Employees of Elon Muskās so-called ādepartment of government efficiencyā (Doge) have entered the US Institute of Peace despite protests from the non-profit that it is not part of the executive branch and is instead an independent agency.
The organizationās CEO, George Moose, said: āDOGE has broken into our building.ā Police cars were outside the Washington building on Monday evening.
The Doge workers gained access to the building after several unsuccessful attempts Monday and after having been turned away on Friday, a senior US Institute of Peace official said. The official spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter.
It was not immediately clear what the Doge staffers were doing or looking for in the non-profitās building, which is across the street from the state department in the Foggy Bottom neighborhood.
Donald Trump targeted the organization and a few others in a 19 February executive order that aims to shrink the size of the federal government. The administration has since moved to fire and cancel programs at some of those organizations.
Doge has expressed interest in the US Institute of Peace (USIP) for weeks but has been rebuffed by lawyers who argued that the instituteās status protected it from the kind of reorganization that is occurring in other federal agencies.
On Friday, Doge members arrived with two FBI agents, who left after the instituteās lawyer told them of USIPās āprivate and independent statusā, the organization said in a statement.
The US Institute of Peace says on its website that it is a nonpartisan, independent organization ādedicated to protecting U.S. interests by helping to prevent violent conflicts and broker peace deals abroadā.
The non-profit says it was created by Congress in 1984 as an āindependent nonprofit corporationā, and it does not meet US code definitions of āgovernment corporationā, āgovernment-controlled corporationā or āindependent establishmentā.
Also named in the presidentās executive order were the US African Development Foundation, a federal agency that invests in African small businesses; the Inter-American Foundation, a federal agency that invests in Latin America and the Caribbean; and the Presidio Trust, which oversees a national park site next to the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.
The African Development Foundation, which also unsuccessfully tried to keep Doge staff from entering its offices in Washington, went to court, but a federal judge ruled last week that removing most grants and most staff would be legal. The president of the Inter-American Foundation sued on Monday to block her firing in February by the Trump administration.