Musk says USAID is ‘a criminal organisation, time for it to die’

“With regards to the USAID stuff, I went over it with (the president) in detail and he agreed that we should shut it down,” Musk said in a X Spaces conversation early Monday.

Musk said he checked with Trump “a few times” and Trump confirmed he wants to shut down the agency, which dispenses billions in humanitarian aid and development funding annually. CNN has reached out to the White House and USAID for comment.

Sunday evening, before the X Spaces conversation, when asked for comment on USAID, Trump told reporters: “It’s been run by a bunch of radical lunatics, and we’re getting them out, and then we’ll make a decision” on its future.

Musk’s comments come after two top security officials at USAID were put on administrative leave Saturday night for refusing members of the Department of Government Efficiency access to systems at the agency, even when DOGE personnel threatened to call law enforcement, multiple sources familiar with the situation told CNN.

Around 60 senior USAID staff were put on leave last week on accusations of attempting to circumvent Trump’s executive order to freeze foreign aid for 90 days. Another senior official was put on leave for trying to reverse that move after finding no evidence of wrongdoing.

In the X Spaces conversation early Monday, which he co-hosted with Republican Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa and Vivek Ramaswamy – who was initially named co-chair of DOGE with Musk but has since left – the X owner called USAID “incredibly politically partisan” and said it has been supporting “radically left causes throughout the world including things that are anti-American.”

Musk said USAID is “beyond repair,” among other attacks he made against the agency created by Congress as an independent body.

We don’t have “an apple with a worm in it,” he said. “We have a ball of worms.”

“USAID is a ball of worms.”

USAID was established in 1961 under President John F. Kennedy’s administration and is the US government’s humanitarian arm. It dispenses billions of dollars annually across the world in an effort to alleviate poverty, treat diseases, and respond to famines and natural disasters. It also promotes democracy building and development by supporting non-government organizations, independent media and social initiatives.

USAID is a key soft power tool of the US to foster relations with communities around the world, officials say, noting that US national security is approached with the “three D” pillars: defense, diplomacy and development, led, respectively, by the Defense Department, State Department and USAID.

DOGE personnel gained access to USAID files, sources say

According to sources, personnel from the Musk-created office first physically tried to access the USAID headquarters in Washington, DC, and were stopped. The DOGE personnel demanded to be let in and threatened to call US Marshals to be allowed access, two of the sources said.

The DOGE personnel wanted to gain access to USAID security systems and personnel files, three sources said. Two of those sources also said the DOGE personnel wanted access to classified information, which only those with security clearances and a specific need to know are able to access.

Three sources told CNN that in the end, the DOGE personnel were eventually able to access the headquarters.

The incident, which had not been previously reported, is the latest showdown as the Trump-affiliated DOGE seeks to exert increasing authority over the federal government as it aims to slash spending.

In a letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio Sunday, Democratic members of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee requested “an immediate update about the access of USAID’s headquarters, including whether the individuals who accessed the headquarters were authorized to be there and by whom.”

“The potential access of sensitive, even classified, files, which may include the personally identifiable information (PII) of Americans working with USAID, and this incident as a whole, raises deep concerns about the protection and safeguarding of matters related to U.S. national security,” the letter said.

The Senators also wrote that “any effort to merge or fold USAID into the Department of State should be, and by law must be, previewed, discussed and approved by Congress.

Katie Miller, whom Trump named to DOGE in December, on Sunday appeared to confirm that DOGE personnel had accessed classified information.

“No classified material was accessed without proper security clearances,” she posted on X.

On Sunday, in response to CNN’s report about the incident, Musk said that “USAID is a criminal organization.”

“Time for it to die,” he posted on X.

Other top Trump officials, such as Stephen Miller, who serves as deputy chief of staff for policy at the White House, have also taken aim at USAID, accusing its workforce of being overwhelmingly Democrats.

On Saturday, USAID’s website went dark and a new page for the agency appeared on the State Department website. USAID’s X account also went offline Saturday.

A source told CNN that the entire USAID public affairs office was put on leave and locked out of their systems.

Shortly after being sworn in last month, Trump issued a sweeping executive order pausing all foreign aid for 90 days, leading to widespread confusion, layoffs and program shutdowns.

USAID Director of Security John Voorhees and his deputy are among dozens of USAID officials who have been put on leave amid fears that the agency is being intentionally dismantled — a move that some aid officials argue would have massive negative implications.

Aid officials argue the State Department isn’t equipped to take over and sustain USAID’s vast number of development projects. It would also erase, they argue, unique and essential soft power that can’t be replicated.

The State Department doesn’t “have the capacity, the expertise, the training to do that kind of work. It is a completely separate line of effort that is undertaken on the ground,” a former senior USAID official said.

“The one element of the US government bureaucracy on the ground in foreign places that has been able to get out beyond the wire and actually have a deeper understanding of the places in which we work is USAID,” the former official continued, requesting anonymity due to growing and widespread fears of being targeted by the Trump administration.

“That ability to work in that way, that culture — and it is a culture I think — gets lost. And with it, I think we lose an enormous, incredibly valuable tool of US foreign policy. We’re basically going to be punching with one arm behind our back,” the person said.