A whistleblower from the US Agency for International Development said he believes that “tremendous waste” extends beyond USAID and runs throughout the entire federal government.
In a Friday appearance on Fox News’ “Jesse Watters Primetime,” Rob Cohen, who had worked at USAID since 2016, explained how the “system” really worked to give kickbacks to bureaucrats and how he was punished for raising concerns about the mismanagement in spending.
“Well, I have to say this — I want to be careful that this is a classic case where we want to avoid throwing the baby out with the bathwater. USAID does save babies. That said, it does. Studies show that up to seven million children have been prevented from being born with HIV by giving drugs to HIV positive mothers while they’re giving childbirth. That’s a wonderful thing,” Cohen said.
USAID whistleblower pic.twitter.com/00aHhr46mk
— Karli Bonne’ 🇺🇸 (@KarluskaP) February 8, 2025
“That said, there is tremendous waste within the aid industrial complex. This is well known. It’s been well documented,” Cohen continued. “It’s probably not unique to USAID. It’s probably true across the federal government, in which most contractors charge overhead that is beyond what any reasonable business would consider appropriate. Therefore, the American taxpayer does not get the return on investment that we expect.”
Watters asked Cohen about him being “punished” by the higher-ups for speaking out within the agency, despite him being a Democrat.
“That’s exactly right. So I was elevated to be the acting deputy chief of staff of the Global Health Bureau during COVID, and I immediately observed incredible delay and arrogance on the part of career bureaucrats who I fought and frankly cleaned up their mess,” Cohen said. “Instead of being appreciative that we avoided an embarrassment, I was retaliated against. I had to sue them under the Whistleblower Protection Act, which is detailed in my op-ed. Then they proceeded to botch 10 times more money.”
“I should add this was under the career bureaucrats. There were political appointees like our recent assistant administrator, Atul Gawande, who did a good job of streamlining bureaucracy. That’s where there are important programs that I’m concerned are going to be thrown out with a bureaucracy that has grown over six decades without enough accountability,” Cohen said.
“There have been efforts to reform it, not successful. So I hope that this can be an act of creative destruction, which is a good thing, instead of just total destruction, which would be the concern of overreach,” he added.
President Trump this week directed Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to audit USAID, which revealed the agency had wasted billions of taxpayer dollars on leftist international programs.
97% of USAID’s workforce have since been fired and the agency has been placed under the auspices of the US State Department.
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