Judicial Watch Sues USAID for Records on Ukraine Aid Waste, Fraud and
Abuse
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Judicial Watch Sues USAID for Records on Ukraine Aid Waste, Fraud and
Abuse

USAID’S WASTE, FRAUD AND ABUSE IN UKRAINE

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Judicial Watch Sues USAID for Records on Ukraine Aid Waste, Fraud and
Abuse
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Judicial Watch Sues National Archives for JFK Assassination Records
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Court Hearing Held in Fani Willis Documents Scandal
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$200 Million Program Giving Illegal Alien Minors Free Lawyers
Reinstated
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Soros Group Sues Trump for Cutting Aid to Soros Funded Nonprofit
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JUDICIAL WATCH SUES USAID FOR RECORDS ON UKRAINE AID WASTE, FRAUD AND
ABUSE

The American people deserve an immediate and full accounting of the
billions of dollars that Biden’s U.S. Agency for International
Development (USAID) sent to Ukraine. USAID is a notoriously corrupt
agency, and we hope the Trump administration brings transparency on
this key issue.

We continue our own investigation. We filed a Freedom of Information
Act (FOIA) lawsuit
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against
USAID for records regarding waste, fraud and abuse tied to aid money
sent to Ukraine (_Judicial Watch Inc. v. U.S. Agency for International
Development_
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(No.
1:25-cv-00508)).

Our FOIA requests include a demand for records of USAID’s
then-Administrator Samantha Power and others regarding:

1) any reported allegations of sexual exploitation, abuse or
trafficking of migrants fleeing Ukraine and/or receiving assistance
from USAID inside Ukraine.

2) any third-party monitoring contractors or NGOs reporting potential
fraud associated with USAID aid to Ukraine.

3) any reported allegations of Direct Cash Assistance Program fraud or
attempts to conduct cash transactions in Russian Rubles associated
with USAID aid to Ukraine.

4) any USAID-branded commodities appearing for sale in open markets or
outside of response activities in Ukraine.

USAID never responded to our FOIA requests, citing “unusual
circumstances.”

In December 2023, the agency’s Inspector General’s Office issued
a fraud warning
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citing
“Conflicts of Interest in USAID’s Ukraine Response,” including:

> Example 1: Missing Conflict of Interest Policy
>
> A USAID prime awardee, executing a Multipurpose Cash Assistance
> program, discovered that an employee of a subawardee was
> simultaneously a registered beneficiary of the program and tasked
> with confirming beneficiary eligibility. The prime awardee reported
> the matter to OIG, which determined that the subawardee did not have
> a conflict of interest policy in place to prevent an employee from
> participating in administered programs as beneficiaries.
>
> Example 2: Unreported Personal Relationship Between Procurement
> Staff and Bidder
>
> A USAID prime awardee determined that a subawardee’s procurement
> official had an unreported ongoing personal relationship with a
> bidder. Upon discovery, the bidder was disqualified, and the
> procurement official was retrained by the subawardee on handling
> conflicts of interest and reporting potential conflicts.
>
> Example 3: Awardee Employee Working for a Subawardee
>
> A USAID prime awardee identified an unreported conflict of interest
> when it found an employee responsible for quality control of a
> subawardee was also working for that subawardee. After identifying
> this conflict, the prime awardee prohibited the conflicted employee
> from any further contact with the subawardee and issued the
> subawardee a written warning.

According to a February 13, 2025, USAID Inspector General’s report
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the agency did not properly vet humanitarian groups it funded to
prevent sexual abuse of Ukrainian war victims:

> According to the United Nations, approximately 90 percent of the
> nearly 6.5 million people who fled the country are women and
> children, with women at the greatest risk of sexual exploitation and
> abuse (SEA), human trafficking, and forced prostitution.
>
> In July 2022, we issued an advisory notice highlighting key
> considerations for USAID’s developing humanitarian response led by
> its Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance (BHA), which included risks
> of SEA. However, more than a year later, we had not received any
> allegations of SEA, which raised concerns that cases were
> underreported.

President Trump on January 20 ordered
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a
“90-day pause in United States foreign development assistance for
assessment of programmatic efficiencies and consistency with United
States foreign policy.”

In a January 2025 exit memo
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USAID stated it sent Ukraine “close to $35 billion” since the
Russian invasion in February 2022.

We have several ongoing FOIA lawsuits regarding Ukraine.

In December 2020, we uncovered
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records from
the State Department revealing that then-United States Deputy Chief of
Mission to Ukraine and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for
European and Eurasian Affairs George Kent sent an email to
then-Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch stating that Ukraine
Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko informed Kent that he was offered
“high-level” access to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign
by the same firm that represented Burisma Holdings.

Also in December 2020, we revealed
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records
from the State Department which showed that former U.S. Ambassador to
Ukraine Marie “Masha” Yovanovitch had specifically warned in 2017
about corruption allegations against Burisma Holdings. During her
November 2019 testimony in the impeachment proceedings against
President Donald Trump, Yovanovitch told lawmakers that she knew
little about Burisma.

In January 2020, we sued
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the
United States Department of State for records related to a January 19,
2016, meeting at the White House that included Ukrainian prosecutors,
embassy officials and CIA employee Eric Ciaramella, who reportedly
worked on Ukraine issues while on detail to both the Obama and Trump
White Houses. Ciaramella was widely reported
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the person who filed the whistleblower complaint that triggered the
impeachment proceedings. His name reportedly was “raised privately
in impeachment depositions, according to officials with direct
knowledge of the proceedings, as well as in at least one open hearing
held by a House committee not involved in the impeachment inquiry.”



JUDICIAL WATCH SUES NATIONAL ARCHIVES FOR JFK ASSASSINATION RECORDS

We filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit
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against
the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) for records
about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy (
[[link removed]
Watch, Inc. v. National Archives and Records Administration_
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(1:25-cv-00577)).

We sued after the National Archives failed to respond to a January 20,
2025, FOIA request for:

> All previously unreleased records in the possession of the National
> Archives and Records Administration regarding the assassination of
> President John F. Kennedy. This request includes, but is not limited
> to, all records transferred to NARA by the Assassination Records
> Review Board.

On January 19, 2025, then President-Elect Donald Trump announced
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his
intention to make public the “remaining records related to the
assassination of President John F. Kennedy.” On January 23,
an executive order
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was
issued to that effect:

> More than 50 years after the assassinations of President John F.
> Kennedy, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, and the Reverend Dr. Martin
> Luther King, Jr., the Federal Government has not released to the
> public all of its records related to those events. Their families
> and the American people deserve transparency and truth. It is in the
> national interest to finally release all records related to these
> assassinations without delay.
>
> The President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act
> of 1992 required all records related to the assassination of
> President Kennedy to be publicly disclosed in full by October 26,
> 2017, unless the President certifies that: (i) continued
> postponement is made necessary by an identifiable harm to the
> military defense, intelligence operations, law enforcement, or
> conduct of foreign relations; and (ii) the identifiable harm is of
> such gravity that it outweighs the public interest in disclosure.

Despite overwhelming public interest, many records about the JFK
assassination remain secret. These records can and should be released
under FOIA, so that the American people are assured the Deep State
isn’t playing games and ignoring President Trump’s transparency
orders.

We have several FOIA cases pending against the National Archives.

In January 2024, a FOIA lawsuit uncovered records
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from the
Archives that showed then-Vice President Joe Biden’s use of an email
alias to correspond with family members, including son Hunter and
brother James; and that Joe Biden signed off on the cessation of
Secret Service protection for Hunter Biden and Beau Biden’s daughter
Natalie during an August 2016
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to Kosovo.

In August 2023, we sued
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the Archives
for records of its role in President Trump’s White House records
controversy; whether it offered Trump a secure storage location other
than the National Archives; and if the Archives consulted with the
Office of the Director of National Intelligence regarding the
classification or declassification procedures of any of the alleged
classified documents found at Trump’s Florida residence.

In August 2022, we uncovered
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that, as of March
31, the Archives had released only 1,276 pages of over 8,000
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records
about the unprecedented document dispute and raid on the home of
former President Trump.

In October 2022, we sued
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the Barack
Obama Presidential Library for Obama White House records about the
2016 “Russia Collusion Hoax.” The records, which by law were not
available under FOIA until five years after President Obama left
office, are held at the library, which is part of the National
Archives system.



COURT HEARING HELD IN FANI WILLIS DOCUMENTS SCANDAL

We were in court today for a hearing
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before
Judge Robert C.I. McBurney of the Superior Court of Fulton County, GA,
on a motion for _in camera_ (private) “inspection and appointment
of special master” to oversee District Attorney Fani Willis’
search for records of communications with Special Counsel Jack Smith
and the House January 6 Committee.

This comes in the lawsuit
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we filed
in March 2024 after Willis falsely denied having any records
responsive to our earlier Georgia Open Records Act (ORA) request for
communications with Smith’s office and/or the January 6 Committee
(_Judicial Watch Inc. v. Fani Willis et al._
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(No.
24-CV-002805)).

After finding Willis in default, the court ordered a hearing on
December 20, 2024, which resulted in an order
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that
found Willis liable for fees and expenses that “shall be paid within
two weeks of the entry of this Order.”

The court then awarded us $21,578 “attorney’s fees and costs.”
Willis’ operation made the payment 10 days after the court-ordered
deadline.

Thanks to this lawsuit
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Willis
finally admitted to having records showing communications with the
January 6 Committee but refused to release
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all but one
document in response to the court order
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that found
her in default. She cited a series of legal exemptions to justify the
withholding of communications with the January 6 Committee. The only
document she did release is one already public letter to January 6
Committee Chairman Benny Thompson (D-MS).

We subsequently filed a motio
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asking
the court to appoint a special master
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to
oversee Willis’ search for records in the lawsuit and to conduct a
private inspection of any records found.

Regarding the appointment of a special master
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we stated:

> Willis by her own admission conducted at least three searches before
> finding any responsive records not already supplied by [Judicial
> Watch]. She did not even bother to conduct a search until the
> Complaint was filed. Her records custodian says he does not know the
> Cellebrite [digital investigations
>
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equipment he apparently had a
> hand in ordering can be used to search cell phone texts and other
> data…. Moreover, the custodian had no standard practice for
> conducting searches and keeps no records of the methods used in a
> given search.
>
> The foregoing gives rise to grave suspicion that all responsive
> records have not been found. The Court should appoint a special
> master to supervise and monitor the record searches. The special
> master should have authority to audit searches and conduct searches
> herself. She also should have authority to hire such consultants and
> experts as may be needed to execute her commission. The special
> master should make a recommendation to the Court as to how her fees
> and expenses should be allocated among the parties, taking into
> consideration whether she finds responsive records that Willis
> should have found but did not.

We and the court caught Fani Willis red-handed, hiding records.
We’re asking the court to appoint a special master because Willis
simply can’t be trusted to come clean on her office’s political
collusion with the Pelosi January 6 committee to ‘get Trump.

We have several FOIA lawsuits on the lawfare targeting Trump.

In February 2024, the Department of Justice asked
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a
federal court to allow the agency to keep secret the names of top
staffers working in Special Counsel Jack Smith’s office that is
targeting former President Donald Trump and other Americans.

(Before his appointment to investigate and prosecute Trump, Special
Counsel Jack Smith previously was at the center of several
controversial issues, the IRS scandal
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among
them. In 2014, a Judicial Watch investigation
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revealed
that top IRS officials had been in communication with Jack Smith’s
then-Public Integrity Section about a plan to launch criminal
investigations into conservative tax-exempt groups. Read more here
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In January 2024, we filed a lawsuit
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against Fulton County,
Georgia, for records regarding the hiring of Nathan Wade as a special
prosecutor by District Attorney Fani Willis. Wade was hired to pursue
unprecedented criminal investigations and prosecutions against former
President Trump and others over the 2020 election disputes.

In October 2023, we sued
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the
DOJ for records and communications between the Office of U.S. Special
Counsel Jack Smith and the Fulton County, Georgia, District
Attorney’s office regarding requests/receipt of federal
funding/assistance in the investigation of former President Trump and
his 18 codefendants in the Fulton County indictment
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of
August 14, 2023. To date, the DOJ is refusing to confirm or deny the
existence of records, claiming that to do so would interfere with
enforcement proceedings. Our litigation challenging this is
continuing.

Through the New York Freedom of Information Law, in July 2023, we
received the engagement letter
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showing
New York County District Attorney Alvin L. Bragg paid $900 per hour
for partners and $500 per hour for associates to the Gibson, Dunn &
Crutcher law firm for the purpose of suing Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) in
an effort to shut down the House Judiciary Committee’s oversight
investigation into Bragg’s unprecedented indictment of former
President Donald Trump.



$200 MILLION PROGRAM GIVING ILLEGAL ALIEN MINORS FREE LAWYERS
REINSTATED

We’re not sure why the Trump administration has decided to continue
funding a leftist group representing illegal minors. Our_ Corruption
Chronicles _blog reports
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> A few days after suspending a $200 million annual program that
> provides illegal immigrant minors with free legal assistance, the
> Trump administration reinstated it and American taxpayer dollars
> will continue flowing to the leftist group that helps represent tens
> of thousands who have entered our country illegally. Little
> information is available involving the abrupt about face, why in the
> middle of drastic cuts to the U.S. federal workforce the
> administration has chosen to continue funding a controversial
> initiative that benefits illegal aliens. It is part of
> abillion-dollar commitment
>
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> in 2022 by a Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) agency
> known as Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) to legally represent
> underage migrants, known as Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC), who
> cross the border without a parent. Over 600,000 UAC have crossed
> illegally into the U.S. through Mexico since 2019 and Uncle Sam
> spends hundreds of millions of dollars to house, educate, feed,
> entertain and medically treat them.
>
> The Biden administration extended the services to legal
> representation, a costly benefit the Trump administration rightfully
> revoked only to quietly restore it days later. The money, a couple
> hundred million annually, goes to theAcacia Center for Justice
>
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a Washington D.C. nonprofit
> that partners with a national network of human rights defenders to
> provide legal defense to immigrants at risk of detention or
> deportation. “Acacia envisions a nation with a transformed
> immigration system that embodies freedom from detention, due
> process, and equal protection, where every person facing the
> prospect of exile and community separation has access to meaningful
> legal defense,” the group writes on its website, which assures its
> network of attorneys fight for all immigrants regardless of gender
> identity, sexual orientation, race or previous interaction with the
> criminal system.
>
> The center’s executive director, Shaina Aber, celebrated the
> speedy reinstatement of the government’s multi-million-dollar UAC
> defense program, saying in a press release
>
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that
> “it is unconscionable” that children who arrive in the U.S.
> unaccompanied by parents or legal guardians should be forced to
> represent themselves in immigration court against a trained
> government attorney in an adversarial hearing before a judge,
> without even a child-friendly orientation or understanding of their
> legal options. “We welcome the news that the stop-work order on
> Acacia’s Unaccompanied Children Program has been lifted,” Aber
> said. “We will continue working alongside the Department of Health
> and Human Services to ensure that these critical services upholding
> the basic due process rights of vulnerable children are fully
> restored and our partners in the legal field–legal lifelines
> safeguarding the rights and well-being of children seeking
> safety–can resume their work without future disruption or
> delay.”
>
> Ironically, it does not always end well for UAC — overwhelmingly
> males over the age of 14
>
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mostly from
> Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico—who are allowed to stay in the U.S.
> Under Biden the government failed to monitor hundreds of thousands
> of the underage migrants, putting them at high risk for trafficking,
> exploitation or forced labor. This may seem just as
> “unconscionable” as forcing the young migrants to represent
> themselves in immigration court, as the leftist attorney whose group
> is receiving millions from the government claims. A mainstream
> newspaper even published a scathing in-depth piece
>
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slamming
> the Biden administration for losing track of at least 85,000 illegal
> immigrant minors who ended up in dangerous jobs that violate the
> nation’s child labor laws, including in factories that make
> products for well-known American brands. A federal audit
>
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> revealed that tens of thousands of UAC vanished from the
> government’s radar and that hundreds of thousands go unmonitored.
>
> The government’s UAC program has for years been rocked by many
> other problems that have put underage migrants at risk, including
> physical and sexual abuse at U.S.-funded shelters. In 2021 Judicial
> Watch obtainedrecords
>
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from HHS
> documenting 33 incidents of physical and sexual abuse during a
> one-month period at shelters where the government houses UAC until
> they are relocated with a sponsor. That year an HHS Inspector
> General report
>
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blasted the
> agency for failing to protect UAC from sexual misconduct at the
> facilities. Last summer the U.S.sued
>
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> nonprofit it has paid billions of dollars to house migrant youths
> for sexually abusing them for years. The Texas-based nonprofit,
> Southwest Key, is the government’s largest housing provider for
> illegal immigrant minors and operates 29 shelters. In its federal
> complaint the Justice Department claims the children the government
> pays it to shelter are raped, sexually abused, and harassed.



SOROS GROUP SUES TRUMP FOR CUTTING AID TO SOROS FUNDED NONPROFIT

George Soros and his minions certainly know how to use the courts, and
they’re at it again as President Trump shuts off the tax dollars
they have been receiving. Our _Corruption Chronicles _blog has
the details
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Highlighting the need to crack down on waste at the nation’s
famously corrupt global aid agency, a group funded by leftwing
billionaire George Soros is suing the Trump administration for
freezing the funds of another nonprofit, also bankrolled by Soros,
that receives millions of dollars from the from the United States
Agency for International Development (USAID). With a massive budget of
around $40 billion, the agency has for years come under fire for the
outrageous programs it funds with taxpayer dollars, including hundreds
of millions to promote Soros’ radical globalist agenda in Latin
America
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a failed Clinton-backed port and power plant in Haiti
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a project to help Asians learn enough English
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work in offshore call centers and develop a Pakistani version of the
iconic educational children’s program Sesame Street. Other USAID
allocations have paid for a condom strategy in Eswatini, bicycles for
rural communities in sub-Saharan Africa and racial equity. Vice
President Kamala Harris’failed multi-million-dollar venture
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to curb
“irregular migration” was also funded through USAID.

Fortunately for American taxpayers, President Trump froze USAID
disbursements on day one while his administration identifies problems,
and the move has caused outrage among liberals and their allies in the
mainstream media. Now two leftist entities that despise the president
and promote agendas that clearly contradict his policies are suing
him, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and others in the administration
for finally stopping the highly questionable flow of taxpayer dollars
into their coffers. A lawsuit
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filed
this month in the United States District Court for the District of
Columbia accuses the president and his administration of “illegally
and unconscionably” freezing funding and work related to nearly
every U.S. foreign assistance mission. By freezing foreign aid,
President Trump has exceeded his constitutional authority with his
unlawful actions that are harming and will harm countless individuals
and entities, the complaint alleges.

The lawsuit was filed by a group called Public Citizen that has
received $2.46 million from Soros’ Open Society Foundations (OSF)
since 2020, records uncovered by Judicial Watch reveal. The Washington
D.C.-based group describes itself as a consumer advocacy organization
that champions the public interest in the halls of power. “We defend
democracy, resist corporate power, and fight to ensure that government
works for the people – not big corporations,” according to
its website
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Public Citizen’s lead attorney in
the case, Lauren Bateman, claims
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the
“Trump administration’s freeze on foreign assistance funding is
dangerous and illegal. She added that “when programs like the ones
run by our clients are abruptly shuttered, the impacts are felt
throughout the world—with the most vulnerable people bearing the
deadliest impact.”

One of those plaintiffs is a Soros project called Journalism
Development Network (JDN), which received $4.4 million from OSF
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in
2023 alone, according to records uncovered by Judicial Watch. The
Maryland-based nonprofit that claims to support a global consortium of
journalists has also received over $6.5 million from the State
Department and USAID
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since
2020. JDN is the corporate name of the vehemently
anti-Trump Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project
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and the two operate under the same
Employee Identification Number (EIN) in official Internal Revenue
Service (IRS) records obtained by Judicial Watch. A JDN spokesperson
called the funding cut an illegal action that deprives small
investigative media in low-income countries the funds they desperately
need to operate. The recently filed lawsuit has another plaintiff, a
New York-based nonprofit calledAIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition
[[link removed]]
(AVAC) that strives for
a world without AIDS and with global health equity.

USAID has authority under federal law and the terms of foreign aid
contracts to stop payments, Deputy Administrator Peter Marocco writes
in a court document
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filed
in the case. The agency took action to ensure funds are not being used
for fraudulent purposes and it will continue to examine outgoing
payments, Marocco writes. “Historically, USAID had limited, and
insufficient payments control or review mechanisms,” the court
filing reads. “Certifying officers pushed out payments—or grantees
directly drew down on letters of credit or other facilities—and the
system automatically processed those payments, without sufficient
opportunity for payments integrity or program review. Under that
legacy system, USAID employees were unable to adequately identify
basic information about specific payments, such as the programs with
which specific payments were associated. After Trump’s order halting
foreign aid funding USAID staff were unable to identify which payments
were associated with particular enumerated accounts or programs,
Marocco further reveals. “These system deficiencies and inability to
provide complete information led to serious questions about waste,
fraud, abuse, and even illegal payments,” the filing states. “The
lack of sufficiently effective controls of an integrated payments
review process has led to significant payment delays in some cases and
has placed certain USAID programs at risk of catastrophic failure.”

>

Until next week,





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