United States Agency for Global Media (USAGM) acting CEO Kari Lake defended her sweeping cuts in a newly filed deposition.
In this case, Widakuswara v. Lake, the director of the Voice of America (VOA), Michael Abramowitz, and journalists at affiliated government-funded media outlets sued Lake over their paid administrative leaves and firings and reduced programming. USAGM oversees VOA.
Also being challenged is the legitimacy of Lake taking over the role of acting CEO of USAGM. Lake attests that she took over for Victor Morales, who assumed the position in March.
An attorney on behalf of the VOA employees, Debra Greenberger, questioned Lake extensively about the timeline of her leadership roles within USAGM, and her consideration of Foreign Service when ceasing all VOA programming. Lake also canceled a 15-year lease in D.C. for VOA headquarters.
Lake maintained that she was carrying out President Donald Trump’s executive order to reduce agency staffing to the statutory minimum.
In an announcement of these actions earlier this year, Lake declared USAGM “not salvageable.”
When questioned by Greenberg about that perspective, Lake said she based her opinion on a multitude of problems observed within the agency, and that she currently believes the agency might be salvageable based on work they’ve done since that March release:
“That’s my opinion based on massive national security violations, including spies and terrorist sympathizers and/or supporters infiltrating the agency, eye-popping self-dealing involving contracts, grants, and high-value settlement agreements, obscene over-spending including nearly a quarter-of-a-billion-dollar lease for a swanky — I added swanky — Pennsylvania Avenue high-rise that has no broadcasting facilities to meet the needs of the agency and included a $9 million commission to a private real estate agent with connections, hundreds of millions of dollars being spent on fake news companies, a product that often parrots the talking-points of America’s adversaries.”
During her deposition, Lake did clarify that the nation would continue to do international broadcasting even with USAGM’s elimination.
“This agency has hurt the Voice of America. The inept people who ran this agency have hurt Voice of America. The decisions made have hurt the Voice of America and the people there. The corrupt people who ran it are one of the reasons we’re in this situation right now,” said Lake. “Arguably, the last time VOA was effective is when it was under the Department of State, and so there’s that option.”
Greenberger also questioned Lake on arrangements to provide OAN and Newsmax networks airing through VOA, the former of which she characterized in questioning as “pro-Trump.”
The deposition follows a ruling made in August in which a federal judge denied Lake’s authority to fire Abramowitz.
Lake stated in her deposition that the judge acted improperly, in response to questioning over her X post claiming the judge didn’t respect the Constitution.
“I think it’s improper for district court judges to try to take control of the executive branch,” said Lake.
The eight-hour deposition occurred relatively smoothly with several breaks until the end, when the questioning attorney, Greenberger, began questioning Lake about her X posts.
President Donald Trump appointed Lake to USAGM as senior advisor in March; she does not run the agency but did have “roughly 95 percent” of deputy CEO authorities. Then, Trump issued an executive order in March to size down bureaucratic agencies. During her deposition, Lake denied having any role in drafting the executive order.
In response to the executive order, Lake placed Abramowitz and over 1,300 other VOA staffers on leave in March (approximately 90 percent of the workforce), and terminated all personal service contractors. Lake also directed VOA to cease all programming pending their determination of the statutory minimum operations and staffing.
Lake officially took over as deputy CEO, then acting CEO, in July.
Prior to her appointment to USAGM and before Trump’s inauguration, Lake was initially tapped to serve as the VOA director. However, as Lake stated in her deposition, it would have taken some time for Lake to obtain the International Broadcasting Advisory Board (IBAB) confirmations needed to secure the VOA director role.
Following Lake joining USAGM rather than VOA in January, Trump fired six of the seven members of IBAB which oversees VOA.
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