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Some staff at USAID were ordered to destroy classified documents and personnel records, according to a memo from a top official, a move that prompted fresh legal challenges but that an administration official later described as routine.
"Shred as many documents first, and reserve the burn bags for when the shredder becomes unavailable or needs a break," says the memo, a copy of which was seen by Bloomberg News. It was signed by USAID Acting Executive Secretary Erica Carr.
On Tuesday evening, the White House said that the memo was sent to "roughly three dozen employees" and was related to the decision to turn over USAID's Washington offices soon to US Customs and Border Protection.
"The documents involved were old, mostly courtesy content (content from other agencies), and the originals still exist on classified computer systems," White House Deputy Press Secretary Anna Kelly wrote on X. "More fake news hysteria!"
The State Department, which oversees USAID, didn't respond to a request for comment earlier on Tuesday.
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In response to the directive being made public, two separate legal challenges were filed seeking to stop destruction of the documents. Lawyers representing USAID contractors in an ongoing lawsuit against the Trump administration filed an emergency request for a court order forcing the government "to preserve all documents with any possible relevance to pending litigation."
In the filing, the lawyers said they'd already asked a Justice Department lawyer for an explanation but hadn't yet received one. Plaintiffs in another lawsuit against USAID also sought a temporary restraining order on Tuesday, alleging the government issued "a broad, short-fused directive to shred and burn documents immediately - today - that concern the structure, function, and activities of USAID."
In an update to the court later on Tuesday, lawyers for both sides conferred and administration lawyers said they hadn't destroyed personnel records and "will not destroy additional documents stored in the USAID offices" without notifying the court. They agreed to provide an update by 4 p.m. on Wednesday describing what documents had been destroyed, the update said.
Democratic staff on the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee had also reached out to the State Department and USAID for details on compliance with federal record keeping, according to a congressional aide.
Carr issued the order on shredding Monday, the same day that Secretary of State Marco Rubio officially canceled the vast majority of USAID contracts and put the remainder under the purview of the State Department.
That move essentially eliminates USAID as a standalone entity. It follows the Trump administration's broader efforts to curtail US foreign aid spending and terminate most of the aid agency's 10,000 employees, with thousands fired or placed on leave.
"There's no reason for USAID to be destroying records," said Lauren Harper at the Freedom of the Press Foundation. "As USAID's successor agency, the State Department is supposed to take control of USAID's records." The American Foreign Service Association, a group that represents State Department and USAID employees and is involved in one of the legal actions against the Trump administration, said in a statement that it's alarmed by the directive. It said the documents "may be relevant to ongoing litigation regarding the termination of USAID employees and the cessation of USAID grants."
"Federal law is clear: the preservation of government records is essential to transparency, accountability and the integrity of the legal process," the group said.
Federal law prohibits agencies from destroying or disposing of records "without specific authorization from the Archivist of the United States." Agencies have to go through a multistep process and obtain approval from the National Archives and Records Administration before purging records.
In its emergency motion, lawyers for the foreign service association argued that destroying classified files and personnel records could prevent USAID from resuming normal operations and make it impossible to "recreate and rebuild agency programming" in the future.
At the same time, Harper of the Freedom of the Press Association said the matter is complicated because Rubio is technically in charge of three separate agencies.
In addition to leading the State Department, he's been named acting administrator for both USAID and the National Archives and Records Administration, which is "supposed to step in and investigate when federal records are being destroyed," Harper said.
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