An operative for President Donald Trump fired nearly all of the U.S. foreign aid agency’s last 900 employees without accepting its job offer, a new report says.
Jeremy Lewin, then a 28-year-old member of billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, did not sign the paperwork typically required by law to begin work at the U.S. Agency for International Development during his first three weeks running it, WIRED reported Tuesday.
Lewin took charge of USAID’s daily operations on March 18, 2025, when Secretary of State Marco Rubio handed him the powers of the agency’s No. 2 official, according to court filings.
The emails WIRED reviewed show that USAID’s White House liaison, Adam Korzeniewski, asked the agency’s human resources office on March 20 to begin onboarding Lewin. After HR asked for a start date, Korzeniewski proposed March 18, and the agency sent Lewin a temporary job offer on March 25.
By March 26, Lewin still had not accepted the offer or filed his OF-306, the government’s standard pre-employment background form. Without that form, WIRED reported, an agency cannot lawfully issue a final job offer or complete an appointment.
Two days later, on March 28, Lewin signed a letter terminating all remaining USAID staff, according to WIRED. The cuts covered nearly all of the agency’s last 900 employees, NPR reported at the time.
The same day, a federal appeals court paused a judge’s order blocking further cuts at USAID, based on the administration’s argument that Lewin acted as a federally appointed official, WIRED reported. In a sworn declaration, Lewin had written, “I report directly and only to Acting Administrator Rubio.”
Yet more than a week after Rubio’s order, a USAID official told Korzeniewski that agency security could not issue Lewin an ID card because its database “did not have a record of Jeremy as an employee,” according to the emails.
The legal case for the firings rested on Lewin being an appointed official, yet his own agency’s records did not list him as an employee.
“USAID HR was confused about this paperwork for a period of days, but this issue was cleared up once they were made aware of the dual appointment and my State Department position,” Lewin told WIRED.
But a top HR executive told WIRED that no one in that office saw any delegation documents until late April 2025. A White House official told the outlet Lewin had submitted all the paperwork required for employment and clearance.
On Feb. 10, 2025, when USAID contracting officers questioned an order to terminate about 200 awards, Lewin wrote back that “all of the terminations in these tranches have been signed off by Secretary Rubio and Acting Deputy Administrator Marocco,” according to a sworn declaration one officer filed in court the next day.
That was five weeks before Rubio’s March 18 order gave him the agency’s No. 2 powers.
“The comment seemed to be a threat,” the officer wrote, adding that Lewin was unknown to contracting staff and had no title in his email.
“I have a vivid memory of him telling me that he believed non-white people were inherently of ‘lower value’ than white people,” a former acquaintance who called Lewin “blatantly racist” told Rolling Stone in April 2025, days after the firings.
Five other former acquaintances told the magazine that Lewin expressed views they considered racist. Lewin and the administration did not respond to Rolling Stone’s requests for comment.
Lewin’s planned move to the White House National Security Council stalled this July after conservative activist Laura Loomer attacked him on X as a “Trump hater,” Politico reported. He became the State Department’s director of policy planning in August, according to his official biography.
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