With Elon Musk’s DOGE delving deep into the seedy and sometimes anti-American projects funded by USAID, we felt it was a good time to revisit this special episode of The Drill Down, in which Peter and Eric spoke with Prof. Mark Moyar, a USAID whistleblower.
Watch the podcast episode above. Article below.
The Deep State is real—a stagnant swamp festering with corruption, no matter who is in office. Like any swamp, it thrives because it doesn’t move.
But when reformers step in to clean up these bureaucratic backwaters, the swamp creatures spring into action. They attack the reformers. The latest guest on The Drill Down, Prof. Mark Moyar, knows this firsthand.
Moyar, a career academic and military historian, was appointed by President Trump in 2018 to lead the Office of Civilian-Military Cooperation at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Almost immediately, he uncovered corruption—evidence of waste, fraud, and abuse within the agency. He reported multiple instances of wrongdoing to USAID’s inspector general, a holdover from the Obama administration. In retaliation, he became the target of allegations himself.
Anonymous accusations claimed he had misused his travel allowance. When that failed, he was accused of using his work computer for personal matters. When that didn’t stick, he was charged with revealing classified information in a book he had published the previous year. Without the opportunity to defend himself, he was forced out.
Schweizer responds, “It’s sort of like Trump, where they just throw a bunch of stuff against the wall to see what sticks.”
Today, Prof. Mark Moyar teaches military history at Hillsdale College and joins Peter Schweizer and Eric Eggers to discuss his battle with the Swamp and his new book, Masters of Corruption: How the Federal Bureaucracy Sabotaged the Trump Presidency.
What kind of corruption did he uncover? “Some was minor, like toxic leadership, bullying, and employees not showing up for work,” Moyar says. “But one person, who was my deputy for a short time, was also serving on the board of a for-profit company receiving contracts from both USAID and the Defense Department. That’s a clear conflict of interest.”
Yet Jack Ohlmeyer, the department’s Assistant General Counsel for Ethics and Administration—who remains in his position—allowed it.
That wasn’t the only conflict of interest Moyar found. At the time, USAID’s Assistant Administrator was Bonnie Glick, whose husband, Paul Foldi, is a registered lobbyist for companies contracting with multiple federal agencies, including USAID.
Moyar’s book exposes how career bureaucrats and political appointees work together to protect the Deep State, often by selectively attacking whistleblowers. Those who speak out, like Moyar, face relentless retaliation, while others who commit ethical or security violations are shielded. A 2020 RealClearPolitics article by Susan Crabtree highlighted this double standard, comparing Moyar’s case to the lenient treatment of Alexander Vindman, who testified against Trump over his phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Each agency’s Inspector General is supposed to protect whistleblowers, but Moyar’s experience left him deeply skeptical of their integrity.
“One thing I learned is just how bad a lot of these [Inspectors General] are at their jobs,” he tells Schweizer and Eggers. “They’re not watchdogs. They are lapdogs.”
