A leaked whistleblower memo accuses President Donald Trump's administration of lying about reviewing grants that it later cut.
The memo, which was released by the consumer advocacy organization Public Citizen, alleges that the Trump administration usurped the contract-making authority from the U.S Agency for International Development, or USAID, to cancel the grants unilaterally. It also calls into question whether the administration obeyed court orders to release the grant funding and the process the government used to close out the agency.
“The Trump Administration has consistently—preposterously—claimed that its decision to terminate thousands of U.S. foreign assistance awards was legal because those terminations were based on an ‘individualized’ review,” Lauren Bateman, attorney with Public Citizen Litigation Group, said in a news release. “This internal agency document corroborates that there was no such individualized review."
For instance, the whistleblower claimed that they never received any of the requested documentation and evidence of any individualized reviews or analysis of the 800 grants that the Trump administration terminated. This led the whistleblower to conclude that no such review or analysis was conducted before the grants were terminated.
At the same time, the whistleblower said the way the Trump administration moved to shut down USAID after cancelling the grants put the government at risk. Trump gave the State Department control of the USAID portfolio in early July, a move that some experts described as dangerous.
"Transferring an entire Agency’s portfolio of active awards to the State Department, who has no official authority, skill, or capacity to manage these awards, is not only irresponsible but opens up the USG to innumerable liabilities as well as fraud, waste, and abuse," the memo reads in part.