Scott Pelley interviewed former USAID chief Andrew Natsios on the latest episode of 60 Minutes and asked him whether or not Elon Musk unilaterally shutting down his former agency is driving the country toward a constitutional crisis.
Natsios, who ran USAID during President George W Bush’s administration, told CBS that Musk and President Donald Trump lacked the authority to simply shutter the agency.
“He cannot rescind federal law by executive order. And A.I.D is a statutory agency. The Foreign Assistance Act, I believe, is three or four hundred pages long. You can’t rescind that without an act of the Congress. And the Congress has not acted,” Natsios said, adding:
Acting on his own, the president started by destroying USAID’s image. In online posts, the administration smeared USAID as — quote — “a criminal organization” and called employees “worms.”
Pelley added, “About USAID, President Trump has said, ‘Billions of dollars have been stolen.’ ‘The whole thing is a fraud.’”
“It’s utter nonsense. The most accountable aid agency in the world is USAID. I have written actually widely on this subject. Forty percent of the staff are accountants and lawyers and people trying to make sure no money is stolen,” Natsios replied, adding:
We’ve created systems to monitor that. What they did was, they went back 20 years to try to find things, if you have to go back 20 years to find abuse, that means there isn’
t that much abuse.USAID’s spending in 2023 was 38 billion, that’s less than 1% of the federal budget. Natsios told us there is waste and occasional fraud like any big agency, think of the Pentagon, but the money he says is watched by officials including those in the OMB—the Office of Management and Budget.
Later in the interview, Natsios adds, “I am not a moderate Republican. I am a conservative Republican. And– and a strict constructionist. The reason they’re not saying anything, I think they’re afraid. Musk has said that he would spend $100 million in primaries on anybody who opposed the president on anything. So, I think there’s a lot of fear in the city right now.”
“How do you view this moment in history?” Pelley asked.
“I don’t wanna be– too pessimistic. But it does appear we may be headed towards some sort of a constitutional crisis. I don’t– I– I hope that doesn’t happen. I pray it doesn’t happen. But it’s certainly concerning to me what’s going on in this city right now,” Natsios replied.
“Is the constitutional order breaking down?” Pelley pressed.
“We’ll see. If they– if they refuse to enforce a court order by the Supreme Court. If it gets to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court rules against the administration on something and
Pelley shot back, “What happens then?”
“I don’t know,” Natsios, replied as they both agreed, “No one knows.”
Musk replied to a post from 60 Minutes on X Sunday saying, “60 Minutes are the biggest liars in the world! They engaged in deliberate deception to interfere with the last election. They deserve a long prison sentence.”
Watch the clip above.