(Bloomberg) — Staff at USAID were ordered to destroy classified documents and personnel records, according to a memo from a top official, prompting a fresh legal challenge as well as alarm from the union that represents foreign service officers.
“Shred as many documents first, and reserve the burn bags for when the shredder becomes unavailable or needs a break,” says the memo, a copy of which was seen by Bloomberg News. It was signed by USAID Acting Executive Secretary Erica Carr.
The State Department, which oversees USAID, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday. In response to the directive being made public, lawyers representing USAID contractors in an ongoing lawsuit filed an emergency request for a court order forcing the government “to preserve all documents with any possible relevance to pending litigation.”
In the filing, the lawyers said they’d already asked the Justice Department for an explanation and hadn’t yet received one.
Carr issued the order on Monday, the same day that Secretary of State Marco Rubio officially cancelled the vast majority of USAID contracts and put the remainder under the purview of the State Department.
That move essentially eliminates USAID as a standalone entity. It follows the Trump administration’s broader efforts to curtail US foreign aid spending and terminate most of the aid agency’s 10,000 employees, with thousands fired or placed on leave.
The American Foreign Service Association, a group that represents State Department and USAID employees and is involved in a legal action against the Trump administration, is alarmed by the directive, the group said in a statement. It said the documents “may be relevant to ongoing litigation regarding the termination of USAID employees and the cessation of USAID grants.”
“Federal law is clear: the preservation of government records is essential to transparency, accountability, and the integrity of the legal process,” the group said.
The Federal Records Act of 1950 requires federal agencies to preserve records and there are strict guidelines about the destruction of documents.
–With assistance from Erik Larson.
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