Washington
CNN
–
Officials from the government’s Department of Efficiency with DC police officers visited the US Peace Institute on Monday after his death last week.
The dramatic escalation follows the Trump administration’s Friday eruption of the organisation’s board of directors, followed by another court battle between the administration and independent organisations.
“The Doges have broken into our building,” USIP President George Moose, who said the Trump administration was fired from its role, said in a statement Monday.
The administration fired most of the USIP board on Friday, with the remaining three members, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegses and National Defense College Chairman Peter Garvin, who said they had set up Kenneth Jackson as representing USIP president. Jackson was one of the staff members who entered the building on Monday, according to the Institute’s chief security officer.
USIP does not consider its appointment to be legal. The lab that functions to resolve conflicts is not a federal agency. Created by Congress in 1984 as a nonpartisan and independent institution, USIP owns and manages its headquarters.
According to USIP Chief Security Officer Colin O’Brien, the organization called DC Metropolitan Police after a former security contractor whose contract was suspended on Sunday, and entered the building without permission.
When he went to say hello to the police, O’Brien said, “They opened the door and allowed members of the Doge to enter the building, where 10-12 officers, DC police officers, were dressed in uniform.”
Doge officials who said O’Brien wouldn’t identify himself told USIP general counsel and members of operations staff to leave the building, he said.
More police officers arrived later that day with lock picking devices and were seen entering the building’s side doors.
In a post on X, Doge allegedly argued that Moose “denies legal access to USIP representative president Kenneth Jackson, as approved by the USIP committee.” Doge said DC police “arrived on the property and escorted Mr Jackson into the building.”
“The only illegal individual was Mr. Moose. He refused to comply and tried to fire USIP’s private security team when the security team went to access Mr. Jackson,” Doge told the post.
A DC police spokesman told CNN that the police department responded to USIP’s illegal entry reports. “An individual who was asked by management to leave at the facility has left,” they said. “There were no arrests and no incidents to report.”
Some USIP staff remained in the building after Doge arrived, including Moose, a retired career diplomat. He was later forced to leave the building by DC police.
As Doge walked through the building, in an interview conducted by phone from a locked office, Moose said he expected Doge to come back to try to access USIP.
Over the weekend, he said: “Representatives from the FBI and the District of Columbia U.S. Lawyers’ Office are approaching our staff and members of our workforce and are trying to intimidate them to enter the building.”
“We didn’t expect the FBI to succeed in seeking support and cooperation from the District of Columbia police. “For some reason, the FBI was able to convince the DC police that this was a building owned by the US government, not the US Peace Institute.”
O’Brien told CNN that the FBI called him over the weekend, with two FBI agents going to the home of one of his security guards.
The FBI referenced a request for comment to the DOJ. CNN reached out to the Department of Justice.
Moose said USIP plans to fight “hardly” and “hardly” in court.
“We are confident of our legal status and we are confident that the courts that will give us a hearing will be persuaded by the strength of our legal argument,” Moose said after leaving the building.
“It’s not the first building I was asked to protect. We had to protect embassies in Africa all over the world. “This is obviously not a great day for this. This is somehow not a happy day for anyone who has reached this misunderstanding of our intentions, the point where our purpose is to come and try.”
“We’re going to do something in the US Congress,” said Democrat Don Bayer, who arrived on the scene late Monday evening, and “we’ll report it to House leaders.”
“USIP is a nonprofit organization in Congress. It’s not a federal agency. I think it’s obviously illegal and unconstitutional for Doge to take over it,” he told CNN.
Chief Security Officer O’Brien said he has never experienced anything like Monday’s event during his tenure at USIP.
“It’s a shame,” he told CNN. “If we look at the mission of the US Institute of Peace, its job is to prevent Americans from falling into expensive wars. It’s about bringing peace, our president says he wants to be peace supervision and we can be happy to support that mission.”
