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U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a joint press conference with Britain’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer in the East Room at the White House Thursday, Feb. 27, 2025, in Washington (Carl Court/Pool Photo via AP).
The Trump administration is shredding and burning “classified” employee documents at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) with personnel info that would be “essential” to rehiring unlawfully fired federal workers, according to labor groups suing the president, should it be required as a result of their litigation.
“Plaintiffs file this emergency motion for temporary restraining order to stop Defendants’ imminent and ongoing destruction of evidence,” the groups said in a Tuesday filing.
“Defendants are, as this motion is being filed, destroying documents with potential pertinence to this litigation,” the coalition alleged. “Plaintiffs will suffer immediate, irreparable injury should the agency continue to destroy records.”
Last month, the plaintiffs — two government employees unions led by the American Foreign Service Association, the exclusive representative for the U.S. Foreign Service — filed a lawsuit accusing Trump and agency heads of “unlawful actions” that “exceed presidential authority and usurp legislative authority conferred upon Congress by the Constitution, in violation of the separation of powers.”
On Feb. 7, the same day the suit was filed, U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols granted a “limited” temporary restraining order barring the government from placing USAID employees on administrative leave and performing expedited evacuations of such employees from their overseas posts. The order rejected a request to block a 90-day pause on “foreign assistance funding.”
On Feb. 21, Nichols dissolved the TRO and denied a request from the labor groups for a preliminary injunction. Things remained unchanged up until this week when the plaintiffs motioned to stop the shredding and burning of “critical” employee data after hearing about it in an email sent out by USAID’s acting executive secretary, Erica Carr, who allegedly told officials: “Shred as many documents first, and reserve the burn bags for when the shredder becomes unavailable or needs a break.”
In their motion, the unions suing Trump said Carr’s email claimed the USAID was “clearing [its] classified safes and personnel documents” from the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington, D.C., starting at 9:30 am Tuesday. The email allegedly directed USAID staff to “shred as many documents” as possible and to use “burn bags for when the shredder becomes unavailable or needs a break.” An alleged screenshot of Carr’s email was included in the Tuesday motion.
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“This directive suggests a rapid destruction of agency records on a large scale that could not plausibly involve a reasoned assessment of the records retention obligations for the relevant documents under the FRA or in relation to this ongoing litigation,” the motion said. “The ‘classified’ and ‘personnel’ documents that are currently being shredded contain information that will be critical to the continued operation or — as the agency continues to be dismantled — the reconstitution of the agency. For example, if the agency is required as a result of this litigation to rehire terminated employees, personnel records that identify USAID employees and contain personal contact information will be essential to rehiring those employees.”
The motion alleged that union lawyers sought information from the Trump administration and Justice Department as to whether the alleged document destruction efforts were ongoing. The DOJ told them it was investigating the matter.
“Plaintiffs, however, cannot wait,” the motion said. “Immediate injunctive relief is necessary to halt this destruction.”
Nichols has yet to respond to the motion, with no orders being filed by the judge as of 7:30 p.m. EST Tuesday.
The USAID case comes as organizations that entered into contracts or received grants from the State Department and USAID have been suing the Trump administration over an executive order by the president that required a blanket freeze of all foreign aid funding. The coalition of foreign aid groups has argued that it was an unconstitutional exercise of presidential power “in contravention of congressional will” — as well as an “arbitrary and capricious agency action” — that will lead to starvation and the deaths of many.
The Trump administration was ordered Monday to cough up nearly $2 billion in foreign aid that it owes for existing contracts and grants authorized by Congress, with a federal judge ruling that it was unconstitutional of Trump to “unlawfully impound funds” earlier this year through his USAID freeze.
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