The rot at USAID was known... by USAID (02-07-2025--Hour2)

[00:00:04] What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon to 3 on WBT Radio in Charlotte. And if you want exclusive content like invitations to events, the weekly live stream, my daily show prep with all the links, become a patron, go to thepetekalendershow.com. Make sure you hit the subscribe button, get every episode for free, write to your smartphone or tablet. And again, thank you so much for your support.

[00:00:28] So apparently, the Japanese Prime Minister is at the White House and they just did one of those things where they, you know, sit in the chairs in front of the fireplace and they bring in all the media and they throw a bunch of questions at people. If you've just become politically aware during the Biden administration, you probably have, you probably don't know what I'm talking about because Biden really didn't do any of these things. But Trump actually answers questions of the media when they come in to take the pictures.

[00:00:55] So, yeah, so this just happened apparently. Do you have a reaction to the new Time Magazine cover that has Elon Musk sitting behind your Resolute desk? So there's the translator for the Japanese Prime Minister. Is Time Magazine still in business? I didn't even know that.

[00:01:21] Elon is doing a great job. He's finding tremendous fraud and corruption and waste. You see it with the USAID, but you're going to see it even more so with other agencies and other parts of government. He's got a staff that's fantastic. He's wanted to be able to do this for a long time. And everybody else knew it was existent. But I think never so much when you look at USAID. That's a that's a fraud.

[00:01:51] The whole thing is a fraud. Very little, very little being put to good use. All right. So that was Donald Trump standing by Elon Musk and not taking the bait, which is what reporters and the Democrats. But I repeat myself were hoping would create friction between Trump and Musk. Musk, this idea that they're both big egos and they'll eventually have a falling out like Trump has had with all of those people from his previous administration.

[00:02:20] And so if they can just drive this wedge between them that, oh, Elon's actually the president. And then that would, you know, rattle Trump and he would fire Musk. And it's not working. And I suspect it's not working because the people that gathered around Trump for Trump version 2.0, like they're all on board with the same mission and they they are on board because of him.

[00:02:50] So like they are empowered to do these things because it aligns with what he wants. This from John or sorry, from Stephen Richards over at just the news dot com, which is the the outlet that was created by John Solomon, who was an award winning top notch journalist until he started noticing the corruption surrounding the resistance and the the way the government was being weaponized.

[00:03:18] And then all of a sudden he was like, oh, he's just a right winger. So he went off and started his own publication called just the news dot com. Stephen Richards has the story that before Trump. Began the purge at USAID, there was a memo that warned that agency that it had created, quote, vulnerabilities in the way that it was doling out the foreign aid.

[00:03:46] Just days before Elon Musk began a purge at USAID, the agency for international development. The foreign agency was warned in a stinging memo from its own internal watchdog that it had created serious vulnerabilities by doling out billions of dollars, tax dollars to overseas countries and groups without fully vetting for terrorists and fraudsters or demanding transparency from recipients of America's. Largest.

[00:04:45] They didn't want to track the money and they don't know where it's going. And they're not vetting these sub awardees is what they call them. So when they award a grant, they award some NGO something and then the NGO passes the money on to somebody else. They can't they can't keep track of that. They can't stop it. And maybe they find out later on. Oh, actually, it went to feed Hamas fighters. You know, stuff like that.

[00:05:07] Fred Flights, a former Trump National Security Council official, told Just the News that a key concern of the administration now is ensuring that the money is being spent wisely and on causes benefiting U.S. interests.

[00:05:25] There is a, look, I understand there is a philosophy, there is an outlook or an argument to be made that we shouldn't be doing any foreign aid at all. I have heard the argument. I understand the points. But as I said the other day, the bang for the buck is much higher if, you know, unless you're saying that, like, we're just going to be isolated.

[00:05:54] We're isolationists and we are not going to take any interest in helping anybody else outside of our borders. And then, you know, we'll be fine if we don't need any friends. That's essentially what you're saying is I am a rock. I am an island. I don't need any friends. Right. That's, I think, part of that argument, because if you just give people aid and support, right, much like the in marketing or PR, it's called the halo effect.

[00:06:21] You get a halo effect when you do things that are good for other people and then people associate you with being good. And so that's the idea behind helping people is we are a good people. We are a good country. And so we will help you when you need help.

[00:06:40] And when you start infecting that aid and assistance with political ideology or with covert CIA operations underneath them, like when you start doing that, you are working across purposes to what the intention is, which is to help people. But if you're just using that in order to further your own goals and particularly goals that are not great for the people you're helping.

[00:07:10] That's wrong. And people will eventually sniff that out and then they're not going to have a positive view. You have no halo effect. So what's the point? Well, Democrats realize the point is enriching themselves. They give themselves the jobs inside these NGOs. And they survive off of those grants doing the quote work. Right.

[00:07:33] And I mentioned this yesterday, the Mott and Bailey argument that we are seeing right now that, oh, my gosh, you can't cut the Peruvian trans comic books because then starving people won't get their rice. And that's how they that's how they cover for the corruption. But people see it. It's all out in the open.

[00:07:56] USAID, this according to Fred Flights, he says USAID has been incredibly politicized for leftist political goals by the Democrats. It's become a politicized boondoggle. And we saw that over the last 48 to 72 hours. We know that USAID officials were trying to subvert Trump's effort. More on that. I won't get to or his order to freeze foreign aid for 90 days. That's what Marco Rubio talked about when they tried to do it from the top down.

[00:08:22] And you had these USAID staffers and they just kept pushing money out. They were ignoring it. And they're like, whoa, whoa, whoa. We said stop. And they're like, no, we're not stopping. Flight says so we can see what our tax dollars are being paid for. We wanted the freeze. And is it in the interest of the United States? So I would submit that the halo effect is, in fact, in the interest of the United States. Is it America first or is it not?

[00:08:49] Inspector General, the Inspector General, Paul Martin is his name, identified three main areas of vulnerability. Resistance from UN agencies and foreign-based NGOs to share the information with the OIG, the Office of Inspector General. Limitations on the vetting of these aid organizations for ties to designated terrorist organizations and known corrupt actors.

[00:09:15] And the third area was limitations in obtaining data about USAID-funded sub-awardees. So, in other words, the end user of the largesse who gets it after you've passed it through an NGO or two or 20. Where does the money or the aid eventually land? And when you can't see that, then you don't know if you're actually doing good work. You could be actually doing very bad work.

[00:09:42] All right, I hope you had a happy holiday season, but tell me if something like this happened at your house. Your family and friends are gathered around. Maybe y'all are in the living room. You're laughing, swapping stories, reminiscing, and then somebody says, Hey, Dad, remember those old VHS tapes? Did you ever get them transferred? And then the room gets all quiet, all eyes are on Dad, who says, Oh, you know, well, I've been meaning to, but I just haven't gotten around to it.

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[00:10:36] Talk about a memorable gift. So do what I did. Trust the experts at Create A Video, conveniently located in Mint Hill, right off I-485, and online at createavideo.com. Let's talk to Jim. Hello, Jim. Welcome to the program. Hey, Pete. Hey, what's going on? Yeah, IRS. You know, I started thinking about all this. You say money going everywhere in the world.

[00:11:03] And, you know, there's got to be intermediaries, Pete. I'm talking Americans now. And large American companies involved with disseminating a lot of this money. And I got to think when the IRS out there sees this money flowing around, you know, just how involved and excited do they get trying to follow up on it, reporting? Not.

[00:11:30] And so, you know, it raises a big flag right there. And then I got to think about this Office of Management and Budget. And I think you just mentioned the Inspector General's Office. You know, those organizations ought to be staffed and appointed by the American people through commissions, whatever. I don't mind it being partisan as long as it's always like it's a six-member board, three R's and three D's.

[00:11:59] But we need to get the oversight of this monster behemoth. There's never been anything like it in the history of mankind from a scope and size. There needs to be independent outside oversight of this money and these entities up there in D.C. as to what they're doing. So I think that's what, Jim, I think that's what we are seeing right now. The oversight is supposed to be done by Congress.

[00:12:27] And Congress has refused, along with virtually all other aspects of their responsibilities, they have refused to do their jobs. And so that's what I think Elon Musk is doing with his Doge dudes. They're coming in there and they're stripping all this stuff away. I heard there was a report I heard that basically this kind of an operation would not even have been possible like two years ago.

[00:12:54] The technology with AI is now at such a point where they can run this kind of massive data collection and tracking operation because of the current technology. And so like this is like this. I think this is a like a fork in the road, like for like a historical at a societal level.

[00:13:18] I think that whatever we can do to put tech in the middle here to be tracking this stuff and posting this stuff. And by the way, this is what this is what this was a bipartisan thing like 15 years ago. The whole point was to make all of these expenditures public so everybody could see it. And that would help act as a watchdog. Well, two other quick points, Pete.

[00:13:45] These big American corps, you know, they get so-called quote unquote independent audits every year from the so-called biggest accounting firms in the world. And there are accounting principles right now in existence about interoperability, status of arms late transactions, all kinds of so-called footnotes to financial statements where you list those things.

[00:14:14] I have to think, Pete, that these big accounting firms have just been wink-wink and turning their heads when they see these billions of dollars heading overseas courtesy of the books of some of the biggest corps in America. I just have to think that's happening. And I'll make one more point, Pete. We've got to get the offices, a lot of these agencies, out of D.C.

[00:14:40] I mean, out of D.C., we need to get them in somewhere in the middle of Kansas somewhere or Wyoming. They don't need to be in D.C. anymore. Right. I agree with that. Yeah, I agree with that, too. Jim, I appreciate the call. On the auditing firms, I have no confidence in audits and auditing firms. Zero confidence. And I was, I remember covering these stories like when, you know, the city of Charlotte, when I was a beat reporter and I would, you know,

[00:15:10] they'd come in like, we have a clean audit, everybody. We had the auditing firm and the auditing firm would be up there and they would be talking about, you guys have great books, all this stuff. And I always thought, oh, okay, well, that's good. Right. Here's some experts, outside eyes, looking at the books. Everything's hunky-dory. And then I went to Asheville where I remember years ago somebody told me they bury their politicians' feet first because you got to screw them into the ground. They're so crooked.

[00:15:36] And the county manager, Wanda Green, at the time was embezzling hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions of dollars, out of the county coffers in Buncombe County and had conspirators inside county government. And she was convicted, by the way. She went to federal prison, but it was during COVID, so they basically let her right back out.

[00:16:01] They passed their audits every single year, and that's why I don't have confidence in these audits at all. Unless it's like a forensic audit, I don't have confidence. All right. If you're listening to this show, you know I try to keep up with all sorts of current events. And I know you do, too. And you probably heard me say, get your news from multiple sources. Why? Well, because it's how you detect media bias, which is why I've been so impressed with Ground News.

[00:16:26] It's an app, and it's a website, and it combines news from around the world in one place, so you can compare coverage and verify information. You can check it out at check.ground.news.peet. I put the link in the podcast description, too. I started using Ground News a few months ago and more recently chose to work with them as an affiliate because it lets me see clearly how stories get covered and by whom.

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[00:17:15] The takeaway here is that the Office of Inspector General inside the agency, inside USAID, told them, you guys do not have safeguards for your funding so we can track where all of this is going. There's a guy named Mike Benz. You probably have seen him. He has now become a very hot commodity on the interview circuit because he is a former State Department official

[00:17:40] and now the founder of the Foundation for Freedom Online, and he has been ringing the alarm on USAID for years. And now he's an overnight sensation. That's usually how that goes. He has chronicled how USAID spent funds encouraging censorship around the globe. He said the agency's record of funding controversial or freedom-damaging projects had eroded its trust across the globe.

[00:18:10] He says USAID has systematically corrupted the American and world trust in the institutions that keep society going. See, this is not a right-wing position. This is a position that, if anything, would be held by the people at USAID, the people that are funding it, the very people that are out there now marching on every single federal building they can spot,

[00:18:31] you would think they would be the most outraged at the waste of the money that's not going to the purpose that it's originally intended and instead is undermining America. Unless, of course, that's the point. The inspector general's report that was released in January said a quarter of USAID's programming,

[00:18:57] around $8 billion, goes through what are called public international organizations, which include UN agencies and development banks. And because these programs often occur in emergency environments, the OIG relies on those organizations to self-report any potential fraudulent activities.

[00:19:19] But despite the fact that they have contractual obligations to report potential fraud or mismanagement, those UN agencies delay notifications if they give any notification at all. For example, the World Food Program reported 519 instances of potential misconduct to USAID.

[00:19:46] But the inspector general was only told about 29 of them. But there's a contractual obligation to promptly notify the OIG. But they did not. Additionally, the inspector general said that the agency did not have the mechanisms needed to ensure that any individuals accused of corruption or misconduct would not be recirculated to other UN agencies that are being funded by USAID, which makes sense, right?

[00:20:13] Like somebody is a corrupt actor. You find out they're corrupt. So you cut off their funding directly. But oh, no, they just bounce over to another NGO and get a grant through that NGO. And they just keep recirculating through that network. Among those who have benefited from USAID funding, Hayat Tahir al-Sham or HTS. Does that acronym ring a bell? Does the name ring a bell?

[00:20:42] They're the ones that are now in charge in Syria. I'm sure it's just a coincidence. They're former Al-Qaeda. In 2023, there was a scheme to divert USAID-sponsored food aid in Ethiopia. The inspector general also found USAID does not maintain a comprehensive internal database of all of the sub-awardees.

[00:21:06] Meaning the U.S. can't identify them or vet them or track the organizations that ultimately get the U.S. funding after it goes through the international organizations. They say this delays OIG investigative activity and our ability to check with trusted foreign law enforcement partners to see if fraud allegations or fining against a local entity involve USAID funds.

[00:21:29] Now, in recent days, the Trump administration has identified USAID programs ranging from contraceptives for Afghanistan to LGBT and diversity programs for European countries. Like, why are we doing that? In European countries? Justthenews.com has previously reported how USAID was intimately involved with the censorship industry that emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic.

[00:21:58] I believe USAID money went to a group called the, what is it, Hamilton 68. Remember them? So, before it was shuttered, oh wait, hang on, yeah, yeah. Before it was shuttered, this is also Just the News. USAID routed funds to Soros-aligned causes, terrorists, and drag queens. The agency came under scrutiny over failures to ensure transparency in its funding across

[00:22:27] the globe and was not responding to explicit policy directives from the State Department and the wider executive branch to align its programs with Trump policies and the U.S. national interest. Right? And so what we are seeing now, like, shrieking vampires recoiling in the sunlight, well, actually, it's exactly like that. Right?

[00:22:50] They've been sucking dry the lifeblood of our economy, which is money. Right? Or people, you could say, yes, the people. But, like, they're sucking it dry. And they are now exposed and they're running around shrieking because it's existential to them. They're losing their access to the gravy train. And so JustTheNews.com tracks all of these funds that have been run through the Soros Open

[00:23:20] Society Foundation or is funding programs and NGOs that the Soros Open Society Foundations also fund. It's a very lengthy list. Albanian judicial reform proposal that was run in 2017. Rex Tillerson identified this at the time. There was an operation in neighboring Macedonia. Soros-backed program there.

[00:23:47] Soros-backed organizations that received funding and USAID funding include the Anti-Corruption Action Center in Ukraine, part of the overthrow of Viktor Yanukovych, who was a little too Russia-friendly. That's what I said the other day. USAID has been operating in conjunction with, if not under control by, like CIA, color revolution operations.

[00:24:15] Helping to destabilize other countries. And I don't think that's what USAID was supposed to be about. And if you listen to the defenders that are shrieking in the sunlight, they're all talking about food to Africa. But that's not what you were doing. You were doing other things with it. And that's the problem. Well, that's one of the problems. So again, that's at justthenews.com if you want more information on that. Here's a great idea.

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[00:26:04] Matt Vespa at townhall.com. Honestly, I could make probably every single show for the next three months about the USAID scandal. USAID shut down on Friday, absorbed into the State Department. Oh, and by the way, Luke Rosiak, he pointed this out. Rosiak is now with Daily Wire.

[00:26:29] Obama created the USDS, and it was this office specifically designed to hire Silicon Valley types and to be exempt from hiring rules and stuff. In 2017 through 2020, that staff then undermined Trump from within the White House.

[00:26:56] And then Biden put it under the control of a political appointee, Matt Cutts, he, him, pronouns. And now Trump comes in and he has renamed it to Doge. And so this is the Democrats' own creation. They did this, okay? They did this to themselves, which makes it all the more rich. Under the president's direction, Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency, Doge,

[00:27:23] unearthed a web of corruption, waste, and fraud that wasn't necessarily shocking, but jarring nonetheless. Not just all the crazy grants that we have seen, but they seem to have subsidized and played a significant role in the 2019 impeachment of Donald Trump over the perfect phone call with Zelensky, who, by the way, now says he may be willing to trade some rare earth minerals

[00:27:48] access for support in their war effort, which, well, that's nice. Why didn't you offer that before? The agency appears to have been pulling the strings of the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, or the OCCRP, or the OCCRP, as I like to call it, which was cited multiple times by the CIA whistleblower, which sparked the quid pro quo circus surrounding Trump, Ukraine,

[00:28:18] and military aid. So the OCCRP, the OCCRP. Independent journalists Michael Schellenberger and Alex Gutentag did a deep dive into this sordid government web where the purpose of OCCRP wasn't your usual investigative journalism. USAID seems to have had massive sway regarding agenda, hiring practices, and mission.

[00:28:44] The story on Schellenberger's site called Public ruffled the OCCRP feathers, which then threatened Schellenberger and the company with a lawsuit claiming their premise was false and defamatory. So now they're trying to create separation. DropSite News, an outlet that was led by former Intercept reporters, that was Glenn Greenwald's operation, did well to piece together the seedy relationship. They too now have been slapped with threats of a lawsuit.

[00:29:14] USAID was the perfect vehicle for the deep state and other anti-Trump staffers at government agencies to farm it out to. In the complaint, the whistleblower, at the time, claimed to have heard from White House staff that Trump had a phone call. Directed Ukrainian President Zelensky to work with his personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, to investigate the Bidens. The whistleblower who triggered the impeachment was a CIA analyst who was first brought into the White House by the Obama administration.

[00:29:43] Is this that Chierelma, Chierelma, Chimarella guy? Anyway, reporting by DropSite News last year revealed that the CIA analyst relied on reporting by a supposedly independent investigative news organization called the ACRP, which appears to have effectively operated as an arm of USAID, which Trump has just shut down.

[00:30:10] The CIA whistleblower complaint cited a very lengthy report by ACRP four times. Last year, there was a documentary that a German television broadcaster called NDR made about ACRP's dependence on the U.S. government.

[00:30:30] And a USAID official confirmed in that documentary that USAID approves ACRP's annual work plan and approves new hires of key personnel. But the documentary was censored before broadcast after U.S. journalist Drew Sullivan, the co-founder

[00:30:54] and the head of ACRP, put pressure on the broadcaster, NDR management, and made false accusations against the broadcaster's journalists involved in the project. On December 16th, just a couple months ago, DropSite's Ryan Grimm posted a link on Twitter to the 26-minute-long documentary. Quote, NDR, Germany's public broadcaster, is facing a censorship scandal and has defended itself

[00:31:23] by saying it never killed a news report about ACRP and its State Department funding because no report was ever produced to kill. And that's absurd. Here it is. This is the documentary. Dozens, maybe hundreds of journalists knew that was false. And now, of course, somebody has leaked the documentary. ACRP does not operate like a normal investigative journalism organization in that its goals appear

[00:31:50] to include interfering in foreign political matters, including elections aimed at regime change. Sullivan, the guy who heads up ACRP, yeah, Sullivan told the NDR in that documentary that his organization had probably been responsible for five or six countries changing over from one government to another government and getting prime ministers indicted or thrown out.

[00:32:16] As such, it appears that CIA, USAID, and ACRP were all involved in the impeachment of President Trump in ways similar to the regime change operations that all three organizations engage in abroad. See, this is why I keep saying that they are part of and help color revolutions, as they're called. You work from the inside through the institutions that exist, right?

[00:32:45] You get together coalitions and you overthrow the government. And you make it appear as if this is some thing that the people are clamoring for. You bring down governments in a hopefully mostly peaceful way. The difference is that it is highly illegal to do that to your own government. It's even treasonous. Now, how many of these people knew it? How many of these people were involved in that? Right?

[00:33:13] I read that transcript of the Zelensky phone call with Trump and I didn't find anything in there to be impeachment worthy. And by the way, Trump was apparently correct in asking Zelensky to say, hey, like, what exactly is going on with all this? Can you can you guys get to the bottom of what the Biden relationship is with Burisma and all that stuff going on? USAID kept the Democrat media complex subsidized in the tens of millions via Politico, Associated Press,

[00:33:42] New York Times and Reuters being some of the outlets who got that government sugar daddy cash. It was only for subscriptions. These outlets are exactly the ones that you would need, though, to push a narrative. And that's what they did. He concludes, alas, we're at the nexus point where a CIA whistleblower who set the beat of the impeachment drums cited a report from OCRP, which has deep ties to USAID, which allegedly controls most editorial and managerial aspects of that organization,

[00:34:10] which produced content that was weaponized against our duly elected president in 2019. All right. That'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. I could not do the show without your support and the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast. So if you'd like, please support them, too, and tell them you heard it here. You can also become a patron at my Patreon page or go to the Pete calendar show dot com. Again, thank you so much for listening. And don't break anything while I'm gone.