Trump ally Peter Marocco behind evisceration of USAID: ‘He’s a destroyer’
Ya'll remember Merritt Corrigan and Peter Marocco?#SeditionHunters #Acountability #Jan6thInsurrection pic.twitter.com/giIb4IebTp
— Not Sandy 📛 (@K2theSky) November 4, 2024
In November, D Magazine reported:
Pete Marocco, the executive director of Dallas HERO, and his wife, Merritt Corrigan Marocco, have been accused by citizen investigators of entering the U.S. Capitol during the January 6, 2021, insurrection. A group of semi-anonymous, volunteer sleuths that has become known as the Sedition Hunters identified the couple by scouring social media, video footage, and by using facial recognition software, among other tools that have helped them identify more than 1,000 rioters.
The Trump administration’s evisceration of US overseas aid has been presided over by a campaign ally who sowed a trail of enmity at multiple agencies during the first Trump presidency and has been publicly identified as allegedly having been present at the January 6 insurrection when rioters stormed the US Capitol.
Peter Marocco has accumulated power in the office of foreign assistance, informally called “F”, that traditionally has helped coordinate US foreign aid programs. But under Marocco, it has enforced a full-scale freeze on overseas aid and a stop-work order that has in effect halted operations and already led to hundreds of layoffs in the United States and overseas.
According to current and former USAid and state department officials, the office’s consolidation of power under Marocco has undermined congressional checks and balances and instead given authority to a non-Senate-confirmed appointee who is slashing and burning his way through overseas aid programs at USAid and the state department.
“He is not a disruptor. He’s a destroyer,” said a former USAid official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss Marocco. “And it’s clear to me. The plan is to come in, destroy USAid, take it down, and then build it up again, the way they want to do that.”
Marocco’s return to USAid has not been formally announced and the department website still lists a previous director for the office of foreign assistance. Many staff only learned that Marocco had been appointed from emails and cables drafted by him ordering them to stop work. [Continue reading…]
The personnel moves and attendant controversy – President Donald Trump essentially shut down USAID’s primary mission when he froze foreign aid on his first day in office – have roiled an agency established in 1961 to help other countries alleviate poverty and disease, rebuild after war or crisis and use American funding to push back on Chinese and Russian influence.
On Saturday, the standoff centered on access to a secure room that’s designed for reviewing classified and sensitive information. Called a “secure compartmented information facility,” or SCIF, the room on the second floor of the Reagan Building houses some of USAID’s most sensitive documents and personnel information. While the personnel documents they were seeking are not classified, according to people familiar with them, entry to the SCIF requires a top secret/sensitive compartmented information security clearance. It’s unclear whether the DOGE team held security clearances at that level.
“No classified material was accessed without proper security clearances,” wrote Katie Miller, who Trump has attached to DOGE, in a post on X Sunday. She didn’t respond to a request for comment sent to her LinkedIn account. Likewise, members of the DOGE team that participated in Saturday’s visit to USAID’s offices didn’t respond to requests for comment sent to email accounts they were assigned by USAID officials.
Trump’s allies have placed USAID under intense scrutiny. The influential Project 2025 document, a plan from the Heritage Foundation that appears to have guided the Trump administration thus far, said that the agency had become a “platform to pursue overseas a divisive political and cultural agenda that promotes abortion, climate extremism, gender radicalism, and interventions against perceived systemic racism.” [Continue reading…]