was settling in among employees remaining at USAID as they learned of the new suspensions and braced for the potential of even more sweeping layoffs and a crippling of the agency.

In a letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday, Democratic senators who sit on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee expressed concern about the upheaval and the attempt by Musk representatives to access classified areas and material, and demanded updates.

"Congress has also made clear that any attempt to reorganize or redesign USAID requires advance consultation with, and notification to, Congress," the senators wrote.

They continued: "The potential access of sensitive, even classified, files, which may include the personally identifiable information (PII) of Americans working with USAID, and this incident as a whole, raises deep concerns about the protection and safeguarding of matters related to US national security."

Employees of USAID's Washington, DC, headquarters have been told to attend a Tuesday staff meeting at which they are expecting to be informed of a significant reduction in the workforce, according to two people apprised of the plans, who spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to speak about the matter. Staff members of USAID have been given strict instructions not to speak publicly about the staffing cuts or other changes underway at the agency.

The expected staff reductions follow a week of turmoil at the government's lead agency for humanitarian aid and development assistance.

USAID, which spent about $38.1 billion on health services, disaster relief, anti-poverty efforts and other foreign assistance programs in fiscal year 2023, makes up less than 1% of the federal budget. It takes foreign policy guidance from the State Department but has otherwise operated independently.

The USAID website went dark Saturday -- a possible indication of a looming loss of the agency's autonomy that employees anticipated Trump would soon make official with an executive order. Spokespeople for the White House did not immediately return a request for comment.

The State Department website has a page with archived posts from the aid agency.

Lawmakers and aid workers also learned that at least some of the signs at the agency's headquarters had been removed.

Pete Marocco, a divisive figure from the first Trump administration, has taken charge of foreign aid at the State Department under Rubio. He has been a leading figure in driving the halt to foreign aid, the firing and suspension of the USAID employees, and the efforts of Musk's representatives to get access to classified material at the agency, the officials said.

The State Department and USAID did not respond to requests for comment.

The changes underway have jarred nonprofit organizations that are supported by USAID. Those groups were already reeling from the Trump administration's decision to freeze nearly all foreign aid programs, a move that was slightly modified by a subsequent vague waiver for programs that administer lifesaving humanitarian aid.

"An abrupt collapse of the agency would put the rights of millions of people around the world at greater risk as a result," Paul O'Brien, executive director of Amnesty International, said in a statement. "What dismantling USAID doesn't do is make anyone safer or more prosperous. Congress should immediately step in to challenge this."

Many foreign policy veterans struggled to understand the seeming animus Musk has displayed toward the agency, especially given the small fraction of the federal budget it constitutes.

USAID funds democracy-promotion programs around the world, including in European countries where right-wing populist movements are thriving. Musk has become an ally of those movements, some of whose leaders have specifically targeted the agency's pro-democracy programs in recent years.

Supporters of Viktor Orban, the right-wing leader of Hungary and a darling of pro-Trump conservatives in the United States, have personally criticized Samantha Power, who led USAID during the Biden administration, for trying to import American values into their country.

After Power visited Budapest in early 2023, where she promoted the agency's civil society efforts in the country, an article in a Budapest-based publication called Hungarian Conservative criticized her visit as part of a larger pattern of "American empire building under the guise of providing aid and spreading democracy."

"Besides carrying out noble humanitarian tasks, USAID is also an indirect instrument of power of the current American government," the publication wrote.

Last week, Balazs Orban, a Hungarian parliamentarian who is not related to Viktor Orban, wrote on social media: "One of the largest Hungarian opposition media outlets is upset by Trump's executive order halting U.S. foreign aid for 90 days, as Hungary's 'independent' press stands to lose millions of forints in funding. Makes you wonder how independent one can be when relying on another government's funding…"

Musk replied to the post, declaring, "The US radical-left has been using US taxpayer money to fund radical-left political parties & media around the world!"

President Vladimir Putin of Russia ordered USAID to cease its work inside Russia in 2012 after public protests against his leadership that he blamed on American influence, singling out US funding for pro-democracy and civil society groups in his country.