The Trump administration is considering getting the Department of Justice involved in pursuing allegations of criminal conduct by federal workers at the U.S. Agency for International Development.
Pete Marocco, deputy administrator-designate at USAID, told the House Foreign Affairs Committee in a briefing Wednesday he is considering sending criminal recommendations to the DOJ regarding actions within USAID being exposed by the Department of Government Efficiency, the Daily Mail reported Wednesday.
Members of Marocco's team believe they have uncovered a pattern of illegal activity at the agency, which serves as the main vehicle used by the U.S. to deliver foreign aid.
"Apparently, there's still judicial action that has even come out as late as this morning," Rep. Keith Self, R-Texas, who was at the briefing, told the Daily Mail, "they intend to refer USAID officials to DOJ."
As part of dismantling USAID, President Donald Trump folded it into the State Department and made Secretary of State Marco Rubio its acting administrator. But Marocco has been the point man for many of the agency's operations, according to the Daily Mail.
The Trump administration in January put 60 senior USAID staffers on leave, and then last month it put two top security chiefs on leave after they refused to turn over classified material in restricted areas to DOGE teams.
Self said Marocco told lawmakers that USAID would not share plans for criminal recommendations unless they had an ironclad "paper trail."
"You're going to have to have a paper trail to prove that," Self said. "And I doubt that they would refer anyone without a very strong paper trail."
Another source at the meeting who spoke to the Daily Mail confirmed the potential legal action.
"Marocco briefed the full House Foreign Affairs Committee, Democrats and Republicans, that the waste, fraud, and abuse at USAID was more severe than initially presumed," the source said. "He told lawmakers that multiple referrals to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution were being considered.
"The conduct in question arose because of USAID’s decentralized accountability system that often left grantees on the ground using American tax dollars in ways that were both inappropriate and potentially illegal."
Self told the Daily Mail that Marocco indicated that USAID workers and grant recipients could be recommended for crimes.
"If they are detecting outright fraud, not just bad programs, not just ignoble programs, not just programs that don't support the national interest of the United States, if they're finding fraud, then, absolutely" the wrongdoers should be prosecuted, Self said.