The Trump administration has given itself the moniker “The Most Transparent Administration in History.” It seems like it’s an “in name only” kind of thing, because the New York Times reports that a senior administration official at the U.S. Agency for International Development—the agency that has been stripped for parts by Elon Musk and the extremely cloak and dagger Department of Government Efficiency—told employees to start emptying safes used to store classified documents and personnel files and shred or burn them.
The message (see email below) was delivered to the agency’s remaining staffers by Erica Y. Carr, USAID’s acting executive secretary. She told workers to “Shred as many documents first, and reserve the burn bags for when the shredder becomes unavailable or needs a break.” Per the Times, the documents getting prepped for the shredder could potentially contain information that would be relevant to ongoing legal challenges to the Trump administration over its attempts to freeze aid and dismantle the agency—efforts that were recently deemed a likely violation of the Constitution by a federal judge. So it seems like a transparent attempt at destroying evidence, which I guess counts for something.
The shred and burn initiative may violate federal law. The American Foreign Service Association, a union that represents diplomats, warned that the destruction of documents may violate the Federal Records Act, which requires agencies to abide by certain document retention requirements. Under the law, printed documents are required to be saved in a digital format before being destroyed—and it’s not clear that there has been any effort to digitize the documents that are getting put through the shredder or into the burn bags.
USAID isn’t alone in its apparent efforts to obfuscate access to documents. DOGE, which is responsible in large part for gutting USAID, has been trying to operate in secrecy as much as possible. Elon Musk has thrown hissy fits over members of his staff being named in public—a thing that would be standard for basically any other government agency. And for the entirety of its operation thus far, DOGE has ignored Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests by claiming that it is immune from the process by arguing that it is a “presidential records entity” that serves as a shield against public disclosure.
That might be changing—or at least, it should be. This week, a District Court judge ruled that DOGE likely is covered by FOIA and that “the public would be irreparably harmed by an indefinite delay in unearthing the records.” Just how willfully DOGE will go along with this is yet to be seen. Government agencies certainly have ways of skirting requests with denials, redactions, and foot-dragging. But legally, it seems DOGE does have to comply—a thing a transparent administration should welcome, right?
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