USAID Inspector General Fired After Critical Report

The U.S. Agency for International Development headquarters in Washington on Feb. 3, 2025. Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

The inspector general of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) was fired on Feb. 11, one day after his office issued a report criticizing the dismantling of USAID that’s being undertaken by the Trump administration.

Trent Morse, deputy director of the White House Office of Presidential Personnel, informed Paul Martin, the inspector general, of his termination via email. Morse told Martin that he was fired “effective immediately,” a copy of the email shows.

No reason for the termination was included in the missive.

The USAID office of inspector general and the White House did not return requests for comment.

Martin could not be reached.

The inspector general’s office on Feb. 10 released a report stating that the dismantling of USAID had left little oversight for $8.2 billion in unspent aid.

The State Department’s pause on foreign assistance programs and the subsequent directives to staff members to stop their work, at least for now, has “degraded USAID’s ability to distribute and safeguard taxpayer-funded humanitarian assistance,” the report states.

Martin was nominated by President Joe Biden. He had previously been inspector general of NASA.

President Donald Trump on Feb. 11 called USAID “incompetent and corrupt.” The president tasked billionaire Elon Musk with scaling down the agency, which had employed more than 10,000 staff members at home and overseas before all but about 600 were put on leave or fired.

The president also paused foreign assistance, with exceptions for life-saving aid, while a review of foreign spending is conducted.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who was recently appointed acting administrator for USAID, told reporters during a briefing on Feb. 5: “Our goal for USAID was to align the programs that it fulfills with the foreign policy of the United States. What would be a gift to our geopolitical rivals is billions of dollars in foreign aid that is not aligned to the national interest and the foreign policy of the United States.”

USAID and the Trump administration have been hit with several lawsuits that allege that the actions taken by officials have been illegal. A federal judge on Feb. 7 temporarily halted the administration from putting some USAID workers on leave as the legal challenge plays out.

Some fired inspectors general have also sued, including the former inspectors general of the Department of Defense and the State Department. Eight of the former officials said in a new lawsuit that their dismissals violated the law.

Trump has said that terminations of the officials are “a very common thing to do.”

Reuters contributed to this report.