BLUF:
On Friday, all overseas USAID missions are to be shut down. For now, the gravy train is over, but given how they were able to hide what is arguably a covert piece of state-run media that targeted a president, what else is buried in these file grants? DOGE will find out.

Wait, USAID Was Involved in Donald Trump’s Impeachment?

USAID will effectively shut down on Friday. Most of the staff will be furloughed as it’s absorbed into the State Department. Under the president’s direction, Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency unearthed a web of corruption, waste, and fraud that wasn’t necessarily shocking but jarring, nonetheless. Democrats are livid that this agency is being gutted, and we may know why. They seem to have subsidized and played a significant role in the 2019 impeachment of Donald Trump.

The agency appears to have been pulling the strings of the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), which was cited multiple times by the CIA whistleblower that sparked the quid pro quo circus surrounding Trump, Ukraine, and military aid. Independent journalists Michael Shellenberger and Alex Gutentag did a deep-dive into this sordid government web, where the purpose of OCCRP wasn’t your usual investigative journalism—USAID seems to have had massive sway regarding agenda, hiring practices, and mission.

This story on Public ruffled the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project’s feathers, which threatened Shellenberger and company with a lawsuit, claiming their premise was false and defamatory. The second part is a lengthy sifting through of what USAID’s relationship is with OCCRP, the latter of which is trying to create degrees of separation. Even then, USAID officials offered statements that cast severe doubt on the OCCRP’s supposed independence, which even outlets like ProPublica admit. Drop Site News, an outlet helmed by former Intercept reporters, did well to piece together this seedy relationship. They, too, have been slapped with threats of a lawsuit. It’s quite the read here, folks. And given what we know about the waste and fraud from USAID, it was the perfect vehicle for the Deep State and other anti-Trump staffers at government agencies to farm this out (via Public):

In the complaint, the whistleblower claimed to have heard from White House staff that Trump had, on a phone call, directed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to work with his personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, to investigate Joe Biden and Hunter Biden. The whistleblower who triggered the impeachment was a CIA analyst who was first brought into the White House by the Obama administration.

Reporting by Drop Site News last year revealed that the CIA analyst relied on reporting by a supposedly independent investigative news organization called the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), which appears to have effectively operated as an arm of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), which President Trump has just shut down. The CIA whistleblower complaint cited a long report by OCCRP four times.

[…]

In a 2024 documentary that German television broadcaster NDR made about OCCRP’s dependence on the US government, a USAID official confirmed that USAID approves OCCRP’s “annual work plan” and approves new hires of “key personnel.” NDR initiated and carried out the investigation with French investigative news organization Mediapart, Italian new group Il Fatto Quotidiano, Reporters United in Greece, and Drop Site News in the United States.

However, according to a Mediapart story published the same day as the Drop Site News article, NDR censored the broadcast “after US journalist Drew Sullivan, the co-founder and head of the OCCRP, placed pressure on the NDR management and made false accusations against the broadcaster’s journalists involved in the project.”

On December 16, Drop Site’s Ryan Grim posted a link on X to the 26-minute-long documentary. “NDR, Germany’s public broadcaster, is facing a censorship scandal and has defended itself by saying it never killed a news report about OCCRP and its State Department funding — b/c no report was ever produced to kill,” said Grim. “That was absurd — and dozens, maybe hundreds, of journalists knew it to be false, and now of course, someone has leaked it.”

The journalistic collaboration revealed that OCCRP’s original funding came from the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs of the State Department, and quotes a USAID official who says, “Drew’s just nervous about being linked with law enforcement,” referring to Sullivan. “If people who are going to give you information think you’re just a cop, maybe it’s a problem.”

OCCRP does not operate like a normal investigative journalism organization in that its goals appear to include interfering in foreign political matters, including elections, aimed at regime change. Sullivan told NDR that his organization had “probably been responsible for five or six countries changing over from one government to another government… and getting prime ministers indicted or thrown out.”

As such, it appears that CIA, USAID, and OCCRP were all involved in the impeachment of President Trump in ways similar to the regime change operations that all three organizations engage in abroad. The difference is that it is highly illegal and even treasonous for CIA, USAID, and its contractors and intermediaries, known as “cut-outs,” to interfere in US politics this way.

We all thought the Clinton Foundation was bad—USAID makes them look like they were mere amateurs in the game of funneling cash for left-wing slush fund activities. They also kept the Democrat-media complex subsidized in the tens of millions, with Politico, Associated Press, The New York Times, and Reuters being some of the outlets who got that government sugar daddy cash. These outlets are exactly the ones you need to push a narrative. Here’s the second part of the Public piece discussing how USAID and OCCRP tried to hide their ties:

OCCRP threatened to file a lawsuit against Public in response to questions we sent. “The premise of your article is factually false and defamatory,” wrote Miranda Patrucic, the Editor in Chief of OCCRP, over email. “The claim by Dropsite News and partner media that USAID has control over editorial appointments has been disproven and we suggest you read our response to that.”

But neither OCCRP nor anyone else disproved Drop Site’s allegations and Drop Site stands by them. And the evidence does not support OCCRP’s claim of journalistic independence.

On the website Patrucic links to, a screenshot from OCCRP’s own agreement with USAID states, “Requests for approval of new Key Personnel shall include (a) written justification; and (b) CV curriculum vitae in English… Key personnel positions, candidates and changes to such personnel will require concurrence from the AOR [Agreement Officer’s Representative] and approval from the AO [Agreement Officer].”

OCCRP claims on its website that USAID’s oversight of OCCRP is not what it appears to be. “This represents a serious misunderstanding of a common procurement procedure. This person or persons, referred to as the grant’s ‘key personnel,’ ensures that the money we get is spent appropriately and that the work gets done. This is not an editorial role, but a logistical one.”

But there is nothing in the agreement that suggests USAID’s approval of OCCRP’s work plan and senior staff are unimportant to the editorial content produced by OCCRP.

Indeed, USAID’s Shannon McGuire emphasizes, in the NDR documentary, that USAID controlled OCCRP through what is known as a “substantial involvement clause.”

[…]

Patrucic told Public, “I am the editor-in-chief of OCCRP and was appointed during a USAID grant, but my CV was never sent to USAID and no approval was sought or received. OCCRP is governed only by its board of directors and no one else.“

But a second USAID official, Mike Henning, confirmed to the NDR filmmakers that USAID approval is not just for “logistical” or “administrative” functions.

“A cooperative agreement has more strings attached,” said Henning, “than a grant… Some of the strings that are attached in a cooperative agreement are approval of key personnel, approval of an annual work plan, approval of sub grants of a certain amount above a certain amount.”

USAID, he added, would have to approve “the editor in chief or who’s the CEO, who’s the, you know, managing editor.”

[…]

Meg Gaydosik, a USAID official, “confirmed she had not only pushed to get funding for OCCRP internally but even helped re-write the group’s application for a major USAID grant,” reported Drop Site. Gaydosik said, “It was from USAID,” about the OCCRP’s initial support.

OCCRP also threatened Drop Site News, it said. “The news outlets involved in this project, including Drop Site, have been on the unpleasant end of increasingly aggressive legal threats from Drew Sullivan, co-founder and head of OCCRP,” the authors wrote. “While we strived to be as fair as possible, and have posted most of Sullivan’s responses, what we’re not going to do, of course, is back down to threats, even ones backed with the resources of the federal government.”

And alas, we’re at the nexus point where a CIA whistleblower, who set the beat of the impeachment drums, cited a report from OCCRP, which has deep ties to USAID, which allegedly controls most editorial and managerial aspects of the organization, which produced content that was weaponized against a duly elected president in 2019.

On Friday, all overseas USAID missions are to be shut down. For now, the gravy train is over, but given how they were able to hide what is arguably a covert piece of state-run media that targeted a president, what else is buried in these file grants? DOGE will find out.