Image Credit: BrianPIrwin / Getty Images 
The moment members of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) attempted to enter the US Institute of Peace (USIP) in March of 2025, encountering heavy resistance from staff and security, is captured in newly released bodycam footage.
Tense footage, taken from policy bodycams, shows Metropolitan Police Department officers coordinating with DOGE to evict USIP staff and secure the building so the Institute’s finances could be audited.
USIP staff and lawyers attempt to resist the eviction, describing it as “police state actions.”
FBI agents and State Department employees were also present.
TPUSA’s Andrew Kolvet provided commentary on the footage on Twitter.
“This newly released body cam footage from the March 2025 DOGE raid on the US Institute of Peace shows the insane resistance Trump faced from day one,” Kolvet wrote.
“As Edward Coristine (aka Big Balls) told Jesse Watters last year, this was the ‘least peaceful’ of all the agencies to deal with, and that it used taxpayer funds for private jets, an armory filled with weapons, and contracts with the former members of the Taliban (!!)
“These are grown adults in full meltdown mode because they realized the gravy train was coming to an end. They referred to lawful orders as “jackbooted police state actions” while refusing to vacate the premises after President Trump issued an order firing them and sending in his DOGE team to clean house.
“What you see in this video isn’t democracy, it’s an insight into how wild and entitled the DC swamp had grown.
“Even the officers who were on the scene to ensure order became impatient after realizing these defiant bureaucrats weren’t even USIP employees when one said, ‘we’re their lawyers’ who were trying to regain access to ‘classified information’ pertaining to “other cases” outside of USIP’s purview.
“George Foote, one of the lawyers there, even pushed to have Trump officials arrested as ‘unauthorized intruders.’
“Elon Musk later revealed on X that USIP’s chief accountant attempted to wipe over a terabyte of financial data in a desperate cover-up – but DOGE recovered it, and it’s now with the DOJ for review.
“Unelected ideologues fleecing taxpayer dollars shouldn’t block the people’s choice. This is what draining the swamp looks like, and it’s horrifying just how out of control it had all become.”
USIP, an independent non-profit created through Congress, was an early target of DOGE because of reports of massive misuse of funding, including, as Kolvet points out, allegations that it maintained a large stockpile of weapons and also gave US-taxpayer money to former members of the Taliban.
