Senior USAid officials put on leave after denying access to Musk’s Doge team

USAid has put two senior security officials on administrative leave after a tense standoff with members of Elon Musk’s department of government efficiency (Doge) seeking access to sensitive data from the agency, four current and former USAid officials have told the Guardian.

USAid director of security John Voorhees and a deputy have been put on administrative leave after they blocked efforts by Doge members to physically access restricted areas, the people said. The demands led to a tense standoff during which a senior deputy to Musk threatened to call the US marshals in to grant access to the building.

The confrontation and Voorhees’ suspension was first reported by CNN and confirmed by the USAid officials. The Doge officials gained control over the access control system, which would allow them to lock out employees and read emails. They also sought personnel files and turnstile data, two people said.

Musk’s deputees may also have sought access to Sensitive Compartmented Information Facilities, or SCIFs, and servers used to access sensitive cables with top-secret classifications. Four members of Doge have been granted regular access to USAid as the administration has suspended dozens of senior staff and furloughed hundreds more at the bureau for humanitarian assistance who help the agency respond to urgent crises around the world.

“USAID is a criminal organization,” Musk wrote on X, the social network that he owns. “Time for it to die.”

The efforts resemble those at other agencies such as the treasury department and the Office of Personnel and Management where Doge officials have sought direct access to sensitive servers with data on millions of Americans, often over the protests of serving staff and leadership.

The Doge account on X has crowed about cutting hundreds of millions of dollars in grants and Donald Trump has repeated an unsubstantiated claim that the agency was sending $50m in condoms to Gaza where they were being repurposed as bombs.

US media have reported that the president is planning to either roll up or subsume the organisation into the state department, challenging Congress’s authority over the agency. He has also placed campaign ally Pete Marocco in a senior position at the state department’s office of foreign assistance, where he has overseen the ruinous freeze on foreign aid that has paralysed the organisation.

Around the time of the confrontation at USAid, the organisation’s website, including decades of grant records and financial reports, suddenly went offline. For a brief period, it redirected to the White House’s website, a Guardian reporter confirmed on Saturday evening. Now it is simply inaccessible.

On Friday evening, senior Senate Democrats warned that the Trump administration’s decisions to place senior USAid officials on leave and freeze foreign assistance without engaging with Congress “have created a maelstrom of problems that have put our nation at risk and undermined American credibility around the globe”.

They warned Trump away from reported plans to downsize or even subsume the agency into the state department. “It is imperative that we maintain an independent development voice and capability within the US government,” wrote the senators. “USAid is, by statute, an independent establishment outside of the State Department. Any proposal to modify that structure would require an Act of Congress.”