The Rachel Maddow Show
Independent Agency CEO: 'DOGE has broken into our building.'
Tue, 18 Mar 2025
The U.S. Institute for Peace announced Monday that despite being independent of the executive branch and controlling its own building and the land it sits on, their objections to members of Elon Musk's DOGE team trespassing in their building were overridden by D.C. police. That came after an earlier confrontation in which DOGE was accompanied by the FBI. Skye Perryman, president of Democracy Forward, who is suing the U.S. Marshals for information on DOGE after a similar raid, joins to discuss the unprecedented nature of DOGE leveraging the threat of armed law enforcement against another part of the government.
Chapter 1: How large were the protests in Serbia?
Thanks, Stuart Holm, for joining us this hour. Really happy to have you here this Monday night. They said that by nightfall, the turnout was somewhere north of 325,000 people. Look at the size of this. We knew in advance that this is going to be a big demonstration. The government knew it was coming.
The government had parked a whole bunch of tractors around their Capitol building in anticipation that there were going to be a lot of people there. And they thought the wall of tractors might put people off, I guess. All through that afternoon, Saturday afternoon, you could see the crowd starting to build up in the capital city.
But when they ended up at night at something like three hundred and look at that. 325,000 people in the streets. I think pretty much everybody was surprised. This happened Saturday in Serbia, in a country that's only got about 6.6 million people.
They got a third of a million people to show up at a single demonstration when they don't even have 7 million people in the entire country for their population. If you want to compare that to us, if we got a similar proportion of our country's population to all show up for the same demonstration, that would be a demonstration of about 17 million people. Yeah, this is just massive.
This is Belgrade this weekend. Serbia's president is pro-Putin and pro-Trump. The people of Serbia are not. And they are mobilizing in almost unbelievable numbers now to try to get rid of their president. These are the biggest protests that have happened in that country in a generation. Absolutely massive.
President Donald Trump's son, Don Jr., the brunette, he visited Serbia last week and said that he thought the protests there were artificial, that they weren't real. The real Serbian people certainly wouldn't be protesting against their leadership. The Serbian president posted photos of himself with Don Jr., He was greeting a head of state or something.
The Serbian president also ordered police in that country to raid the offices of four of the major civil society NGOs in that country. The police went in without warrants. They went in armed and they just took everything at those organizations. The justification for them doing that was Donald Trump. Trump is trying to abolish USAID, trying to close down America's foreign aid agency.
In so doing, Trump's top campaign donor Elon Musk called USAID a criminal organization. Remember when he said that? That has had consequences. Serbia's government is deciding that they're taking that literally. Well, it's Donald Trump's top campaign donor saying they're criminals.
They're taking that literally and essentially operating now on the assumption, or at least on the pretext, that any organization that ever got any support from USAID must be a criminal organization. And so now they've got armed police raids and shutting those organizations down and the threat of, in fact, criminal charges.
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Chapter 2: What sparked the political movement in Serbia?
That said, the people of that country in absolutely massive numbers would seem to disagree. What's going on in that country started as a group of students protesting against corruption and its consequences. In November, there was a disaster at a Serbian train station. The concrete roof of a train station in Serbia collapsed and it killed 15 people.
And that might not sound like a political event, but it has sparked this huge political movement because students, after that disaster, took to the streets and said, reasonably, that the reason that train station roof was improperly built and it therefore collapsed is because the government is corrupt.
And that's the kind of construction you get when the only criteria for getting a government contract is cronyism and bribery instead of actually knowing how to do the work. That is the kind of accident you get when your terrible train station construction passes inspection and opens up to the public, not because it's actually safe or properly built, but because the necessary bribes were paid.
Corrupt countries, oligarchic countries, autocratic countries are lousy countries. Bad governance means bad standards of living, means bad economies, means worse lives for everybody except the people at the very top. And these students started demonstrating against their Putin and Trump-style corrupt government in November.
And now they are turning out hundreds of thousands of people in the streets of their capital. And it is very possible that that government will fall. Despite a friendly visit from Dong Jr. Another 50,000 people turned out in Hungary this weekend. Look at this. To protest against the Trump and Putin-aligned dictator in that country, Viktor Orban, look at this crowd in Budapest on Saturday.
Viktor Orban is the tool that Vladimir Putin is using to try to break apart the EU. Viktor Orban has also provided the Trump movement in this country with much of its playbook for what they're doing to our country and to our government right now, firing as many civil servants as they can, discrediting, attacking, intimidating, ultimately trying to co-opt all of the media.
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Chapter 3: How are protests against authoritarian governments spreading?
attacking and trying to close down colleges and universities, discrediting and attacking judges and the court system. That is all Viktor Orban's playbook. And the Trump movement credits him with all those good ideas, which they are now trying to put in place in the United States. Viktor Orban has been in power in his country for 15 years now.
He has turned his country into an autocracy, and although his family and his friends have become very, very, very rich, Hungary's economy is also trash now for everyone else. And so Hungary...
In large numbers, Hungarians are turning out in shockingly large numbers against him and in support of a rising opposition party that very well may beat him and remove him from office if he allows the next rounds of elections to happen in Hungary. Also this weekend, in Romania and in the nation of Georgia, there were more huge anti-Putin, pro-Europe, large-scale protests.
Russia is accused in Romania of not only interfering in their last election, but also just outright trying to mount a military coup to oust the government there to instead install a pro-Russian, pro-Putin puppet regime. Vice President J.D.
Vance has taken up Russia's talking points against the Romanian government, criticizing them while the EU has taken steps to try to help Romania defend itself against Putin. In the nation of Georgia, they also have a pro-Putin, pro-Russia authoritarian government, even though much of the population of that country wants Georgia to be part of Europe instead.
The opposition in Georgia, the pro-European, pro-Western opposition in Georgia has mounted increasingly large demonstrations in their capital city. They've actually done a large-scale demonstration in their capital city every single day for the last 110 days. Today was day 110. They are protesting the government itself.
They've, interestingly, and I think importantly, been protesting against state TV, which is just relentless Russian-style propaganda now. But they're mounting those demonstrations in the nation of Georgia 110 straight days now and counting. Lest you feel like we're all alone here. We've got plenty of company.
And they're doing it in massive, unified protests over there, particularly in huge numbers this weekend. Here, we're doing it mostly in widely dispersed protests all over the place, all the time. Some of them large, some of them small. This was Boise, Idaho, at the state capitol on Saturday. Deep, deep, deep red Idaho. Look at this.
Thousands of people turned out in Boise on Saturday protesting against Trump and what he and his top campaign donor are doing to the U.S. government. This was in lower Manhattan this weekend. What they call a die-in. Thousands of people protesting what Trump and Musk are doing and their threats to things like Medicaid and Medicare that tens of millions of Americans rely upon.
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Chapter 4: What happened at the U.S. Africa Development Foundation?
We covered here on this show a sort of, in the grand scheme of things, a small-scale confrontation in one small government office in Washington. It's a little agency that you definitely haven't heard of. It's called the U.S. Africa Development Foundation.
And the reason we covered what was going on there is because something unusual happened there when Trump went after that office, went after that agency and tried to shut them down. At that agency, they had a physical confrontation with people from Doge, from the Elon Musk austerity group. These would-be anonymous young men who work for Elon Musk. They showed up. Do you remember the story?
They showed up at that small government agency and they demanded to be let inside. And that small government agency told them no. They said, we're an independent agency. We are actually not part of the executive branch. You have no legal authority over us. You have no legal right to come in. We do not invite you in. We say you can't come in. You cannot come in.
And the Doge kids left when they were told they couldn't come in. But then the next day, they came back with muscle. They came back with people who said they were U.S. Marshals. And we think those people were possibly armed. They were carrying guns. Now, the U.S. Marshals Service consistently will not comment on this. They will not say whether or not those people were actually U.S. Marshals.
We have some reporting that suggests they may not have been U.S. Marshals. Nevertheless, they reportedly claim to be U.S. Marshals. And with those men, with those people claiming to be U.S. Marshals, the young men from Doge did physically force their way into that agency and then locked out all the actual staff and changed the locks.
So whether or not you, you know, your heartstrings are pulled by the fate of that individual agency, right? You can see why this might be a qualitatively more worrying thing than some of the other stuff we have seen.
I mean, there are legitimate legal disputes as to whether this Doge group has any legal authority over some of these agencies that they're trying to get into so they can take over their systems and fire their staff and shut them down. Those disputes are legal disputes that need to be sorted out legally.
You can't just use guns to force your way in in the meantime as a means of settling that dispute. If there's a legal dispute as to whether or not you are allowed in a U.S. government building and you cast that aside and say, we've got guns and that's the grounds on which we're coming in. What that is, is an armed assault on the U.S. government. That is an armed assault on a U.S. government office.
That's a break in. That's call the cops territory. That's barricade the doors territory. I mean, at that point, what's to stop the little government agency from bringing in their own armed force, right? And then we shoot it out. That said, if there is an armed part of the U.S.
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Chapter 5: Why is Doge attempting to access government buildings?
So that happened at the U.S. Africa Development Foundation a couple weeks ago, led to the lawsuit against the U.S. Marshals demanding information from the Marshals last week. Well, now tonight, it has led to another physical confrontation. And this time, the agency in question actually did call the cops. In this case, it's something called the U.S. Institute of Peace.
It works on things like research in conflict zones and training future diplomats. It was created by Congress during the Reagan administration. It was created in 1984. But it is not an official part of the U.S. government. It does not act in the name of the U.S. government. It is a separate institution. Nevertheless, on Friday, representatives from Doge showed up unannounced at their building.
And they showed up unannounced this time not with somebody claiming to be a U.S. marshal. This time they showed up with... FBI agents? Wait, the FBI works for Doge? They demanded entry into the U.S. Institute of Peace. The Doge team was reportedly met by lawyers for the Institute who informed them, quote, of the Institute's private and independent status as a non-executive branch agency.
They told them they could not come in. The Doge representatives on Friday then departed. That was Friday. But now, today, apparently it is... Come to a different ending. We got this alarming quote from the CEO of that independent organization tonight. Quote, Doge has broken into our building. The New York Times reports, quote, the U.S. Institute for Peace called the D.C.
police on the Musk team members in an effort to stop them from trespassing because the institute has control of its own building and the land it sits on. But instead, the D.C. police allowed them to enter and kicked out the Institute's officials.
FBI agents, reportedly, and the local police are being used by one government agency as an armed force against another part of the government, another government agency that controls its own building and that says you can't come in. What's going on here? And how do we figure it out? Joining us now is somebody who has been trying to pry loose some of the truth of what's going on here.
Skye Perryman is the president and CEO of Democracy Forward, which sued the U.S. Marshals Service last week, asking why Doge was repeatedly invoking the marshals while trying to force their way into various buildings in Washington. Ms. Perryman, thanks very much for joining us. I appreciate it.
Thanks for having me.
So we've been trying to follow this as it has been unfolding. It sort of dribs and drabs, and now this dramatic unfolding tonight. Let me just ask if there's anything that you know about this that either contradicts what I just said or can further advance the story.
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Chapter 6: What legal actions are being taken against Doge?
That's one of many cases that we have pending right now to really understand what's happening with Doge, with Elon Musk, by the way, because no one voted for Elon Musk or for this sort of force.
I know that Democracy Forward, that your organization, is involved in a lot of litigation against the president and Doge and what they're doing to try to dismantle the government. I do want to ask, though, if there is precedent for this type of
Controversy, this type of dispute, I feel like when I cover things in other countries, one of the things I watch for to try to understand what kind of country that is, is when physical force is used to settle legal or political disputes, when guys with guns show up in the middle of what I would otherwise expect to be something that was a subject of a summons.
I don't know of anything else like this before. I profess I might be ignorant to this part of D.C. dramatic history. But do you know of any precedent for something like this for one part of the government using armed physical force against another?
This is completely unprecedented. And when you talk to experts that study societies that are in decline, democracies that are in decline, you find these kind of skirmishes between different parts of the government, sometimes with force. And so it's highly concerning this is happening in the United States in 2025.
That is why our team at Democracy Forward, of course, is in court every day challenging these actions, trying to help the American people figure out what is going on with their own government. But this is quite concerning and unprecedented.
Skye Perriman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward. You are a very, very, very busy woman, and this is a very busy organization that you are running. Thank you for taking time out tonight to help us understand this. We appreciate it. Thanks for having me. All right. More news ahead here tonight. Stay with us.
So tonight we are right in the middle of a very important clash between the Trump administration and the courts. And it has been rapidly developing and escalating over the past 48 hours or so. As we talked about on Friday Night Show, the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 is a law that is a wartime law in this country. It's used during wartime only.
The last time it was used was during World War II when it was used to put Japanese Americans in internment camps, something for which the U.S. government later apologized and paid reparations under Ronald Reagan.
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Chapter 7: How unprecedented is the use of force between U.S. agencies?
You should inform them that any plane containing these folks that's going to take off or is in the air needs to be returned to the United States. Those people need to be returned to the United States. Quote, this is something that you need to make sure is complied with immediately. By all appearances, that order... was not complied with immediately.
NBC News reports that two flights carrying these men were in transit when the judge issued his ruling, but they did not turn around. They continued on their way. The Washington Post reports that a third plane was still on the ground at the time of that ruling. It hadn't taken off in Texas until after that judge's ruling had been issued. The next morning, the pro-Trump
President of El Salvador announced that his country had accepted 238 men from the United States. He posted a slickly produced three-minute propaganda video of some of these men being sort of manhandled and pushed around and all of them having their heads shaved by armed Salvadoran military or security forces. President Trump happily posted the video as well.
The president of El Salvador says these men will be jailed in a massive prison in his country for as many years as the U.S. wants to pay him to keep them there. They have not been charged with crimes and thereby sentenced to serve this time. They're just being locked up indefinitely at the pleasure of El Salvador.
At the White House press briefing today, Trump's press secretary listed all the crimes these men ostensibly committed. But a senior Trump administration official tells NBC News that these men have not necessarily been convicted of any of these crimes. Still, though, they're in prison now in El Salvador indefinitely, having been disappeared out of this country with no process whatsoever.
We don't even know who these guys are. They keep saying they're Venezuelan gang members. We don't even know if they're Venezuelans, let alone gang members.
Unsurprisingly, the federal judge who held that hearing on Saturday where he made it abundantly clear that nobody was supposed to be sent to El Salvador, he called a new hearing today to assess whether the Trump administration had knowingly violated his court order.
Quote, a federal judge pressed a Justice Department lawyer today over why the Trump administration did not comply with his order to temporarily halt deportations under an 18th century law. and asked why key information about the flights was being withheld over the weekend.
In a tense hearing, the judge summarized the administration's position on his court order Saturday as, quote, The Trump administration lawyer at this evening's hearing still refused to provide any information about the flights.
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