DOGE’s attempt to takeover and destroy a tiny government agency was stymied after the team made an embarrassing technological mistake, according to a court filing.
Elon Musk’s group tried to fire the board in charge of the U.S. African Development Foundation and seize control of the agency, but they couldn’t figure out how to successfully send an email, the legal document filed Tuesday by the agency’s current president says.
Four out of the five emails that President Donald Trump’s legal team claimed were sent to terminate the agency’s leadership were never delivered.
The DOGE staffer who attempted to send the email was not identified in the court documents, but a USADF staffer told the Daily Beast they were sent by just one individual.
The filing says that one email was sent to a Gmail address, but the board member in question doesn’t have a Gmail account. Two others were sent to inactive USADF addresses. And most egregiously, the termination notice for John Agwunobi both spelled his name wrong and was sent to an address that incorrectly used a .org rather than a .gov ending.
“Perhaps the incorrect email addresses were shots in the dark,” the document reads. “Perhaps they were attempts to deduce naming conventions from other email addresses at the agency or at a business. Perhaps it was assumed that someone with a distinctive name, like Carol Moseley Braun, would have that full name at Gmail. And perhaps a misspelled name and incorrect domain were simply the result of moving fast.”
It says that when DOGE staffers requested personal contact information for the board members, a USADF official said they would look into whether they were allowed to share the addresses.
“But the DOGE employees were too impatient and instead tried to find information about the Board members online,” the filing says. “They never followed up to ask the employee if she had been given permission to share the information (which she had).”
Many of DOGE’s staffers are young software engineers with little to no prior experience in government. Trump has often praised their intelligence, calling them “super geniuses” with “182 IQ.”
The USADF staffer told the Daily Beast that it adds to the sense of indignation at having the agency shut down that it’s being carried out by Musk’s soldiers.
“The thing that we’re starting to realize with the Trump administration is that Trump can either find people to hire that are loyal to him or he can find people that have two brain cells,” the person said. “But he can’t find the intersection of those two populations.”
The one termination email that was delivered was received by the current USADF president, Ward Brehm, who is leading the legal battle to stop the DOGE takeover. He argues that the president does not have the authority to fire him.
The USADF was established by an act of Congress in 1980. Unlike other government agencies which DOGE has effectively eliminated, it is controlled by a board whose members are nominated by the president and must be confirmed by the Senate. The board is responsible for naming the president of the agency.
Trump’s administration had tried to remove the board and install Peter Marocco, the State Department official who helped Musk take apart the U.S. Agency for International Development, as its sole member, according to the legal filing.
Despite being among the smallest government agencies, with a budget of just around $45 million, it has put up a strong defense to the takeover. Last week, a video showing staffers blocking backpack-wearing DOGE employees from entering their office to fire them went viral on social media.
Soon after, the USADF initiated its legal battle, which is ongoing. The agency believes that only Congress has the authority to shutter it. Trump’s attempts to use his power to effectively do so goes against the law, Brehm has argued.
In a statement to the Daily Beast, a White House representative declined to comment on the email flub.
“The USADF was reduced to its statutory minimum via President Trump’s executive order to reduce the federal bureaucracy, and the prior board was lawfully removed,” spokesperson Anna Kelly said. “Entitled bureaucrats like Ward Brehm are only demonstrating why independent agencies must be held accountable to officials elected by the American people.”
Musk’s DOGE, wielding Trump’s executive power, has already successfully shut down similar (but larger) foreign aid organizations, like USAID and the Inter-American Foundation, with Marocco’s help.
An employee at the USADF told the Daily Beast last week that the staff at the agency want to use their organization’s unique structure to fight the takeover for as long as possible.
“People are definitely freaking out,” said the staffer, speaking with the Beast under the condition of anonymity. “I think most people are resigned to the fact that the agency is probably not gonna survive this, but we want to put up a resistance.”
The USADF employee told the Daily Beast on Tuesday that the ongoing legal battle—and coverage of the situation in the press—has given staff at USADF a sunnier outlook.
“People are feeling a little more optimistic that maybe Congress might intervene on our behalf,” the person said. The staffer said that Congress could add further statutory protections to the agency’s operations.
“Whether they would actually do that for an agency as small as us, I don’t know,” they added.
The turmoil at the agency has impacted its ability to fulfill its mission to invest and support initiatives that benefit underserved communities in Africa, with much of its aid under freeze orders, the staffer said.
The funds “make a huge impact on the lives of the poorest of the poor,” they said.
