Following President Donald Trump’s Feb. 19 executive order targeting nonexecutive branch foreign aid and peacemaking agencies for elimination, agents of DOGE, the White House-based organization overseen by Elon Musk, have moved to take over entities both small and large.
DOGE, which stands for Department of Government Efficiency, on Monday took over theU.S. Institute of Peace after threatening its officials with criminal prosecution. Its president was removed from its headquarters with the assistance of the office of the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, the FBI and D.C. police.
In seizing control of the 40-year old Washington institution, founded and funded directly by Congress and employing about 600 people here and overseas, DOGE emptied the building and installed DOGE agentKenneth Jackson as acting USIP president.Jackson is also titled as a board member of several other far smaller agencies similarly emptied, and he was nominated by Trump as a senior official at the U.S. Agency for International Development.
Amid the many sagas of DOGE activities over the past two months, the USIP story marks the most aggressive. Andrew Goldfarb of the D.C. law firm Zuckerman and Spaeder, who is representing USIP, said he would file a lawsuit asking the federal court in the District for DOGE’s actions to be reversed on grounds that the Trump administration had no authority to take them.
Trump’s executive order listed USIP for “expected termination,” along with the smaller Inter-American Foundation and the U.S. African Development Foundation, which provide small business and farming grants and loans. They were both taken over by DOGE this month.
USIP, whose mandate from Congress is to help resolve violent international conflicts and provide Congress and the administration with information and analysis, frequently hosts senior government officials for seminars and policy discussions.
Following the Trump order, USIP officials tried to convince DOGE representatives that its independent status and statutory documents prevented such a takeover. Those discussions ended last Friday, when Jackson and DOGE agentsJacob Altik and Nate Cavanaugh showed up at the USIP door with two others who said they were FBI agents but did not further identify themselves.
DOGE presented an undated document on what appeared to be USIP letterhead firing the institute’s president, George Moose, a retired career diplomat and senior State Department official. The document was signed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Peter Hegseth and Peter Garvin, president of the National Defense University. All three offices are listed in the USIP’s establishing statute as members of its board.
At the door, USIP officials informed DOGE that its president could only be dismissed by a majority of its 15-member board, chaired by John J. Sullivan, Trump’s first-term ambassador to Russia, for one of three reasons — felony conviction or malfeasance, recommendation of the board majority, or a majority vote of four separate congressional committees.
Noting that the building, located on 23rd Street and Constitution Avenue NW, across from the State Department, was not the property of the U.S. government but owned by USIP, a D.C. registered nonprofit, and that its personnel were not federal employees, the institute officials asked if DOGE had a court order for admission. The DOGE agents acknowledged they did not and withdrew.
At an emergency meeting Saturday, the USIP board decided to lock the building and tell employees not to come to work Monday. They also decided to suspend their building security contract with Inter-Con, a global company with a number of government contracts that USIP security chief Colin O’Brien said he suspected was working with DOGE.
On Sunday, FBI agent Doug Silk with the Washington field office and another agent “went to the home of one of my staff members” to question them about “the Inter-Con contract” and access to the building, O’Brien said Tuesday.
Separately, O’Brien said, he received a call from Silk saying he was the “subject” of a Justice Department investigation of the Friday events and asking him to “come in for [FBI] questioning.”
Reached by telephone, Silk referred all questions to the FBI press office, which declined to comment.
Later that night, George Foote, the longtime outside legal counsel for USIP, received a call from Jonathan Hornok, head of the criminal division of the D.C. U.S. Attorney’s office. Hornok said his office was investigating “suspicions of criminality at USIP,” according to a person familiar with the call who spoke on the condition of anonymitybecause of concerns about government retribution.
Hornok, a former Justice Department drug cartel prosecutor, was appointed by U.S. Attorney Ed Martin on March 3 after three-decade veteran Denise Cheung resigned. Cheung had refused to carry out what she said was a demand by Martin and acting deputy attorney general Emil Bove’s to freeze the bank accounts of a $20 billion Biden administration environmental grant program without sufficient evidence.
“He said the ex-officio directors, Rubio, Hegseth and Garvin, would like to inspect the books and records” of the institute, the person familiar said. Foote replied that they were welcome to come at “any reasonable time,” O’Brien said. When Hornok responded that “agents” would arrive at the building “with computers” on Monday, Foote told him the office would be closed.
“Anyone who obstructs our efforts is subject to criminal investigation,” Hornok said, according to the person familiar with the call.
Hornok’s and Martin’s offices declined to comment.
O’Brien, the USIP security chief, compiled a timeline of what happened next.
“On Sunday, I personally notified the [Inter-Con] guard force that their contract was suspended and had them depart ... letting them know all [entry] badges had been deactivated and they were not authorized on the property,” O’Brien said in an interview. The contract was officially canceled Monday.
“On Monday, at approximately 2:30 p.m.” four members of Inter-Con’s local office “came onto the property and attempted to use their key cards to open the doors. Ken Jackson was sitting in a government Lincoln Navigator on 23rd Street.” The security guards “walked around, trying different badge readers” on different doors. Eventually, one “who had retained a manual key to the building” used it to open a side door.
At the time, only O’Brien, Moose, USIP communications director Gonzo Gallegos and two lawyers were in the building. When the four entered and refused to leave, O’Brien said, the head of the Inter-Con team “said DOGE had called them and threatened every one of their federal contracts if we didn’t let them in.”
The four headed for the locked armory, where firearms for security personnel at the site were kept. One remained at the opened weapons safe while the three others headed for the front door, O’Brien said. “I called 911” at 2:59 p.m., he said, telling the dispatcher that four individuals “had illegally entered USIP.”
O’Brien said he activated “lockdown procedure” preventing the opening of any doors. As the security contractors approached the door, “members of DOGE were running up to enter the building. When they were unsuccessful, they went back to their cars.” It was all, he said, on USIP security cameras.
Inter-Con did not respond Tuesday to calls and emails to both its Pasadena, California, headquarters and its local office in Arlington, Virginia.
When the police arrived at about 5:30 p.m., O’Brien went outside the meet them, believing that they were responding to USIP’s 911 call hours earlier. “I invited them in so they could take a statement,” he said. One of the officers opened the door to allow Jackson and other DOGE representatives inside, along with about a dozen additional uniformed officers.
According to a D.C. police statement issued Tuesday, they were responding to a 4 p.m. call from Martin “regarding an ongoing incident at the United States Institute of Peace” who advised that “at least one person who was refusing to leave the property at the direction of the acting USIP president, who was lawfully in charge of the facility.”
All USIP personnel present, including Moose, whose locked door on the fifth floor was forced open, were escorted by police from the building and prevented from reentering.
In response to an inquiry about Jackson’s appointment and the actions of DOGE and law enforcement officials, White House spokesperson Anna Kelly provided a statement.
“President Trump signed an executive order to reduce USIP to its statutory minimum. After noncompliance, 11 board members were lawfully removed, and remaining board members appointed Kenneth Jackson acting president,” the statement said. “Rogue bureaucrats will not be allowed to hold agencies hostage. The Trump administration will enforce the President’s executive authority and ensure his agencies remain accountable to the American people.”
Spencer S. Hsu and Brianna Tucker contributed to this report.