Criminal Referrals Being Considered After House DOGE Panel Hears What Was Happening at USAID

Could the House Oversight Committee’s Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency be delivering “criminal referrals” over USAID spending?

That’s what GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia intimated during a hearing on Wednesday, in which she alleged that funding went to social engineering experiments abroad — including “funding the Syrian civil war” and other questionable geopolitical exploits.

“This committee, based on this hearing and witness testimonies, will consider recommending investigations and criminal referrals,” Greene said during the hearing, according to The Hill.

“What we have heard today is that USAID has been used as a tool by Democrats to brainwash the world with globalist propaganda to force regime changes around the world,” she added.

“But if USAID funded terrorism that resulted in the death of Americans, then this committee will be making criminal referrals.”

She added that the Democratic Party had used USAID to push its agenda on a global scale even when it didn’t involve terrorist groups, reason enough to shut it down.

The foreign aid bureau, founded by the Kennedy administration in 1961, was one of the first targets of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency,

“The Democrat-run USAID should not get to use our federal government, our U.S. taxpayer dollars, as their party piggy bank to push their radical agenda in countries that we have no business giving money to,” Greene said.

Greene isn’t the first Republican to accuse USAID of spending money on terrorist organizations or regimes, either; during the first meeting of the House Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency earlier this month, Rep. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania alleged that money from the organization had found its way into the hands of those associated with the Taliban, al Qaeda, the Haqqani Network, Boko Haram, and other terror groups.

He noted that, for example, some of USAID’s money went to a “women’s scholarship endowment” in Afghanistan.

“If you read the inspector general’s report, it’s telling you that the Taliban does not allow women to speak in public, yet somehow you’re believing — and American people are supposed to believe — that this money is going for the betterment of the women in Afghanistan,” he said. “It is not.”

Even the money that’s going for humanitarian aid in Afghanistan, which fell into the Taliban’s hands again after the chaotic withdrawal of American troops in August 2021, is being used as a propaganda tool by the extremist government there, he added.

“So the Taliban’s in charge, the Taliban threatens the lives of the NGO personnel distributing USAID, they claim credit for USAID in distribution, they interfere with the distribution of USAID aid, they tax the beneficiary of the aid, they tax the delivery service, they steal the food commodities, they divert the funds, they extort citizens for protection for USAID, they created sham procurement schemes, and they threaten the lives of those who oppose those schemes,” he said.

Yeah, sure, but other than that …

Greene also brought up a very uncomfortable issue during the hearing: namely, the infamous case of when Joe Biden, then in-between his gigs as vice president and president, bragged about how he basically got a Ukrainian prosecutor fired by leveraging a USAID loan — something he did while his son was on the board of Burisma.

That prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, claims he was fired because he was investigating Burisma, while others claim corruption was the cause.

🚨 USAID LOAN!: Joe Biden used his VP power to threaten withholding a $1 BILLION USAID Loan from Ukraine to get prosecutor Viktor Shokin fired.

Why?

Because Shokin was investigating Burisma, where Hunter Biden, Joe’s son, was on the board!

Notice how Biden stated that… pic.twitter.com/3OdYo9pmxQ

— Publius (@OcrazioCornPop) February 7, 2025

Whatever the case, Greene reopened that scab by asking witness Max Primorac, senior research fellow with the conservative Heritage Foundation, about the propriety of that kind of threat.

“Is USAID supposed to be used as leverage by a president to protect his son?” Greene asked.

“No, we call that corruption,” Primorac said in response.

Again, quite a bit of this fits under the category of “big if true,” with an emphasis on “if true” — and, more precisely, “if true and provable.” That’s been an issue with quite a few of these investigations, which produce sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Nevertheless, what’s clear is that USAID was being used as a tool for U.S. social engineering abroad, not to give foreign aid to the poorest of the poor. It deserves to be shuttered for good — and if money made it into the hands of terrorists, those who distributed it through either malice or gross negligence should be held to account.

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