Trump fires USAID’s top watchdog after reports of billions wasted on educating al Qaeda terrorist and drag shows

President Trump has fired the top watchdog for the US Agency for International Development (USAID) — just as details resurfaced that the controversial agency had bankrolled the college education of an al Qaeda terrorist with ties to 9/11 hijackers.

Paul Martin, who had served as the inspector general since 2023, was informed by a White House official via email Tuesday that his termination was “effective immediately.”

Martin wasn’t given a reason for his firing, a copy of the email shows. The White House wouldn’t comment on his termination.

His dismissal came just one day after his office had published a report criticizing Trump’s call to freeze USAID funds after finding that the agency had wasted billions on lefty schemes in recent years.

In the report, the watchdog’s office had said the Trump administration’s push to dismantle USAID had crippled the agency’s ability to conduct oversight of unspent aid worth roughly $8.2 billion.

Staff cuts and stop-work orders had made it difficult to ensure taxpayer-funded aid would end up in the hands of those intended, the report claimed.

Meanwhile, news of Martin’s departure came as unearthed records showed USAID had shelled out thousands to send American-born jihadist Anwar al-Awlaki to Colorado State University back in 1990 — an education that he used to help recruit and groom terrorists for future attacks on US soil.

The documents, obtained by Fox News, showed al-Awlaki had lied on his application by claiming that he was born in Yemen — rather than New Mexico — in an apparent bid for federal tuition funding worth more than $27,000 at the time. 

Al-Awlaki went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering in 1994 with the funds before teaching Islam at mosques across the country, where US officials believed he radicalized and recruited terrorists, the documents show.

President Barack Obama later ordered him killed in a US airstrike in Yemen in 2011.

The details emerged as Trump on Tuesday slammed USAID as an “incompetent and corrupt” agency.

Trump, who ordered the USAID funding freeze on most US foreign aid back on Jan. 20, has tasked billionaire Elon Musk with scaling down the agency

The Trump admin last week acted to put most of USAID’s workforce on administrative leave before the move was blocked by a judge on Friday.

With Post wires