While on the campaign trail last year, Donald Trump vowed to initiate massive federal spending cuts, and few agencies thus far have experienced the effects of that promise quite as sharply as the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

In the wake of sweeping job cuts and the effective dismantling of the USAID, reports emerged of an internal directive to employees to commence the shredding and burning of classified documents housed at the agency, though the Justice Department has since taken steps to discredit the allegation, as the New York Post reports.

Email spurs alarming report

It was earlier this week that outlets such as NBC News reported on an email sent to certain USAID employees by Erica Carr, acting executive director of the agency, and according to the communication, staffers were directed to shred and burn documents, with Carr expressing gratitude for those providing “assistance in clearing our classified safes and personnel documents.”

The email told employees, “Shred as many documents first, and reserve the burn bags for when the shredder becomes unavailable or needs a break,” and staffers were further instructed to write “secret” on the burn bags with a marker.

The scenario comes amid ongoing legal challenges to recent steps taken by the Trump administration to effectively shut down the bulk of USAID's operations, and some of the groups that have mounted legal challenges to the actions filed an emergency request for judicial intervention aimed at stopping the destruction of documents.

The motion filed on Tuesday asserted, “Defendants are, as this motion is being filed, destroying documents with potential pertinence to this litigation.”

The filing continued, “Although Plaintiffs do not know at this moment which records are being destroyed, the destruction of records may severely undermine the agency's ability to function. For example, destruction of records that contain information about the agency's operations may make it extraordinarily difficult -- if not impossible -- to recreate and rebuild agency programming” if the dismantling of USAID is successfully thwarted.

DOJ denies allegations of impropriety

As the Post noted, the Trump Justice Department responded to allegations of wrongful destruction of documents by declaring that the “out-of-context email” cited above fostered a misunderstanding of what was actually taking place.

A DOJ lawyer wrote in a subsequent court filing, “Trained USAID staff sorted and removed classified document in order to clear the space formerly occupied by USAID for its new tenant. The removed classified documents had nothing to do with this litigation.”

The attorney went on, “They were copies of documents from other agencies or derivatively classified documents, where the originally classified document is retained by another government agency and for which there is no need for USAID to retain a copy.”

Assurances were also given that all documents related to current classified programs at USAID were retained along with all personnel records and materials covered by retention policies under the Federal Records Act.

In addition, the lawyer vowed that prior to any further destruction of any documents, the plaintiffs at the case at issue would be notified in advance.

Battle over USAID continues

Almost as soon as he entered office for a second term, Trump signed an executive order halting large swaths of foreign aid, with USAID among his largest targets for cuts.

On Monday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio confirmed that the federal government would indeed be eliminating 83% of all programming at USAID, declaring, “The 5200 contracts that are now canceled spent tens of billions of dollars in ways that did not serve, (and in some cases even harmed), the core national interests of the United States,” and given the massive nature of the reductions, litigation over the president's actions is sure to continue in the weeks and months to come.