USAID’s Waste, Fraud and Abuse in Ukraine

Judicial Watch Sues USAID for Records on Ukraine Aid Waste, Fraud and Abuse
Judicial Watch Sues National Archives for JFK Assassination Records
Court Hearing Held in Fani Willis Documents Scandal
$200 Million Program Giving Illegal Alien Minors Free Lawyers Reinstated
Soros Group Sues Trump for Cutting Aid to Soros Funded Nonprofit

Judicial Watch Sues USAID for Records on Ukraine Aid Waste, Fraud and Abuse

The American people deserve an immediate and full accounting of the billions of dollars that Biden’s U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) sent to Ukraine. USAID is a notoriously corrupt agency, and we hope the Trump administration brings transparency on this key issue.

We continue our own investigation. We filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against USAID for records regarding waste, fraud and abuse tied to aid money sent to Ukraine (Judicial Watch Inc. v. U.S. Agency for International Development (No. 1:25-cv-00508)).

Our FOIA requests include a demand for records of USAID’s then-Administrator Samantha Power and others regarding:

1) any reported allegations of sexual exploitation, abuse or trafficking of migrants fleeing Ukraine and/or receiving assistance from USAID inside Ukraine.

2) any third-party monitoring contractors or NGOs reporting potential fraud associated with USAID aid to Ukraine.

3) any reported allegations of Direct Cash Assistance Program fraud or attempts to conduct cash transactions in Russian Rubles associated with USAID aid to Ukraine.

4) any USAID-branded commodities appearing for sale in open markets or outside of response activities in Ukraine.

USAID never responded to our FOIA requests, citing “unusual circumstances.”

In December 2023, the agency’s Inspector General’s Office issued a fraud warning citing “Conflicts of Interest in USAID’s Ukraine Response,” including:

Example 1: Missing Conflict of Interest Policy

A USAID prime awardee, executing a Multipurpose Cash Assistance program, discovered that an employee of a subawardee was simultaneously a registered beneficiary of the program and tasked with confirming beneficiary eligibility. The prime awardee reported the matter to OIG, which determined that the subawardee did not have a conflict of interest policy in place to prevent an employee from participating in administered programs as beneficiaries.

Example 2: Unreported Personal Relationship Between Procurement Staff and Bidder

A USAID prime awardee determined that a subawardee’s procurement official had an unreported ongoing personal relationship with a bidder. Upon discovery, the bidder was disqualified, and the procurement official was retrained by the subawardee on handling conflicts of interest and reporting potential conflicts.

Example 3: Awardee Employee Working for a Subawardee

A USAID prime awardee identified an unreported conflict of interest when it found an employee responsible for quality control of a subawardee was also working for that subawardee. After identifying this conflict, the prime awardee prohibited the conflicted employee from any further contact with the subawardee and issued the subawardee a written warning.

According to a February 13, 2025, USAID Inspector General’s report, the agency did not properly vet humanitarian groups it funded to prevent sexual abuse of Ukrainian war victims:

According to the United Nations, approximately 90 percent of the nearly 6.5 million people who fled the country are women and children, with women at the greatest risk of sexual exploitation and abuse (SEA), human trafficking, and forced prostitution.

In July 2022, we issued an advisory notice highlighting key considerations for USAID’s developing humanitarian response led by its Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance (BHA), which included risks of SEA. However, more than a year later, we had not received any allegations of SEA, which raised concerns that cases were underreported.

President Trump on January 20 ordered a “90-day pause in United States foreign development assistance for assessment of programmatic efficiencies and consistency with United States foreign policy.”

In a January 2025 exit memo, USAID stated it sent Ukraine “close to $35 billion” since the Russian invasion in February 2022.

We have several ongoing FOIA lawsuits regarding Ukraine.

In December 2020, we uncovered records from the State Department revealing that then-United States Deputy Chief of Mission to Ukraine and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs George Kent sent an email to then-Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch stating that Ukraine Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko informed Kent that he was offered “high-level” access to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign by the same firm that represented Burisma Holdings.

Also in December 2020, we revealed records from the State Department which showed that former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie “Masha” Yovanovitch had specifically warned in 2017 about corruption allegations against Burisma Holdings. During her November 2019 testimony in the impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump, Yovanovitch told lawmakers that she knew little about Burisma.

In January 2020, we sued the United States Department of State for records related to a January 19, 2016, meeting at the White House that included Ukrainian prosecutors, embassy officials and CIA employee Eric Ciaramella, who reportedly worked on Ukraine issues while on detail to both the Obama and Trump White Houses. Ciaramella was widely reportedas the person who filed the whistleblower complaint that triggered the impeachment proceedings. His name reportedly was “raised privately in impeachment depositions, according to officials with direct knowledge of the proceedings, as well as in at least one open hearing held by a House committee not involved in the impeachment inquiry.”

Judicial Watch Sues National Archives for JFK Assassination Records

We filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) for records about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy (Judicial Watch, Inc. v. National Archives and Records Administration (1:25-cv-00577)).

We sued after the National Archives failed to respond to a January 20, 2025, FOIA request for:

All previously unreleased records in the possession of the National Archives and Records Administration regarding the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. This request includes, but is not limited to, all records transferred to NARA by the Assassination Records Review Board.

On January 19, 2025, then President-Elect Donald Trump announced his intention to make public the “remaining records related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.” On January 23, an executive order was issued to that effect:

More than 50 years after the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, and the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the Federal Government has not released to the public all of its records related to those events. Their families and the American people deserve transparency and truth. It is in the national interest to finally release all records related to these assassinations without delay.

The President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992 required all records related to the assassination of President Kennedy to be publicly disclosed in full by October 26, 2017, unless the President certifies that: (i) continued postponement is made necessary by an identifiable harm to the military defense, intelligence operations, law enforcement, or conduct of foreign relations; and (ii) the identifiable harm is of such gravity that it outweighs the public interest in disclosure.

Despite overwhelming public interest, many records about the JFK assassination remain secret. These records can and should be released under FOIA, so that the American people are assured the Deep State isn’t playing games and ignoring President Trump’s transparency orders.

We have several FOIA cases pending against the National Archives.

In January 2024, a FOIA lawsuit uncovered records from the Archives that showed then-Vice President Joe Biden’s use of an email alias to correspond with family members, including son Hunter and brother James; and that Joe Biden signed off on the cessation of Secret Service protection for Hunter Biden and Beau Biden’s daughter Natalie during an August 2016trip to Kosovo.

In August 2023, we sued the Archives for records of its role in President Trump’s White House records controversy; whether it offered Trump a secure storage location other than the National Archives; and if the Archives consulted with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence regarding the classification or declassification procedures of any of the alleged classified documents found at Trump’s Florida residence.

In August 2022, we uncovered that, as of March 31, the Archives had released only 1,276 pages of over 8,000 records about the unprecedented document dispute and raid on the home of former President Trump.

 In October 2022, we sued the Barack Obama Presidential Library for Obama White House records about the 2016 “Russia Collusion Hoax.” The records, which by law were not available under FOIA until five years after President Obama left office, are held at the library, which is part of the National Archives system.

Court Hearing Held in Fani Willis Documents Scandal

We were in court today for a hearing before Judge Robert C.I. McBurney of the Superior Court of Fulton County, GA, on a motion for in camera (private) “inspection and appointment of special master” to oversee District Attorney Fani Willis’ search for records of communications with Special Counsel Jack Smith and the House January 6 Committee.

This comes in the lawsuit we filed in March 2024 after Willis falsely denied having any records responsive to our earlier Georgia Open Records Act (ORA) request for communications with Smith’s office and/or the January 6 Committee (Judicial Watch Inc. v. Fani Willis et al. (No. 24-CV-002805)).

After finding Willis in default, the court ordered a hearing on December 20, 2024, which resulted in an order that found Willis liable for fees and expenses that “shall be paid within two weeks of the entry of this Order.”

The court then awarded us $21,578 “attorney’s fees and costs.” Willis’ operation made the payment 10 days after the court-ordered deadline.

Thanks to this lawsuit, Willis finally admitted to having records showing communications with the January 6 Committee but refused to release all but one document in response to the court order that found her in default. She cited a series of legal exemptions to justify the withholding of communications with the January 6 Committee. The only document she did release is one already public letter to January 6 Committee Chairman Benny Thompson (D-MS).

We subsequently filed a motion asking the court to appoint a special master to oversee Willis’ search for records in the lawsuit and to conduct a private inspection of any records found.

Regarding the appointment of a special master, we stated:

Willis by her own admission conducted at least three searches before finding any responsive records not already supplied by [Judicial Watch]. She did not even bother to conduct a search until the Complaint was filed. Her records custodian says he does not know the Cellebrite [digital investigations] equipment he apparently had a hand in ordering can be used to search cell phone texts and other data…. Moreover, the custodian had no standard practice for conducting searches and keeps no records of the methods used in a given search.

The foregoing gives rise to grave suspicion that all responsive records have not been found. The Court should appoint a special master to supervise and monitor the record searches. The special master should have authority to audit searches and conduct searches herself. She also should have authority to hire such consultants and experts as may be needed to execute her commission. The special master should make a recommendation to the Court as to how her fees and expenses should be allocated among the parties, taking into consideration whether she finds responsive records that Willis should have found but did not.

We and the court caught Fani Willis red-handed, hiding records. We’re asking the court to appoint a special master because Willis simply can’t be trusted to come clean on her office’s political collusion with the Pelosi January 6 committee to ‘get Trump.

We have several FOIA lawsuits on the lawfare targeting Trump.

In February 2024, the Department of Justice asked a federal court to allow the agency to keep secret the names of top staffers working in Special Counsel Jack Smith’s office that is targeting former President Donald Trump and other Americans.

(Before his appointment to investigate and prosecute Trump, Special Counsel Jack Smith previously was at the center of several controversial issues, the IRS scandal among them. In 2014, a Judicial Watch investigation revealed that top IRS officials had been in communication with Jack Smith’s then-Public Integrity Section about a plan to launch criminal investigations into conservative tax-exempt groups. Read more here.)

In January 2024, we filed a lawsuit against Fulton County, Georgia, for records regarding the hiring of Nathan Wade as a special prosecutor by District Attorney Fani Willis. Wade was hired to pursue unprecedented criminal investigations and prosecutions against former President Trump and others over the 2020 election disputes.

In October 2023, we sued the DOJ for records and communications between the Office of U.S. Special Counsel Jack Smith and the Fulton County, Georgia, District Attorney’s office regarding requests/receipt of federal funding/assistance in the investigation of former President Trump and his 18 codefendants in the Fulton County indictment of August 14, 2023. To date, the DOJ is refusing to confirm or deny the existence of records, claiming that to do so would interfere with enforcement proceedings. Our litigation challenging this is continuing.

Through the New York Freedom of Information Law, in July 2023, we received the engagement letter showing New York County District Attorney Alvin L. Bragg paid $900 per hour for partners and $500 per hour for associates to the Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher law firm for the purpose of suing Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) in an effort to shut down the House Judiciary Committee’s oversight investigation into Bragg’s unprecedented indictment of former President Donald Trump.

$200 Million Program Giving Illegal Alien Minors Free Lawyers Reinstated

We’re not sure why the Trump administration has decided to continue funding a leftist group representing illegal minors. Our Corruption Chronicles blog reports.

A few days after suspending a $200 million annual program that provides illegal immigrant minors with free legal assistance, the Trump administration reinstated it and American taxpayer dollars will continue flowing to the leftist group that helps represent tens of thousands who have entered our country illegally. Little information is available involving the abrupt about face, why in the middle of drastic cuts to the U.S. federal workforce the administration has chosen to continue funding a controversial initiative that benefits illegal aliens. It is part of abillion-dollar commitment launched in 2022 by a Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) agency known as Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) to legally represent underage migrants, known as Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC), who cross the border without a parent. Over 600,000 UAC have crossed illegally into the U.S. through Mexico since 2019 and Uncle Sam spends hundreds of millions of dollars to house, educate, feed, entertain and medically treat them.

The Biden administration extended the services to legal representation, a costly benefit the Trump administration rightfully revoked only to quietly restore it days later. The money, a couple hundred million annually, goes to theAcacia Center for Justice, a Washington D.C. nonprofit that partners with a national network of human rights defenders to provide legal defense to immigrants at risk of detention or deportation. “Acacia envisions a nation with a transformed immigration system that embodies freedom from detention, due process, and equal protection, where every person facing the prospect of exile and community separation has access to meaningful legal defense,” the group writes on its website, which assures its network of attorneys fight for all immigrants regardless of gender identity, sexual orientation, race or previous interaction with the criminal system.

The center’s executive director, Shaina Aber, celebrated the speedy reinstatement of the government’s multi-million-dollar UAC defense program, saying in a press release that “it is unconscionable” that children who arrive in the U.S. unaccompanied by parents or legal guardians should be forced to represent themselves in immigration court against a trained government attorney in an adversarial hearing before a judge, without even a child-friendly orientation or understanding of their legal options. “We welcome the news that the stop-work order on Acacia’s Unaccompanied Children Program has been lifted,” Aber said. “We will continue working alongside the Department of Health and Human Services to ensure that these critical services upholding the basic due process rights of vulnerable children are fully restored and our partners in the legal field–legal lifelines safeguarding the rights and well-being of children seeking safety–can resume their work without future disruption or delay.”

Ironically, it does not always end well for UAC — overwhelmingly males over the age of 14 mostly from Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico—who are allowed to stay in the U.S. Under Biden the government failed to monitor hundreds of thousands of the underage migrants, putting them at high risk for trafficking, exploitation or forced labor. This may seem just as “unconscionable” as forcing the young migrants to represent themselves in immigration court, as the leftist attorney whose group is receiving millions from the government claims. A mainstream newspaper even published a scathing in-depth piece slamming the Biden administration for losing track of at least 85,000 illegal immigrant minors who ended up in dangerous jobs that violate the nation’s child labor laws, including in factories that make products for well-known American brands. A federal audit subsequently revealed that tens of thousands of UAC vanished from the government’s radar and that hundreds of thousands go unmonitored.

The government’s UAC program has for years been rocked by many other problems that have put underage migrants at risk, including physical and sexual abuse at U.S.-funded shelters. In 2021 Judicial Watch obtainedrecords from HHS documenting 33 incidents of physical and sexual abuse during a one-month period at shelters where the government houses UAC until they are relocated with a sponsor. That year an HHS Inspector General report blasted the agency for failing to protect UAC from sexual misconduct at the facilities. Last summer the U.S.sued a nonprofit it has paid billions of dollars to house migrant youths for sexually abusing them for years. The Texas-based nonprofit, Southwest Key, is the government’s largest housing provider for illegal immigrant minors and operates 29 shelters. In its federal complaint the Justice Department claims the children the government pays it to shelter are raped, sexually abused, and harassed.

Soros Group Sues Trump for Cutting Aid to Soros Funded Nonprofit

George Soros and his minions certainly know how to use the courts, and they’re at it again as President Trump shuts off the tax dollars they have been receiving. Our Corruption Chronicles blog has the details.

Highlighting the need to crack down on waste at the nation’s famously corrupt global aid agency, a group funded by leftwing billionaire George Soros is suing the Trump administration for freezing the funds of another nonprofit, also bankrolled by Soros, that receives millions of dollars from the from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). With a massive budget of around $40 billion, the agency has for years come under fire for the outrageous programs it funds with taxpayer dollars, including hundreds of millions to promote Soros’ radical globalist agenda in Latin America, a failed Clinton-backed port and power plant in Haiti, a project to help Asians learn enough English to work in offshore call centers and develop a Pakistani version of the iconic educational children’s program Sesame Street. Other USAID allocations have paid for a condom strategy in Eswatini, bicycles for rural communities in sub-Saharan Africa and racial equity. Vice President Kamala Harris’failed multi-million-dollar venture to curb “irregular migration” was also funded through USAID.

Fortunately for American taxpayers, President Trump froze USAID disbursements on day one while his administration identifies problems, and the move has caused outrage among liberals and their allies in the mainstream media. Now two leftist entities that despise the president and promote agendas that clearly contradict his policies are suing him, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and others in the administration for finally stopping the highly questionable flow of taxpayer dollars into their coffers. A lawsuit filed this month in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia accuses the president and his administration of “illegally and unconscionably” freezing funding and work related to nearly every U.S. foreign assistance mission. By freezing foreign aid, President Trump has exceeded his constitutional authority with his unlawful actions that are harming and will harm countless individuals and entities, the complaint alleges.

The lawsuit was filed by a group called Public Citizen that has received $2.46 million from Soros’ Open Society Foundations (OSF) since 2020, records uncovered by Judicial Watch reveal. The Washington D.C.-based group describes itself as a consumer advocacy organization that champions the public interest in the halls of power. “We defend democracy, resist corporate power, and fight to ensure that government works for the people – not big corporations,” according to its website. Public Citizen’s lead attorney in the case, Lauren Bateman, claims the “Trump administration’s freeze on foreign assistance funding is dangerous and illegal. She added that “when programs like the ones run by our clients are abruptly shuttered, the impacts are felt throughout the world—with the most vulnerable people bearing the deadliest impact.”

One of those plaintiffs is a Soros project called Journalism Development Network (JDN), which received $4.4 million from OSF in 2023 alone, according to records uncovered by Judicial Watch. The Maryland-based nonprofit that claims to support a global consortium of journalists has also received over $6.5 million from the State Department and USAID since 2020. JDN is the corporate name of the vehemently anti-Trump Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project and the two operate under the same Employee Identification Number (EIN) in official Internal Revenue Service (IRS) records obtained by Judicial Watch. A JDN spokesperson called the funding cut an illegal action that deprives small investigative media in low-income countries the funds they desperately need to operate. The recently filed lawsuit has another plaintiff, a New York-based nonprofit calledAIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition (AVAC) that strives for a world without AIDS and with global health equity.

USAID has authority under federal law and the terms of foreign aid contracts to stop payments, Deputy Administrator Peter Marocco writes in a court document filed in the case. The agency took action to ensure funds are not being used for fraudulent purposes and it will continue to examine outgoing payments, Marocco writes. “Historically, USAID had limited, and insufficient payments control or review mechanisms,” the court filing reads. “Certifying officers pushed out payments—or grantees directly drew down on letters of credit or other facilities—and the system automatically processed those payments, without sufficient opportunity for payments integrity or program review. Under that legacy system, USAID employees were unable to adequately identify basic information about specific payments, such as the programs with which specific payments were associated. After Trump’s order halting foreign aid funding USAID staff were unable to identify which payments were associated with particular enumerated accounts or programs, Marocco further reveals. “These system deficiencies and inability to provide complete information led to serious questions about waste, fraud, abuse, and even illegal payments,” the filing states. “The lack of sufficiently effective controls of an integrated payments review process has led to significant payment delays in some cases and has placed certain USAID programs at risk of catastrophic failure.”

Until next week,

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