A viral Facebook post has accused the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) of paying the daughter of former President Barack Obama, Malia Obama, a total of $2.6 million for consulting work.
“Malia Obama received $2.6 million for ‘consulting’ from USAID,” the Facebook account, “America – Love it or Leave it,” shared with its more than 200,000 followers on the platform. “There’s no record of who or what she consulted.” The account added in its caption, “They were stealing right out in the open because they thought nobody would ever come looking. They were wrong.”
Malia Obama did not receive any funding from USAID. The Facebook account that shared the post is a satire account associated with America’s Last Line of Defense (ALLOD), a self-described network of “trollery and propaganda” that The Dispatch Fact Check has extensively covered in the past. The account states in its profile, “Nothing on this page is real.” That same message, along with a small “satire” label, also appears on the post itself, though in a small watermark on the bottom-right corner.
But some internet users have responded to that post as though it were legitimate and not satire. “Why DID Malia Obama get $2.2 MILLION from USAID???” one X user tweeted with a cropped image of ALLOD’s post. “I’m guessing because I have no facts,” another X user tweeted, “but likely Malia Obama received $2.2 mm from USAID because she’s Obama’s daughter and someone put in a grant request for her.”
There is no evidence linking any funding, grants, or awards from USAID to Malia Obama. If such payments were issued, they would be publicly recorded on the U.S. government’s public online database tracking federal spending, USAspending.gov. However, the database shows no USAID funds were allocated to Malia Obama.
The site does show some federal funds from the State Department were allocated for Malia Obama’s protection while her father was president, though she did not receive any of the funds directly. Between September and October 2016, while her father was still serving in the White House, “miscellaneous foreign awardees” received $30,412 for a “vehicle rental” and $10,611 for lodging at the JW Marriott hotel in Cusco, Peru, for Secret Service protection.
In January 2017, the New York Times reported that Malia Obama had traveled to Peru and Bolivia months earlier for an 83-day educational trip, and noted she was accompanied by a “small band of American bodyguards.”
If you have a claim you would like to see us fact check, please send us an email at factcheck@thedispatch.com. If you would like to suggest a correction to this piece or any other Dispatch article, please email corrections@thedispatch.com.
Please note that we at The Dispatch hold ourselves, our work, and our commenters to a higher standard than other places on the internet. We welcome comments that foster genuine debate or discussion—including comments critical of us or our work—but responses that include ad hominem attacks on fellow Dispatch members or are intended to stoke fear and anger may be moderated.
With your membership, you only have the ability to comment on The Morning Dispatch articles. Consider upgrading to join the conversation everywhere.