Darren Beattie, a top State Department official who was fired from the first Trump administration after speaking at a conference attended by white supremacists, has been appointed to lead the U.S. Institute for Peace, an independent nonprofit funded by Congress.
Beattie, who will continue serving as U.S. Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy while leading the institute as acting president, has a history of inflammatory views.
The former academic has lauded eugenics-style population control and mass sterilization, praised the Chinese Communist party and dismissed its repressive campaign against the Uyghurs, claimed the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol was a conspiracy by federal agents, and wrote on social media last year that “competent white men must be in charge if you want things to work.”
“We look forward to seeing him advance President Trump’s America First agenda in this new role,” the State Department said in a statement on Friday.
The Trump administration has tried to exert control over the peace-keeping organization as part of the president’s radical restructuring of federal agencies and diplomacy.
In February, the president signed an executive order slashing most of the group’s staff, part of a wider effort to drastically change U.S. tools of foreign influence and diplomacy that also saw the administration gut the U.S. Agency for International Development.
The following month, Elon Musk’s so-called DOGE initiative seized the peace institute’s headquarters with the help of police and the FBI, ejecting staff from the building.
Staff members then sued over the takeover and mass firings, and a federal judge in May temporarily blocked the Trump administration from dismantling the institute.
The administration then appealed, and a federal appeals court in Washington last month returned control of the building to the administration as the legal process plays out.
In March, Democratic members of Congress wrote to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who sits on the board of the U.S. Institute for Peace, expressing alarm over Beattie’s appointment in February to his diplomatic post.
“Darren Beattie’s white nationalist loyalties and public glorification of our adversaries’ authoritarian systems make him unqualified to serve as the top diplomat representing American values and culture to foreign audiences,” the members wrote.
The Independent has requested comment from the State Department and U.S. Institute for Peace for comment.
After his dismissal from the Trump administration in 2018, Beattie returned to the government two years later, with the White House appointing him to the Commission for the Preservation of American Heritage Abroad, a body that preserves historical sites, including those related to the Holocaust.
The Biden administration forced Beattie’s resignation from the commission in 2022.
Beattie isn’t the only Trump staffer welcomed back into the government after controversy over their views.
Marko Elez, a DOGE staffer who previously praised eugenics, declared himself “racist before it was cool,” and said he wanted to “normalize Indian hate,” according to reporting from The Wall Street Journal, resigned from the administration in February, but soon found a new position in the Social Security Administration.
