Trump 'fired Inspector General over critical USAID report'
Official image of Inspector General for the US Agency for International Development (USAID) Paul K Martin.
Multiple US media reports suggest President Donald Trump has fired independent Inspector General Paul Martin, shortly after his office published a report criticising the new administration's dismantling of aid agency USAID.
Martin, who was appointed as Inspector General for the USAID towards the end of 2023 by former President Joe Biden, was dismissed via an email from Trent Morse, deputy director of the White House Office of Presidential Personnel, according to a Washington Post report.
The move came almost immediately after the Office of Inspector General (OIG) published its impact assessment of Trump's decision to suspend foreign assistance programmes – including those with funds already "obligated and disbursed" – and slash around 90% of USAID's staff.
The precipitous action has reduced the operational capacity of USAID and left an estimated $489 million in food shipments stranded in warehouses or in transit – at risk of spoilage and diversion to undesirable recipients, including criminal or terrorist groups, according to the document.
"Widespread staffing reductions across the agency […] coupled with uncertainty about the scope of foreign assistance waivers and permissible communications with implementers, has degraded USAID's ability to distribute and safeguard taxpayer-funded humanitarian assistance," it says.
The staff reductions have also compromised the agency's ability to respond to allegations of misconduct involving humanitarian assistance programmes, according to the OIG, which nevertheless acknowledges that there are concerns about fraud, waste, and abuse at USAID, as well as oversight of the agency.
Martin's dismissal comes after trade unions representing USAID workers and non-government organisations (NGOs), as well as contractors working with the agency, challenged the effort to dismantle the agency and absorb it into the US State Department in the courts.
The American Bar Association and international development firm Chemonics are among those that have filed a new lawsuit claiming that Trump has no legal authority to shut down USAID or refuse to spend funding already agreed by Congress, according to Reuters.
It claims that cutting off the funding has resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars unpaid for work that has already been done.
The action joins two other lawsuits filed by the American Foreign Service Association (AFSA) and the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), and the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition and the non-profit Journalism Development Network, respectively, which make similar claims.
