At least six United States Agency for International Development (USAID) employees, who believed they had been dismissed by the Trump administration, have now been notified by the agency's internal human resources department that they are under investigation for speaking with journalists, CBS News reported Friday.
These employees, whose official termination dates were postponed due to bureaucratic delays, were accused by the agency of having "engaged with the press/media without authorization." They received an email warning them of potential "disciplinary action," which could include "removal from the U.S. Agency for International Development," per the report.
The warning is said to have been issued by Employment Labor Relations, a division within USAID's internal HR team that handles disciplinary and performance-related complaints.
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Randy Chester, the vice president of the American Foreign Service Association, told CBS: "It's total intimidation."
USAID was among the initial entities to experience significant staff reductions implemented by tech billionaire Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
On February 2, Musk wrote on his social platform X: "USAID is a criminal organization. Time for it to die."
In March, two USAID employees, who were fired the previous month, told CNN the 83 percent spending cuts Secretary of State Marco Rubio had announced would “put lives in jeopardy.”
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“I think that when we’re talking about lifesaving aid programs, saying we’re going to cut 83 percent of USAID’s program, we are going to put lives in jeopardy,” Linden Yee, a former employee of the agency, told CNN at the time.
“After a 6 week review we are officially cancelling 83% of the programs at USAID,” Rubio wrote on the social platform X in March.
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