Judicial Watch Demands African Aid Agency Recover Unlawfully Removed Government Records

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that it sent a letter to Peter Marocco of the U.S. African Development Foundation (USADF) demanding compliance with the Federal Records Act following whistleblower allegations that senior agency officials used personal email accounts for official government business and that agency records may have been destroyed.

Judicial Watch’s letter details allegations that former U.S. African Development Foundation President Travis Adkins and former Chief Financial Officer Mathieu Zahui used non-government email accounts to conduct official foundation business, including communications related to government contracts, grants, and financial transactions. Judicial Watch has further learned that foundation records may have been destroyed.

The letter asserts that the Adkins and Zahui emails sent through personal accounts are still government records that the agency is required to maintain and preserve. Concerning any unlawfully removed records, the letter states: 

As you may be aware, the Federal Records Act imposes a direct responsibility on you as an agency head to take steps to recover any records unlawfully removed from USADF. Specifically, upon learning of “any actual, impending, or threatened unlawful removal, defacing, alteration, corruption, deletion, erasure, or other destruction of records in the custody of the agency,” you must notify the Archivist of the United States…. Upon learning that records have been unlawfully removed from USADF, you then are required to initiate action through the Attorney General for the recovery of records.

The allegations are particularly troubling in light of the recent announcement that Zahui has agreed to plead guilty to allegedly accepting gratuities from a foundation contractor and making false statements to federal law enforcement.

Should the agency fail to take these steps, the letter states Judicial Watch is ready to file a lawsuit in federal district court seeking compliance:

Please advise us no later than February 27, 2026, if you intend to take the action required under the law. If we do not hear from you by that date, we will assume that you do not intend to take any action. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

“Senior officials cannot evade federal transparency laws by conducting government business on personal email accounts,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “Federal law requires the preservation and recovery of all agency records. Any destruction or unlawful removal of records must be investigated and remedied immediately.”

Judicial Watch sued the agency in August 2025 for records regarding its expenditures and deposits related to credible allegations of waste, fraud, and abuse committed by senior officials, contractors, and grantees and retaliation against whistleblowers as well as its attempt to block Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) audits (Judicial Watch Inc. v. U.S. African Development Foundation (No. 1:25-cv-02623)).

In January 2026, Judicial Watch announced that, in a status conference hearing related to its Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit seeking documents regarding corruption at the U.S. African Development Foundation, the Justice Department publicly announced an ongoing criminal investigation related to the agency. This announcement comes after years of whistleblowing by Judicial Watch clients.

In May 2015, Judicial Watch filed a Federal Records Act lawsuit against Secretary of State John Kerry after the State Department failed to respond to a letter notifying Kerry of the unlawful removal of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s emails. The letter had requested that Kerry initiate enforcement action under the Federal Records Act, including working through the attorney general to recover the emails. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit later ruled that the State Department had not done enough to recover all emails that Clinton had failed to return.

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