WASHINGTON—A top State Department official has been given the authority by Secretary of State Marco Rubio to lead the U.S. Agency for International Development and start examining all of the work completed by the government organization that President Donald Trump and tech billionaire adviser Elon Musk are trying to dismantle.
Rubio asked State Department Foreign Assistance Director Peter W. Marocco to start going over all of the U.S. Agency for International Development’s activities. Additionally, he cautioned that some initiatives or programs might be halted or discontinued.
According to multiple sources who spoke to NBC News, Marocco held a number of national security positions during the first Trump administration, including at USAID, where his efforts to cut funding and consolidate power prompted officials to write a dissent memo that ultimately forced him out of office.
Two current USAID officials who are aware of the agency’s new leadership structure and one source who is acquainted with USAID’s daily operations told NBC News that throughout the early weeks of Trump’s second term, Marocco has collaborated closely with the administration’s other political appointments at USAID.
According to other individuals with knowledge of the agency’s activities, Marocco has primarily overseen the agency’s downsizing from a distance.
One USAID official aware with Marocco’s previous efforts stated, “What he’s doing now is frighteningly similar to everything he was trying to do at USAID before, but this time he’s destroying it.”
One USAID staffer stated that their stakeholders would go crazy if someone in the private sector did this without a mitigating plan. He has never been in charge of construction. He is skilled at making people uncomfortable, questioning things, and turning things off. He has disassembled numerous items.
A request for comment on those descriptions of Marocco, who has also been connected to the attack on the Capitol on January 6, was not immediately answered by the State Department.
Using CCTV footage showing the man they identified as Marocco entering the Capitol through a broken window and numerous photos of them on the Capitol grounds that day, online detectives who had assisted the FBI in cases against hundreds of Jan. 6 rioters in early 2023 identified Marocco and his now-wife as part of the rioters who stormed the Capitol in 2021.
According to internet detectives, the person who entered the building’s photos showed a significant face recognition match to pictures of Marocco that were available to the public. Before Trump pardoned all of the prisoners from January 6, Marocco, like hundreds of others who investigators identified as having entered the Capitol, was never charged.
A request for comment from Marocco was not answered.When D Magazine reached him last year, he mentioned desperate personal attacks and smear tactics, but he did not dispute that he entered the Capitol.
Several sources told NBC News that USAID has already been mostly operated out of the State Department since Inauguration Day.
Four people familiar with the letter’s delivery told NBC News that Rubio had written to the ranking members and chairs of the appropriate congressional committees to inform them of the Trump administration’s plans to restructure USAID.
According to the letter, Rubio informed the lawmakers that he is starting to speak with them on how the program will distribute foreign aid globally.
USAID has many duplicative, overlapping, and contradictory responsibilities with the Department of State. Furthermore, according to Rubio, USAID’s systems and procedures are poorly coordinated, integrated, and synthesized, which frequently leads to conflict in US foreign policy and relations. The President’s ability to manage foreign affairs is weakened by this.
Programs, projects, or activities may be suspended or discontinued; missions or posts may be closed or suspended; establishments, organizations, bureaus, centers, or offices may be closed, reorganized, downsized, or renamed; the workforce at such entities may be reduced; or Federal employees may have their functions or activities contracted out or privatized as a result of Marocco’s review, Rubio continued.
More than a dozen current and former officials and people familiar with the talks have stated that officials in the Trump administration are actively contemplating transferring USAID to the State Department. USAID’s website no longer loads on the internet as of Monday, displaying the error message “its server IP address cannot be found.”
Overnight, USAID staff in the nation’s capital were instructed to work from home on Monday instead of reporting to work.
In an email issued to staff overnight, it stated, “At the direction of Agency leadership, the USAID headquarters at the Ronald Reagan building in Washington, D.C. will be closed to Agency personnel on Monday, February 3, 2025,” according to a copy read by NBC News.
Agency staff who typically work at USAID’s headquarters “will work remotely tomorrow,” according to the message, with the exception of those who carry out necessary on-site and building maintenance tasks. “Further guidance will be forthcoming,” it continued.
Although Musk, who has been closely assisting Trump since being appointed to head his Department of Government Efficiency, stated in the early hours of Monday that he and the president were in the process of closing down USAID, the email gave no explanation for the work-from-home order.
Since its founding by President John F. Kennedy in 1961, USAID has served as the principal foreign development and humanitarian agency of the U.S. government.
Approximately two-thirds of the agency’s 10,000+ employees serve abroad, according to a recent Congressional Research Service report. Over the past few years, USAID “provided significant humanitarian, development, and economic support to Ukraine and countries affected by Russia s war in Ukraine, as well as humanitarian assistance in Gaza and elsewhere,” according to the report.
As the head of the Department of Government Efficiency, an unofficial agency, Musk has been spearheading Trump’s drive to reduce the federal government’s bureaucracy.
The director of security for USAID and his deputy were placed on administrative leave on Saturday for attempting to prevent DOGE employees from using the agency’s protected systems.
One USAID official told NBC News that nobody feels comfortable going anywhere close to the Ronald Reagan building. Elon Musk recently referred to us as a criminal enterprise. Our chief of security was led away. We are aware that DOGE is monitoring us.
Musk claimed that Trump was in favor of closing down USAID when he announced on Monday that he was working to do so.
“I went over [it] with him in detail, and he agreed that we should shut it down,” Musk said of the president’s involvement with USAID. In fact, I asked him several times, “Are you certain?” Musk went on to say that Trump said, “Yes.”