When a regime collapses, there is a race to grab control of its archives.
That’s what we are seeing play our right now.
In one sense we all knew this battle was coming, yet from a different direction. Hesgeth, Patel, Bhattacharya, Gabbard. They were all nominated to uncover the rot and conspiratorial nature of their respective agencies. That’s why their nomination battles are so contentious.
However that was the attack everyone knew was coming, the one to fix your attention in place so that you never saw the other one that was going to hit you in the flank.
Last week, Trump suspended the entire senior leadership of USAID due to its insubordination. Over the weekend, he announced the entire agency was shut down and Secretary of State Rubio was to be the interim head. As of Monday, there were DHS agents patrolling the lobby of its offices at the Reagan Building and no doubt its networks have been airgapped.
USAID is better known to the public as the agency that provides foreign aid. Officially, it sends money abroad to combat poverty, assist those suffering from natural disasters, and promote democracy and human rights. However it is one of the crown jewels of the Deep State because it serves as the pass-through for tax dollars flowing to various slush funds and projects, both foreign and domestic.
The other big news was that Treasury Secretary Bessnet granted Elon Musk access to the Department’s payment systems. The Bureau of the Fiscal Service uses the systems to disburse more than $6 trillion in annual payments. The Left is abuzz, thinking that this is a fascist hijacking of the government, but in reality it is part of the same plan as the reassertion of control over USAID.
If the archives at USAID and various agencies are the libraries for the federal government, then the Treasury payment system forms its rudimentary index. In movie terms, getting into the payment systems is like grabbing Capone’s accountant.
Of special note, one of the young whiz kids Elon has parsing code at Treasury won a prize for deciphering an ancient scroll through the use of AI. Seems like just the man for the job.
Apparently much of the $5 billion Victoria Nuland claimed we used to finance the 2014 coupe in Ukraine was distributed via NGO’s funded by USAID. That led directly to the disaster we currently see unfolding before our eyes in that country, complete with the threat of escalation to nuclear war. That alone would justify shutting them down. No doubt the agency is involved in supporting a number of similar “good ideas” worldwide. So much for international charity.