Trump aide who spearheaded government cost cutting gets $15M security detail paid for with slashed USAID cash

A top aide of President Donald Trump, who spearheaded massive government cuts, is getting a $15 million security detail paid for with slashed funds from the U.S. Agency for International Development, according to a new report.

Russell Vought, the director of the White House’s Office of Management and Budget, will be protected by the Marshals Service through the end of the year, using what remains of the USAID’s operating expenses, Reuters reported Friday, citing official documents.

The Trump administration dismantled the 60-year-old foreign aid agency early into the president’s second term in the name of government efficiency.

The controversial move left tens of thousands of government workers out of a job and slashed $60 billion in humanitarian aid for millions of vulnerable people around the world, the Associated Press reported.

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When asked about the USAID funds, OMB spokesperson Rachel Cauley told Reuters, “We are going to continue to use available funds at the three agencies overseen by the director to protect him,” seemingly referring to the budget office, the foreign aid agency and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

A person familiar with the matter told Reuters that Vought has more than a dozen Marshals protecting him. While the Marshals Service didn’t specifically identify Vought as under its protection, it told the publication that it "could offer protection to members of the executive branch who face threats or at the direction of the attorney general."

The Independent has reached out to OMB and the Marshals Service for comment.

Vought, who was portrayed in an AI-generated video shared by Trump on social media as the Grim Reaper, was the lead author of Project 2025, a manual produced by the Heritage Foundation in 2023 that advised on conservative policies for the next presidency.

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Despite Trump claiming during the 2024 election cycle that he had “nothing to do with Project 2025,” it has served as the blueprint for many of his second administration’s policies.

Vought railed against what he saw as a politically biased, bloated federal government in Project 2025: “A president today assumes office to find a sprawling federal bureaucracy that all too often is carrying out its own policy plans and preferences—or, worse yet, the policy plans and preferences of a radical, supposedly ‘woke’ faction of the country.”

The Reuters source said that Vought has received serious threats, apparently connected to his part in Project 2025. Cauley blamed “The Left” for fueling an “assassination culture against public officials” and then acting shocked “about what it takes to keep them safe.”

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There has been an increase in political violence targeting both sides of the political aisle in recent years, including the two assassination attempts on Trump and the shootings of Democratic lawmakers in Minnesota.

Consumer advocacy group Public Citizen bashed Vought following the Reuters reporting.

“Russell Vought has literally taken food out the mouths of hungry children and treatment away from the sick and vulnerable—and now is using the proceeds to pay for what appears to be a platoon of bodyguards. Disgusting,” Robert Weissman, co-president of Public Citizen, said in a statement.