Adam Wolfson and Michael McDonald testify regarding the Trump administration's cancellation of over 1,400 NEH grants between April 1st and 3rd, 2025. While Chair Lowe's DEI initiatives like "American Tapestry" guided prior awards, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) broadly flagged projects involving figures like George Washington or Einstein as wasteful. Witnesses criticize DOGE's lack of humanities expertise and the rushed timeline that bypassed standard appeal processes, ultimately terminating non-controversial research despite internal staff objections to the ideological overreach. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Deposition Begins00:10:23
We are on the record.
The time is 9.45 a.m.
The date is January 29th, 2026.
This is the beginning of the deposition of Mr. Adam Wolfson.
The case caption is the American Council of Learned Societies et al. versus Michael McDonald in his official capacity as acting chairman of the National Endowment of Humanities et al.
Will Council introduce yourselves and state who you represent.
Jamie Crooks from Fairmark Partners LLP on behalf of the authors guild plaintiffs.
Thank you.
Amanda Vaughn Fairmark Partners also on behalf of the authors guild plaintiffs.
Sean Robinson from Jacobson Lawyers Group on behalf of the American Council Societies Historical Association and the bottom line boss that you said the court reporter will now swear in this witness I am your court reporter for today and I just have a quick statement to make for the record.
I would like everyone to please speak loudly, slowly and clearly so I can make an accurate transcript today.
Please do not talk over one another because I can only report one person at a time.
I will be administering an affirmation for any testimony given.
I would like to stipulate for the record that the affirmation and the testimony will be administered and reported by a professional digital reporter.
the testimony will be transcribed and certified attorney i'm sorry Attorney Crooks, do you agree to move forward?
Yes.
Attorney Singh, do you agree to move forward?
Yes.
Attorney Robinson, do you agree to move forward?
Yes.
Okay.
With that being said, thank you for choosing Nightley's deposition trial.
Mr. Wilson, would you please raise your right hand?
Yes.
Do you affirm under penalty of perjury that the testimony you're about to give will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?
Yes.
Okay.
Good morning, Mr. Wilson.
We met off the record.
I'm sorry, you may now proceed.
Good morning, Mr. Wilson.
We met off the record a few minutes ago, but just to say for the record, my name is Jamie Crooks.
I represent a number of individual grantees and the authors guild in this litigation.
Would you please start by stating your full legal name for the record?
It's Adam Wolfson.
Okay.
And do you understand that you've taken an oath to tell the truth under penalty of perjury?
I did, yes.
And you understand that the oath you gave is just as binding as it would be if it was given in front of a judge and jury?
Yes.
And so do you understand that you have an obligation to tell the truth today?
Yes, I do.
And do you understand that if you give an answer that of I don't know or I don't remember when you do know or you do remember that that's considered perjury?
Yes, I understand.
There's a stenographer transcribing our conversation.
So when I ask you questions today, it will be important that you let me finish my question and I'll let you finish your answer before the others speak so that we can have a clean record.
Is that fair?
Similarly, if you could try to remember, and I have to remind myself this as well, to give a verbal yes or no instead of shaking your head or nodding your head, that would be helpful.
Yes, yeah, right.
Okay.
I'm going to assume that you understand the questions I ask unless you ask for clarification.
Is that fair?
Yes.
Okay.
But just know that you can ask for clarification at any time.
I don't want you to guess or speculate in response to the questions I asked today.
Is that fair?
Yes, that's fair.
That said, while I'm not asking you to guess or speculate, I am entitled to your best recollection.
Do you understand?
Understood, yes.
We'll try to take a break roughly every hour to stretch our legs, but if you need one before then or at any time, just feel free to let me know.
The only thing I would say is if I've asked a question that you haven't yet answered, that you answer that question before we take a break.
Is that fair?
Yes.
Okay.
Have you ever been deposed before?
No, this is the first time.
Okay.
Have you ever given testimony under oath in any other setting, like at a trial or a hearing?
No.
Okay.
Congratulations.
Yes, thank you.
Setting aside your role as a government employee, have you personally ever been involved in a lawsuit?
No.
Okay.
Have you ever been involved in a lawsuit before this one and your status as a government employee?
No.
Okay.
Is there anything that would prevent you today from thinking clearly and testifying truthfully?
No.
Are you taking any medication, substance, or alcohol today that could affect your ability to give truthful testimony?
No.
Okay.
I always ask that, but I don't know what I would do if the answer was yes.
So thank you.
What did you do to prepare for today's deposition?
The preparation amounted to meeting with the attorneys yesterday in person and the day before.
Okay.
Virtually.
Okay.
And you met with the three attorneys present, is that right?
Well, two, and then I think one of the others part of the time, maybe, yes.
Okay.
And I think you said you had two meetings with counsel.
Is that right?
Yes.
Okay.
Any other meetings with counsel besides those two in preparation for today?
No.
I don't believe so.
And about how long did those meetings last?
I think yesterday's was maybe, I think they were each maybe an hour and a half to two hours each.
Okay.
And did you review documents in those meetings with counsel to prepare for today's deposition?
They shared with me some documents they thought that you all might be sharing with me.
Okay.
Do you recall about how many documents you reviewed in those two meetings?
Total, maybe half a dozen or so.
Okay.
Did you speak with anyone besides your counsel about your deposition today?
No.
Okay.
You didn't tell your wife you were being deposed today?
Yes, my wife.
Yes, of course.
I didn't realize.
Yes.
Yes.
She knows.
Yes.
And my kids know.
Okay.
Yeah.
Okay.
Have you spoken with anybody within the National Endowment for the Humanities about this litigation before today?
Really, it would just be, again, sort of informally, Losette, Kim, and Michael McDonald.
Okay.
Did you send any emails to anyone about today's deposition?
No.
Did you bring any documents with you today?
No, I've read documents.
Okay.
What is your understanding of what this lawsuit is about?
My understanding is that the right that the plaintiffs are objecting to the cancellation of the grants.
Okay.
And do you have a sense of what grounds they're objecting on?
No, I can't say I have a clear understanding of the legal constitutional grounds.
Okay.
And when did you first learn of this lawsuit?
I think our Office of General Counsel informed me in real time when these things were happening.
Okay.
And were you surprised when you heard about this lawsuit?
I don't know if surprise is the right word.
I just thought it was unfortunate.
And you understand that this law firm is related to a number of grant terminations that took place in early April of this year, right?
And about how many grants were terminated in the first week of April this year?
I don't know the number.
More than a thousand?
I think it was in that neighborhood, but I don't know the number.
Okay.
Are you familiar with the organization I represent, the Authors Guild?
Not especially.
Okay, you've heard of them.
I've heard of it, but that's it.
Okay.
What's your understanding of what that organization does?
I really don't have any understanding of it, so yeah.
Okay.
And how about, I'm sorry?
I'm sorry, yes.
Okay.
How about the American Council for Learned Societies?
I'm more familiar with ACLS as part of my job.
I've attended their conferences over the years.
Okay.
And can you give me a description of what ACLS does?
It's my understanding.
It represents all the many disciplines within the humanities, from philosophy to history to literature and so on and so forth.
I'm sorry to interrupt, Jamie.
I'm told from the people on Zoom that they can't hear the audio.
Can they hear it out?
Should be able to.
Are the folks on the Zoom able to hear me?
Yeah.
And how about Mr. Wolfsman?
Can you state your name and spell it for the record?
Yes, Adam Wolfson, W-O-L-F-S-O-N.
And the folks in Zoom here.
Sorry about that, Mr. Wolfson.
I think we were talking about ACLS.
And are they a partner of NEHs?
No, I wouldn't describe it as a partner.
Okay.
Do they have a relationship with NEH?
I guess I'm not quite sure what you mean by a relationship.
They typically invite the chair of the agency to their annual conference each year.
Okay.
And when you mentioned before that you've been to their conference, if it was in that capacity.
Exactly.
Okay.
I want to go in a little bit into your educational and professional background, if you don't mind.
So you went to undergraduate at Harvard College, is that right?
I did.
Okay.
Academic Background00:02:12
And what was your concentration?
I majored in history, graduated in 1984.
Okay.
Did you know while you were an undergraduate that you wanted to go into government service one day?
I don't think I don't think it occurred to me at that point in my life.
Okay.
Did you know while you were an undergraduate that you wanted to be an academic?
I think that it was a point in my life where I was trying to decide law school or maybe pursue a PhD in history or government.
And I ended up going with the latter.
Okay.
And you got a PhD in political science from the University of Chicago.
Is that right?
Correct.
What was the focus of your doctoral studies?
We had to do three areas.
My main area was political theory.
Okay.
And what were your other two areas?
American government and international relations were the two subfields.
And I eventually wrote a book on John Locke.
Okay.
When did you write a book on John Locke?
That was, I think it came out in 2010.
Okay.
Based on that date, I'm guessing this was not directly related to your graduate studies, but it came later, is that right?
Correct.
And your book about John Locke, what specifically was it about with respect to Locke?
It was about a debate he had way back in 1689 with a fellow named Jonas Prost over toleration.
Locke is famous for his letter concerning toleration.
At the time, he was attacked by a fellow named Jonas Prost who tried to push Locke on his arguments.
Okay.
And toleration at that time meant largely religious toleration, is that right?
Yes, although the debate, I think, was much broader.
Okay.
And Locke was British, right?
Religious Toleration Debate00:15:43
Yes.
English, not Scottish?
Yes.
Okay.
Would you, would you, when you chose that topic to write your book about, how did you choose it?
Well, I had written my dissertation on John Locke at University of Chicago, and it grew out of that dissertation.
Okay.
What was your first job after you got your PhD?
My wife and I were resident heads in the dorms at University of Chicago, and I was working as a adjunct lecturer at several different colleges in the area.
And then my first job, I guess, so those were my first jobs.
And then after about a year, I was offered a job to work as an editor at the Public Interest Magazine.
Is that the name of the magazine, the Public Interest Magazine?
Correct.
Is that based in Chicago?
It was based in Washington, D.C., which is what brought my wife and I out to D.C.
Okay, and what year was that?
That was 1994.
Okay.
And am I right that you joined NEH sometime in the early 2000s?
Yes, 2006.
Okay.
And before then, between 1994 and 2006, you were an academic at various schools in the DC area?
I've pretty much taught continuously on and off.
Again, sort of on and off.
Here in Washington, it was for the school Claremont in California had a Washington DC program.
And I taught in that program for many years.
It was just a course on how to write a research paper.
And then more recently, I've been doing the same for Johns Hopkins in their master's program.
The Claremont program was for undergraduates.
The Johns Hopkins one is for graduate students getting a master's.
Okay.
The Claremont program you mentioned is at the Claremont Institute?
No, it is not.
It is Claremont College.
Claremont McKenna?
Yes, Claremont McKenna.
It has no relation to the Institute.
Okay.
And are you still teaching to this day?
Yes, at Johns Hopkins, not at this moment.
Did you teach last semester?
Yes, I taught in the fall semester.
And what did you teach?
It's a course on administration and the administrative state.
Okay.
No, John Locke?
No, John Locke.
There's not much interest.
Okay.
And you said you joined NEH in 2006?
Is that right?
Yes.
And what was your first job title of NEH?
I started as a program officer in the research division.
Okay.
And what does a program officer do?
The program, a program officer, I think probably the largest part of, at least in the research division, was running peer review panels and doing write-ups, recommendations, and also keeping track of grants once they were made.
And the peer review process and the write-ups and recommendations, those are with respect to grant applications.
Correct.
People apply as a program officer.
I would select panelists, typically five on a panel.
We would do, you know, in the research division, it was a bit of a factory when it came to panels.
So I was probably doing over a dozen panels a year.
Of peer review.
Peer review, yes.
You select, yes.
Okay.
What is the research division's purview?
It's to support research in the humanities, both individual scholars and teams of scholars.
The main kind of the flagship program is its fellowship program, which supports scholars who want to write a scholarly monograph or book.
Okay.
And when you joined in 2006, how many people worked full-time in the research division?
It was pretty large.
I recall at the time it was maybe 19 people, 20, 18.
Okay.
When you were, and we'll talk more about this in detail in a few minutes, but when you were acting chairman of NEH, how many people worked in the research division?
When I was acting chairman, in 2021, you mean?
Yeah.
I think it was still about the same.
19 or 20?
Yeah, roughly speaking.
How many people work there today?
Well, today, as you know, we had a reduction in force, and so they're just four or five people in each of the divisions.
And is the research division still able to carry out the duties that it carried out when you first joined with only four or five people?
Yes, we had to do a lot of rethinking about how we do things, but I think we successfully have done that.
Okay.
And what did that rethinking involve?
Well, we had seven divisions and offices.
And after the reduction force, working together, we realized we couldn't operate with seven divisions.
And, you know, in total, we had, say, 45 programs.
And so we reorganized.
So we now have four divisions.
And we rethought the way we do our programs.
And I should say that this was something that had been talked about quite a bit, is that we had a lot of very specific kinds of programs, which is why we had so many.
And so now we have broader programs.
So people, right, whatever your project might be, you can apply for that program rather than having more specific prescriptive program.
By program, you mean like research division versus a different division?
Is that what you mean?
Oh, no, I'm sorry.
I mean programs within a division.
Okay.
Can you give me an example of before the reduction in force a program that's within the research division?
Let's see.
Well, yeah, sure.
The main programs right now in the research division are fellowships, public scholars, collaborative research, and scholarly additions.
Those are the main programs.
Fellowship, public scholars, collaborative research, and scholarly editions and translations.
Okay, that's one program.
And do those programs still fall under the research division after the reduction in force?
Yes, they do.
Okay, so what has changed about how those programs are administered since the reduction of force?
We have to be more efficient.
I think one of the biggest changes is that we used to have what you would call in-person virtual panels.
Everything okay?
Yeah, right, where we used to have in-person panels where everyone would actually come to the agency.
We had been backing away from that under the encouragement of OMB before COVID, COVID, everything went virtual, but we were, but the panels still met virtually as part of a team's meeting.
For the most part, we don't do that anymore.
We do what we call mailout panels in the sense that the four or five peer reviewers won't actually meet with a panel chair anymore because we just don't have the bandwidth and the staff to do that.
Okay.
That's as a result of the riff.
Of the reduction in force?
Yes.
Okay.
When did the reduction in force get implemented?
That was all over the summer.
Over the summer.
Okay.
And why did NEH implement the reduction in force?
That was a, you know, the, I mean, I think, as you know, the administration was encouraging and directing all agencies to reduce their workforce, and we were told to do so.
Okay, so if the administration hadn't told you to do the reduction in force, would NEH have done the same reduction?
Objection.
You can answer.
It's kind of a seems like a speculative question.
I just don't know.
I wouldn't have a basis for saying yes or no.
You don't know whether if there had not been a direction from the administration to reduce force, whether there'd still be 19 versus four people in the research division?
Objection.
I think what I'm trying to say is that typically when there's a change in administration, new leadership comes in and they take some time looking at the agency and deciding what kinds of changes they want to make.
And that might involve creating, hiring new people or conceivably a new person could decide they want to do a reduction in force.
But I just have no way of knowing since that didn't happen, right?
We didn't have you right that we didn't have it share appointed.
Okay, so you've been at the National Down for Humanities under four different presidents, is that right?
Correct.
And I think six presidential terms?
I'm sorry.
Six presidential terms, like four-year terms.
Oh, I see, yes, right.
Okay.
And in any of the other ones besides the current administration, was there anything approaching a reduction in force of the similar size?
No.
Okay.
And so you're still not sure whether, if, for instance, a different party had won the election in 2024, there would still only be four people working in the research division today?
When you say a different party, you mean the Democratic Party.
No, I think it's safe to say the Democrats would not have done a reduction in force.
Okay.
Was there a reduction in force done at the beginning of the first Trump administration?
Not that I remember.
Okay.
And you said at the beginning that when a new administration comes in, they usually take some time to do a review of the agency and make recommendations.
Is that fair?
I wouldn't say make recommendations.
They come in with a vision or some ideas as someone who works in the chair's office.
It's part of my job to help them achieve that vision, and that's what happens.
Okay.
And how long does that new administration review process generally take?
Again, I don't think there's a it's not a formal review process.
New chairs come in with their political teams.
They operate in very different ways in my experience in my 20 years at the agency.
Some move very quickly and create new programs and initiatives.
Some take more time.
There's not like a formal process.
Okay.
Was there anything different in your experience about this new administration that took office in 2025 versus your past experience with transitions?
I think the main difference is that there was never a political landing team or political appointees during the transition period.
What's the political landing team?
Well, right, so what usually happens is after the election or before the or even before the election, right, you have teams assigned to agencies.
I think this is a this is kind of a little bit out of my kid can because I don't really, this isn't something that I manage or do.
But they once one party wins the election in fairly quickly you have various political appointees who arrive at the agency and start letting us know what they want to do.
And that you said that didn't happen after the 2024 election?
That's correct.
So how did that take what happened instead?
Well, instead, Chair Lowe and her political team remained in place through mid-March, approximately, as I recall.
Okay.
And sorry, why did they remain they remained in place because there wasn't someone brought in to take their place?
Is that right?
This is so far above my pay grade.
Yes, they weren't asked to leave and they stayed through mid-March until they were apparently asked to leave.
Okay.
And what happened in mid-March?
Could you be more, what do you mean, what happened?
You said they were asked to leave.
It sounds like the administration started making changes in mid-March.
I guess so, yes.
Again, this is above my pay grade.
My understanding is that the Trump administration informed Chair Lowe that her services were no longer needed.
And then she and her political team who had been there for those, you know, during that period left.
And shortly thereafter, Michael McDonald was made acting chair.
And had he been at the agency before that time?
Yes, he's been at the agency, I'm not sure exactly how long, maybe 24, 25 years.
Okay.
And it's not unusual to have a permanent staff member become acting chair during a transition, is that right?
That's right.
Okay.
When Ms. Lowe was asked to leave in mid-March, did the agency receive any other communications from outside the agency, but within the executive branch?
Not that I know of.
You don't know if OMB reached out?
Acting Chair Transition00:05:04
I don't know.
You don't know if GSA reached out?
I don't.
I'm not the liaison to those, to OMB and OPM and the other divisions.
But you exchanged emails with GSA in mid-March, didn't you?
Not that I'm aware of, but unless I forgot.
Do you know Justin Fox?
Right.
Justin was from Doge.
Okay, sorry.
I misunderstood.
What is Doge?
I guess Doge worked as a part of GSA, I guess.
Okay.
We'll get into this more later, but just so I understand the timeline, when did you first meet Justin Fox?
That was sometime in mid-March, shortly after Mike McDonald became acting chair and they came to the agency and introduced themselves.
Okay.
And they introduced themselves as coming from Doge.
Is that right?
As best as I can recall, your understanding was that they worked for Doge.
That was my understanding, yes.
And they were in the new, at least, at least, right, one of them, Nate, had been in the newspapers.
Oh, really?
Yeah.
What did the newspapers say?
I don't remember.
It was in the New York Times.
Okay.
So you didn't understand Justin Fox to be an employee of NEH?
No.
Okay.
He was an employee of Doge.
Yeah, I don't know exactly what his technical employment status was.
But it wasn't at NEH.
No.
Okay.
Zooming out for a little while.
Well, I'll do this quickly because I just want to get the timeline.
So you entered the agency in 2006 as a program officer in the research division.
Yes.
Okay.
How long did you have that role?
I think I had that role for about a year, and then I became director of the research division.
And then since 2008, I've served in my current capacity, except for that year when the Biden administration asked me to serve as acting chair.
I've been the assistant chair for programs.
Okay.
And where does the research division sit within the strike that?
When did you become chair of programs?
Assistant chair for assistant chair for programs in 2008.
Okay.
And does that, would you call it, would you call programs like a branch or a division?
I think the title basically refers to the at that time we had seven program divisions and the directors of each one of those divisions that those were the folks that I worked most closely with and reported to me.
And one of those divisions was research?
Yes.
Okay.
Okay.
That's when you became assistant chair for programs.
How many people worked under you in the programs departments, the various divisions?
Yeah, I don't know the total count.
I'd have to take some time to think it through.
There were, right, there were seven divisions.
They ranged in size from the largest being, again, 18 to 20, and the smaller ones being just, you know, four or five or six employees.
Okay.
So would it be fair to say somewhere between 100 and 200 people with all of the different divisions?
Oh, no, nothing close to 200, yeah.
Okay.
Around 100.
Maybe closer to that, yeah.
Okay.
And you still are in the same role, is that right?
I am, yes.
And how many people work under you now?
Well, now the program staff is down to, I think, about 20.
Okay.
And that's because of the reduction of force?
Yes.
And how has that changed your ability to do your job as assistant chair for programs, the reduction of force?
How has it changed your ability to change?
Changed my ability.
I think we've, you know, we've had to adapt and learn to work in different ways.
But I think we've remained effective in doing what we're supposed to do.
Which is, how would you describe what you're supposed to do?
Supporting the humanities, making grants, so on and so forth.
Okay.
And you were acting chairman in 2021, is that right?
Yes.
And when, January 2021, you were first made acting chair?
Yes.
And I ended up serving for, I think, about 13 or 14 months, as I recall.
Grant Awarding Process00:15:34
Okay.
And then you were replaced by Chair Lowe?
Yes.
Okay.
Going back to 2006, why did you join the NEH?
The magazine that I, the journal that I had been working at, the public interest, had closed its doors.
And so I was working at different places at that time, wearing different, doing several things.
And my parents had both worked for the federal government.
And so I thought that might be something I would like to do.
And so this opportunity came up and I applied.
Okay.
And before you worked for the agency, had you ever received an NEH grant?
No.
Had you ever applied for one?
No.
Did you know anybody who had applied for or received one?
No, I can't think of anyone.
So how would you describe NEH's mission as an agency?
What would you describe its mission to be?
I think it's to serve and support the humanities to advance humanities learning, both in terms of research, which was my division, but also the public humanities, education, and so on.
And is it fair to say that the main way in which it provides that support is through grants?
Yes.
Okay.
Are there any other ways in which it provides that support to the humanities?
I think that's the main way.
Okay.
It's effectively a grant-giving agency, is that right?
Yes, that's how we always describe ourselves.
Okay.
When you were the Strike that.
When you were the acting chairman, what was your role?
It was that I oversaw all the operations of the agency.
And in your role as acting chair, how involved were you in the decisions to award particular applicants grants?
Very.
In individual decisions?
Well, the way it works is the right, so as we have the peer review panels, the staff makes recommendations.
You then, the National Council meets three times a year to give advice to the whoever's chair of the agency.
And then it's the chair who, by law, is the only one who can make those decisions.
And so you, by the time it would reach you as acting chair, it had gone through peer review and then also a separate internal staff review.
Is that right?
Yes.
And when it came to you, it came with a recommendation, either grant or denies?
Yes.
How often or how regularly did you disagree with your staff's recommendations, whether it's a grant or not?
Grants in particular?
I don't recall offhand.
Did you agree with your staff's recommendations most of the time?
Yes.
More than 90% of the time?
Yes.
Okay.
And was that because you trusted the peer review process?
Yes.
You're not as qualified to comment on the viability of studies into micronesia as someone who studies that issue, I assume.
Fairly stated.
Okay.
Is that common for folks in that position and the leadership roles at NEH to defer to subject matter experts in particular academic fields when making decisions about grants?
Objection.
In my experience, it really depends upon who is the head of the agency.
Some chairs have some chairs do tend to follow the recommendations of the staff.
Other chairs take a more questioning mode.
Okay, and who's an example of a chair that took a more questioning mode?
Certainly I'd say that would be Bruce Cole when I first arrived here.
Okay.
And also John Peaty.
Okay.
And so they would more often than other chairs disagree with the recommendations provided by career staff?
I think so.
I don't know what the numbers would bear out, but that's my impression of it.
And do you think that those two examples you listed more often than not nonetheless agreed with the recommendations of career staff?
Yes, I still think in most cases they did.
And do you think that was because they also deferred to the expertise of the peer review panels?
Objection.
Yeah, I can't speak for they reach different people with different leadership styles, and I can't speak for why they took the approach they did or what they were thinking.
Okay, fair enough.
Yeah.
When you, let's go back to when you were acting chair, you mentioned that you had the final say on whether a grant application was awarded, right?
It was, I'm sorry.
Whether a grant was awarded.
Awarded.
Is that right?
Correct.
Okay.
How often, when in that 13 to 14 month period when you were acting chair, how often did you or the agency terminate grants that had been awarded?
I don't think we don't think we ever did in that period.
Not once.
Correct.
Okay.
And why is that?
Why?
It never even came up.
Okay.
Did the agency strike that?
Before this year, did the agency have a process for assessing whether awarded grants should be terminated?
There is a process.
It's overseen by the Office of Grant Management, OGM.
That's a process that I've not my lane, so to speak.
It's grant management.
Okay.
But yes, there is a process overseen by that office.
And you don't remember a single instance in the 13 or 14 months when you were acting chair that a grant was terminated?
Not in that period.
Okay.
But you are aware of before this year other instances of grants being terminated?
I can think of only a couple.
So it's a rare occurrence.
Yes.
Okay.
And this is just, so I'm clear, this is of thousands of grants that were given over your time at the agency, you were only aware of a handful at most.
Correct.
And do you remember what, offhand, what the reasons were for those terminations?
I should say, before I mention the two that I have in mind that I can think of, I should say that there could have been a current, as I said, this isn't my lane or something I oversaw.
So it could be there were instances that there were other instances that I'm not aware of because, again, I'm not, I don't oversee termination of grants.
But the two that I am aware of, one was because one of the state councils had ceased to in any meaningful way do humanities programming.
And the other case that I can think of, it was a project.
It was a big kind of multimedia public project on romance novels.
And it kind of went off the track, went off the track, so to speak, that caused considerable concern.
What do you mean went off the track?
Well, in this particular case, as I recall, I think what the staff brought it to the chair's office attention that the project had links to various X-rated sites and things like that.
Oh, I see.
Okay.
Yeah.
And so the two instances that you know of sitting here today in your approximately 20 years at the agency of grants being terminated while they're in process both involved the grantee failing somehow to fulfill the terms of the grant.
Is that fair?
The two that I'm aware of, yes.
Okay.
And you're not aware of any other terminations or any terminations at all for reasons other than a grantee's failure to comply with the grant terms?
Those are the two I'm aware of, yeah.
Okay.
And you're not aware of any grant being canceled because the new administration disagreed with the topic being studied or written about?
I can only remember one of the old timers here telling me, and he's long since retired, that The chair, Liz Cheney, disassociated the agency from particular grants when she was head of the agency.
But that was far before my time, and I don't have any knowledge of it.
You said Liz Cheney, is it Lynn Cheney?
Lynn Cheney, my mistake.
No, fair.
I make the mistake myself.
Can you say more about that instance?
I understand that you heard it secondhand, but when you said disassociated itself, what does that mean?
I'm not, again, I'm not sure it happened before I was here.
I don't know if it meant your termination or whether it meant just taking our name off the grant.
Do you remember what the subject matter of that grant was?
I don't.
I wasn't here.
But it was one grant, the story your friend told you.
That's correct.
Okay.
And other than that one example that happened before you were here, you're not aware of any grants being canceled because a new administration came in and disagreed with the topic that was being studied or written about.
Yes.
Okay.
Why do you think that's the case?
Why has no administration before this one canceled grants?
Objection.
Yeah, it's just, I don't know.
I don't know.
It's so far above my pay grade, what an administration wants and why they do something or don't do something.
Okay.
Well, when you were acting chair, it wasn't above your pay grade, right?
No.
That was your pay grade.
Yes.
Okay.
Would you have felt comfortable when you were acting chair terminating a grant because a new administration said it disagreed with the topic being written about our study?
Objection.
I feel like that's such a speculative question about how I might feel under certain circumstances.
I would just have a hard time answering that.
I appreciate that, but I didn't ask about your feelings.
I asked whether you would disagree with a direction from an executive branch official telling you to cancel grants because of what they're about.
Objection.
Right, there would be so many variables and circumstances and what they're saying, and it just seems too vague and speculative for me to give you a concrete answer.
Okay.
Can we introduce what will be exhibit one?
And I apologize.
How have you been marking exhibits of this?
Let's mark this.
We'll send exhibit one.
Okay.
Okay.
Exhibit one marked.
Mr. Wilson, have you seen this document before?
I think my, I'm sure I have, but I can't say I remember it.
Yeah, fair enough.
Yeah.
And this is a press release issued by NEH.
Is that fair?
Yes.
Summer, it says summer 2021.
And this is when you were acting chair?
Yes.
So I certainly would have, I remember at the time reviewing all the press releases that were produced by our communications office, but I just read a lot and wouldn't remember a particular one.
Don't worry, this won't be a memory test.
But this looks to you like an authentic document obtained from NEH's website.
Yes, right.
No reason for you to doubt its authenticity.
Yeah.
Okay.
And I think you stated this already, but this says at the top that it's from summer of 2021, right?
Yes.
Okay.
And the first paragraph of the press release says, this past April, NEH awarded $24 million in grants to 225 humanities projects across the country.
Did I read that correctly?
Yeah.
And just from that amount of money and those number of grants in this time period, do you have some sense of, does this refresh your recollection of that time period?
Again, I don't remember this precise document you're showing me, but I would have reviewed it at the time.
Okay.
Yes.
And can we turn to the second page?
And it looks like, am I right, that there's a quote from you on the top paragraph?
There it is, yep.
Okay.
And it reads, NEH is proud to support these 225 new projects, which embody excellence, intellectual rigor, and a dedication to the pursuit of knowledge, said NEH acting chairman Adam Wilson.
Quote, we look forward to the contributions these projects will make to our understanding of ourselves and our society through exemplary humanities research publications, documentary films, exhibitions, and undergraduate programs, end quote.
Did I read that correctly?
Yes.
Do you remember making statements like this, not necessarily this particular statement, but statements like this while you were chairman about grants that have been awarded?
Sure, yes.
And you said you would have reviewed and approved this press release before now, right?
That's my memory.
I remember reading a lot of press releases.
Yes.
So is it fair to say then that this is an accurate characterization about how you felt about those awarded grants?
Yes.
Focus On Present Spending00:09:47
If we look at the bottom paragraph on this page, page 2, it says, This class of grants includes the first awarded through NEH's new Archaeological and Ethnographic Field Research Program.
Among the supported projects are an excavation of the ancient city of Teotihuacan in central Mexico to determine the presence and influence of Mayan residents, an archaeological investigation of settlement and migration patterns on the Micronesian islands of Pompeii and Cosre, and an excavation of Egypt's first industrial-scale brewery located at the ancient site of Abidos.
Forgiving my pronunciations, is that generally correct, what I just read?
Yes.
Okay.
Do you remember any of those grants?
I don't remember this specific grant.
As you noted, we make thousands.
Okay.
But the few grants that are listed as exemplars here, just based on this description, they sound fairly typical subject matters for NEH grants to cover.
Yes.
Do you believe that a grant made to study the influence of the Maya on an ancient Mexican city is wasteful spending?
Objection.
I served at the time as the acting chair for the Bay Administration, and I sought to fulfill their vision of the agency.
And it was clear that making grants like this fit within the parameters of the Biden-Harris administration, what they wanted.
Okay, I appreciate that answer, but my question was, do you view a grant studying that topic to be wasteful spending?
Objection.
I don't think I have a personal view one way or the other.
My job as acting chair was to do the best I could for the agency under the Biden administration.
Fair enough, but my question is, do you think it's a waste of taxpayer money to fund research into that topic?
Objection.
I just, I think you're asking, I think you're asking sort of personal political type questions that don't enter into my job.
I don't let my personal opinions influence my actions.
Okay.
And we read your quote earlier where you said that these projects embody excellence, intellectual rigor, and a dedication to the pursuit of knowledge.
Yeah.
And you have no reason to doubt that that assessment is true for this particular grant, right?
I do not.
Okay.
And so given that you think it embodies excellence, intellectual rigor, and a dedication to the pursuit of knowledge, isn't it fair to say you don't think that it's wasteful?
I feel like you're asking the question different ways, and I've done my best to answer you.
Okay.
In the context of an agency that makes grants as its primary purpose, like NEH, what do you understand wasteful to mean?
That's really something that's decided by the head of the agency and the political team that's here.
And they're going to have different views about, not surprisingly, it's the humanities.
They're going to have different views about what they think is important and what they think is of less importance in terms of federal spending in the humanities.
Okay.
So you said that's a decision made by the head of the agency?
And yes, and their political team.
Okay.
So when you were acting chair, you were head of the agency, right?
Yes.
We're working very closely with the political team.
We had, right, there was the chief, right, the chief of staff, head of communications.
We had quite a few political appointees, and I worked with them very closely and had a sense, a very good sense of the direction they wanted to go.
Okay, do you think that assessments like excellence, intellectual rigor, and a dedication to the pursuit of public knowledge are things that change valence with different political parties, or are those objectively true or false?
Objection.
Yeah, that's a very hard question to answer.
Okay, why don't you try?
Could you ask it again?
Sure.
You talked just before about how decisions about what's wasteful and what's not or what funding priorities an administration should have or not is something made at the political level by political appointees, right?
Okay.
But things like excellence, intellectual rigor, and the pursuit of public knowledge, those are not political judgments.
Those are things that you, as someone who's worked in the humanities and humanities grant making for 20 years, can make an objective assessment about, right?
Objection.
Yeah, I don't think that, you know, in some sort of ideal world, right, they shouldn't be.
But in my experience, different chairs who know far more about the humanities than I do have very different understandings of what makes for an excellent project.
When you say different chairs know far more about the humanities, are that's because they were scholars for longer?
What do you mean?
Oh, yeah, exactly.
You know, I mean, Bruce Cole had written over a dozen books.
Chair, You know, Jim Leach had extensive experience, you know, as a congressman, brought all sorts of aspects to the job.
William Brow Adams had been a college president, among many other things.
Why did that make them more experienced in the humanities?
Maybe I'm being modest, but they're very accomplished individuals.
And you've worked at the National Endowment for the Humanities for 20 years, right?
Yes.
Would you call yourself an expert in the humanities?
In yes, in my areas, yes.
You're just saying some people are more expert.
Yes.
Okay.
And so when you were acting chair, did you feel comfortable making decisions about spending priorities?
It sounds like you might feel like you were unqualified.
I did not feel that at all.
You felt comfortable?
I did.
Okay.
Based on your experience in the humanities.
Yes.
Okay.
And so why aren't you able to tell me sitting here whether these are these can be objectively true, whether a project is excellent, shows intellectual rigor and a dedication to the pursuit of knowledge?
Objection.
I feel like I'm in a philosophy seminar, right?
I think ideally folks in the humanities would agree about what is an excellent project, but that rarely is the case.
Right, you see it all the time in peer review panels where peer reviewers, right, one might give it an excellent, one might give it just a good.
They have very different opinions.
It's safe to say that at least the vast majority of these 225 projects that this press release is about were recommended by a peer review panel, right?
Yes.
Okay.
And so they at least determined that this is something that was worth spending taxpayer money on this research, right?
Yes, we don't ask them to formulate it that way.
We just ask them to judge the merits of the project.
Okay.
The peer reviewers.
And would you trust a panel of experts that study the particular topics that an application covers more than you would trust someone who's been in government for 20 years to make that assessment?
Objection.
Can you repeat the question?
I can restate the question.
Okay.
Whether a study of the presence and influence of Mayan residents on an ancient Mexican city is well done, well researched, likely to lead to interesting or meaningful results.
That's a question best answered by someone who knows that particular field of study, right?
Yeah, I think the peer reviewers judge the merits of the application, right, to the best of their knowledge and experience and so on and so forth.
The chair and the political leadership will have different ideas about where they want to spend the money.
Do they want to focus on projects of this sort or do they want to focus on projects of a different sort?
Okay.
And so it's not uncommon for a new administration to come in and have a change of priorities in that sense, right?
Correct.
Right.
But never before in your tenure has an administration come in and canceled the vast majority of grants that were already awarded, right?
That has not happened in my tenure.
Okay.
Were you troubled when that happened?
Objection.
Yeah, you're asking, again, questions about how I felt or didn't feel.
I try to, you know, I've been at the agent, I've been in the government for a while.
I try to separate what my personal feelings might be, and I do the job in front of me.
Okay, I appreciate that, but I am asking about your personal feelings.
And this is a deposition.
Okay, so you are asking about my personal feelings.
Personal Feelings Questioned00:03:38
Yeah.
Yeah, it seemed unfortunate to me.
And why was that?
I didn't, my personal feelings, I didn't see any particular reason for doing it.
Right, a new administration comes in, they have four years ahead of them, maybe more, depending.
Um, my view is sort of focus on the present, not the past.
Okay, but that's not my decision to make.
Okay, whose decision is it to make?
It's the head of the agency, okay.
In consultation with whoever they choose, okay.
Uh, can you turn the page to page three of the exhibit?
Yes.
Um, it says closer to home new grants are helping preserve and make accessible important historical and cultural collections such as audiovisual archives on the coal mining industry in Appalachia at Kentucky's Apple Shock.
Another grant is supporting a cooperative effort of Northern Arizona University, the Hopi Tribe, Follow Pie Tribe, and Dinet College on the Navajo Nation to digitize 400 rare films documenting the Colorado Plateau and the American Southwest from the 1930s to the 1960s.
Did I read that correctly?
Is it, am I right that these two grants at least are about preservation and access to already existing repositories of documents?
Yes.
Is that a common topic for NEH grant?
Yes, absolutely.
The division most likely that would have supported that was preservation and access, and that's their mission.
Okay.
And do you think that preservation and access can be important contributions to the study of the humanities?
Yes.
Why is that?
I think you can think of it as the right kind of the roots of the humanities, right?
In the sense that researchers, whether you're a scholar doing research or you're someone who is trying to in the public humanities, right, it all starts with what the sources are.
Okay.
And again, this is a common, well, strike that.
Is there a division like the research division, but a different division that focuses on this?
I think you said preservation and access.
Yes, now named now named collections and infrastructure.
Okay.
Was that an important name change or was that the typical new administration, new name?
Same thing?
It was just part of the reorganization.
We renamed it to capture a broader range of activities.
Okay.
And would you say it's fair that your statement that these grants will make contributions to our understanding of ourselves, our society, applies to these preservation and access grants?
Yes.
And do you think that's still true today?
Yes.
Nothing's changed about the world such that these would no longer be making such a contribution, right?
Objection.
Well, as we know, a lot has changed, but yeah, no, right?
That seems still true.
DEI And Underserved Groups00:14:45
Okay.
And so do you think, strike that, when you were acting chair, did you believe that grants related to preservation and access were wasteful?
Objection.
No, I didn't feel that.
And you felt they were valuable?
Yes.
Okay.
Do you still feel that way today?
I do.
Um, okay.
We can put that aside.
We've been going about an hour.
Would you like to take a break?
Maybe just to stretch my legs, if that's okay.
Sure.
Let's go.
Please stand by.
The time is 10.48 a.m.
We are off the record.
The time is 10.58 a.m.
And we are on the record.
Okay, welcome back, Mr. Wolfson.
And you're aware that you're still under.
Yes.
Okay.
What is your understanding of the term DEI?
It stands for diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Okay.
And what does it mean?
I can't give you a precise definition.
I think it means different things to different people.
We know it, their DEI policies, and so on and so on and so forth.
It's, yeah.
What does it mean, DE?
I think the diversity, equity, inclusion, I think it's an effort to, as the words say, to emphasize diversity, equity, and usually that's used in terms of underserved groups and being inclusive.
Okay.
About when did you first hear or become aware of the term DEI?
I think the term has been kicking around for a while.
It first really came on my horizon under the administration of Shelly Lowe, where it was a major emphasis of her chairship.
Okay.
And how did she emphasize it?
There were several pillars or priorities for the agency and DEI or other descriptions of it were one of them.
As a priority for the awarding of grants?
Yes.
Well, the main priorities for the agency under the Biden administration, there were sort of,
I think they described them in various ways, but three of the important pillars were, as I recall, strengthening democracy, addressing our changing climate, and the third one, I don't remember the exact language they used.
I think it was advancing equity for racially underserved groups.
Those were the three pillars that were central at that time.
Okay.
Did you ever discuss DEI or DEI-related topics with Chair Lowe?
I'm sure it came up.
I can't remember specifically.
I didn't report directly to her.
So I report to the senior deputy.
Okay.
And so when Chair Lowe was implementing this program, how did it affect how NEH made decisions about which grants to award?
Under her leadership, we developed a, and I took a big part in this, we developed a special initiative called American Tapestry.
And that was, and I'm sure it was on the website and so on and so forth at the time.
It was in our no-foes about, and one of the important parts of that initiative was the idea of diversity, equity, inclusion, in so many words.
And what's a NOFO?
Oh, I'm sorry.
Those are notices of funding opportunities, or we used to call them guidelines, but that's the way we advertise our programs.
I see, with solicit applications.
Exactly.
Okay.
And so you worked with Cherlow to adjust or modify the NOFOs in part based on DEI criteria?
Yeah, we came up with language that was put in all of the nofos or guidelines, if you will, about a paragraph or so in length.
Okay.
And when Chair Lowe was chair, well, I'm curious about how her DEI priorities affected individual grants.
So when she was chair, do you recall ever having a particular grant that you reviewed that you understood, yes, no, this is a DEI application or it's not?
I think she was, yes, very interested in supporting grants of that sort.
And that was one of the encouragements in all of our guidelines.
Okay.
And so when you would look at a grant, how would you decide whether it's DEI or not?
It wasn't something I would decide, this is DEI or not.
It's sort of a way of sending a message to the field of what the agency is interested in.
And then, right, the applications come in and some of them discuss it in different ways.
Okay.
If that makes sense.
But would you be able to make a determination in looking at either a grant application or reviewing an existing grant and determine whether that grant or that application was DEI?
Yes, because I think applicants are very open about it.
They would talk about the ways in which this particular application was about racial equity for underserved groups or about the ways in which it was about diversity or inclusion, access, and so on.
Okay.
Can you give me an example of a topic, you know, a topic at the level that an individual grant would study or apply for funds to research that you would consider DEI?
Could you repeat the question again?
Yeah, at the individual grant level and not the NOFO.
But looking at an application or reviewing an existing grant, can you give me an example of a grant that would be DEI in your view?
And just to be clear, I'm not asking for like, tell me this grant from 2021, yes or no.
I'm saying what makes an individual grant DEI or not?
As I said, because we have the encouragement in the guidelines or the NOFOs, the applicant will frequently, in a way, sort of self-identify.
They'll say, my project contributes to understanding diversity or understanding of equity in the following ways.
So they'll say that in the application itself.
And is that the only way that you would be able to make an assessment as to whether a particular grant was DEI was based on how they described the application?
Or could you tell, based on the subject matter to be studied alone, whether it was DEI?
I think you can tell from reading the application, you can tell from the sometimes from the title what it's about because the titles can be pretty descriptive.
Is that what you were asking?
Sort of, yeah.
I think so is it your view that a grant is definitionally a DEI grant if it is about or related to a black community?
Objection.
No, that came up, that has come up before, right?
If you're writing about slavery or something like that, that doesn't make it a DEI application.
I think, right, DEI is a, it's a new formulation.
I don't know who came up with it, right, how it came to be, but it tends to be more activist or presentist in its orientation.
What do you mean by presentist?
Well, it's a term used today.
It's not a term that was used in the 18th century or 19th century or, for that matter, much of the 20th century.
So it's right, it's a scholar using this formula to think about whatever their issue is, topic is.
And so it's more the gloss the scholar puts on the research and not the topic itself.
Is that fair?
I think that's a fair statement, yes.
In my understanding, again, people are going to have different views on this.
Right.
Okay.
And so, like, if a grant was an application said it wanted to better preserve and enable accessibility to the papers of W.E.B. Du Bois without knowing more, you couldn't say that that grant is DEI just because it's about a black person, right?
I mean, to me, absolutely not.
Yes.
Did anybody at the agency feel differently about that question?
Not to my knowledge.
Okay, do you remember having discussions earlier, sorry, in March or April of last year about these kinds of questions with other NEH staff members?
A question like you asked, right, came up from the staff when we were asked to do a historical review of the grants as a result of one of the executive orders.
And some directors asked the kinds of questions that you were just asking me.
They were asking the chief of staff and others what is meant.
Okay.
And what answer were they given?
We would refer them to the executive, the language of the executive order.
But as an example, someone might say something, this isn't exactly, but it's a representative.
Someone would say, is an application about slavery as that DEI?
And our answer was no, that's not.
When you say our answer was no, who's we?
I'm talking about at that point the Shelley Lowe administration.
Okay.
When we were asked to do the historical review and she was still overseeing the agency.
This is in January, February of 2025?
Yes.
Okay.
And did you have similar such discussions with Acting Chair McDonald when he took office?
Yes.
Okay.
And did his answer vary from Chair Lowe's?
No, I think in that respect he felt the same way.
A DEI.
I think, again, these questions would be better directed to him.
I don't feel comfortable with speaking for him, but I think his sense was a DEI application is a more ideological, agenda-driven application as opposed to one that's exploring the conditions of minorities in the tenement houses in New York in the 1920s.
Okay.
So that grant we talked about before from the 2021 press release about the effect of the Maya on an ancient Mexican city, that subject matter is not inherently DEI, is that right?
Correct.
Okay.
But are you saying that it could be DEI if, for instance, the grant application said we want to understand what the intersectionality of Mayan culture with oppressed peoples in the Mexican in the Yucatan Peninsula?
I mean, what, I guess I'm trying to understand the difference.
I mean, I think we're getting there, but it sounds like the framework is more important than the topic, the lens through which the author wants to study and write about an issue and not the issue itself.
Doge Executive Order Impact00:14:36
Is that fair?
I think that's fair.
It's applying a certain, I think it's applying a certain ideological framework to a particular topic.
Okay.
And based on your discussions with Mr. McDonald, he had a similar view or conveyed a similar view to you of what DEI was when he conveyed a similar view.
Okay.
i'm going to present exhibit two oh mark this is wilson exhibit two Yes.
Okay, Mr. Wilson, do you recognize these text messages?
Yes, I do.
Okay.
And what are they?
This is a text message from, as you can see, mid-April.
Michael had, I do want to say as a preface that this was on my personal phone off hours.
And I just want to make that clear.
It was not part of the work.
It wasn't on my work phone or anything of that sort.
Mike McDonald had sent me an article and I responded to it as I did.
Okay.
And I appreciate that this came from your personal phone, but that this is an authentic, to the best of your knowledge, an authentic copy of the text sent from your personal team.
Oh, yes, absolutely.
You remember sending this text message?
Yes, vaguely, yes.
Okay.
Before we talk about the message you sent, it looks like before that, at some point, Mr. McDonald has sent you an article from forward.com entitled, Jews Thought Trump Wanted to Fight Anti-Semitism, Why Did He Cut All of Their Grants?
Do you remember that article?
I haven't read it since, so I don't remember it very well.
I kind of remember the gist of the article.
And what was the gist?
As I recall, the gist of the article was the forward had interviewed a lot of grantees focusing on Jewish-related topics such as Yiddish and other topics.
Those grants had been among the grants that had been canceled under the new administration, and they were expressing their dismay and unhappiness about it.
And you remember before the cancellations that took place in early April, do you remember grants being flagged for cancellation that related to Jewish culture, Jewish language, anti-Semitism?
I'm not quite sure I understood the question.
Can you say that again?
Before what?
Do you remember thinking or talking about this issue of grants related to Jewish studies, Jewish culture, Jewish language, et cetera, being canceled by an administration that said, No.
I'm sorry?
No, I don't remember that.
Okay, if you could let me finish my question.
Oh, I'm sorry.
I apologize.
You don't remember seeing any grants that had been flagged for termination that related to studies of Jewish culture, Jewish history?
No.
I'm sorry, flagged for termination.
You mean on the oh, you're, I think I was misunderstanding.
I thought you meant when the grants were being made, you're talking about the actual list of grants to be being flagged for termination.
That's what you're referring to.
Yes, I mean, there were lots and lots of grants.
Yes, I don't remember focusing on any particular one.
But you remember seeing that?
Grants of that sort of subject.
Okay.
And when you, did you ever discuss that issue with Mr. McDonald or anyone else?
Discuss which issue?
The fact that grants related to Jewish studies, Jewish culture.
I didn't mean to interrupt.
I apologize.
So you never discussed the fact that many of the grants that were first being considered for cancellation and then canceled related to Jewish studies and combating anti-Semitism?
No.
You did not discuss that with anybody?
Ejection.
Okay.
Looking at the text you sent on April 13th at 8.17 a.m., you say, thanks for sending.
Well, it is the case that Doge cut grants having nothing to do with DEI.
As they said, it was a government-wide effort to claw back money.
But note the tendentious accusation that the administration is acting like all authoritarian or even totalitarian governments to destroy the humanities.
Did I read that correctly?
Can I just say for the record that the question itself contains confidential information and might call for confidential information?
Well we'll write to the reporter after the deposition about what lines border.
Did I read that correctly?
Yes, you did.
Okay.
When you wrote that it is the case that Doge cuts Doge cut grants having nothing to do with DEI, that was your true belief at the time you wrote this, right?
Yes.
Is that your belief sitting here today?
Yes.
Okay.
And what do you mean by that?
What I mean is that they is that there were the grants that were terminated some were terminated because they were related to these categories that the executive orders had made clear were not among their priorities, diversity, equity, inclusion, and so on.
But at the same time, they made clear that they were also just interested in things like budget reduction and that's what I mean there.
Okay.
When you say they, you mean Doge?
I mean the administration.
Okay.
Yeah, Doge is a part of the administration.
And who conveyed to you that position that it was part of a government-wide effort to claw back money?
Well, it was in the executive order about right when Doge first, as I recall, there was an executive order about Doge in February and what they were all about.
And then the two representatives from Doge who came to the agency made clear at various points that it wasn't just grants related to DEI, but just grants that didn't fit the priorities of the new administration.
Was it ever the case that, and I'm sorry, those two individuals were Mr. Fox and Mr. Kavanaugh?
Yeah, Nate and Justin, as we knew them.
Okay.
And am I right that when NEH started its review under the executive order, and when you first interacted with Mr. Fox and Mr. Kavanaugh, it was about DEI and not wasteful spending.
Is that right?
Yes, I think that's a fair statement.
There's two stages.
Okay.
And they came in and asked, well, how did they convey that they were interested in cutting grants related to DEI?
How did they convey that?
So that process had in a way already begun because there was the executive order at the end of January asking for a historical review of all projects in these various categories dating to the January 2021.
Right?
And so we already had that under Chair Lowe.
We were already working on that list.
How did they convey it?
I don't remember exactly what they said or didn't say.
Yeah.
So before the two individuals from Doge came over to the agency, you said that NEH was already in the process of doing a review to ensure compliance with the executive order, correct?
Yes.
And this is the executive order about DEI?
Yes, it was an executive, yes.
Okay.
And so did Chair Lowe instruct the staff to conduct that review?
Yes, it was under Chair Lowe and the chief of staff, who kind of oversaw all operations at the agency.
Okay.
And do you know whether someone instructed Chair Lowe to give that instruction?
I don't know.
Okay.
Yeah.
And what was the instruction that Chair Lowe and her chief of staff gave to folks working on this project?
There were meetings with the directors and the chief of staff, and they were asked to, as the executive order made clear, to do a historical review of all grants starting at the start of the Biden administration, January 2021, for whether or not they were implicated in respect to these various areas.
There were kind of a flurry.
There was more than just one executive order, as I recall.
Under Chair Lowe and the chief of staff, a spreadsheet was created.
Brett Bobley, who was the chief information officer, actually created the spreadsheet.
And the directors were asked to do that review using the spreadsheet.
And then not long after, at the suggestion of Brett Bobley and I believe Richard Brundage, who's the head of the Office of Grant Management, the idea of doing a tiered process was added of low, medium, high, not applicable.
Okay, a tiered process for low, medium, high, not applicable as relates to DEI.
Yes, or the other categories.
Yeah.
Okay.
And so other than Mr. Bobley and Mr. Brundage, who at any age was involved in that review process?
So the review was done by the, we asked the directors to do the review, the directors of each of the seven grant-making divisions.
And they were allowed to include their staff, but we thought we didn't want to put staff in that position, so it was left up to the director.
I see.
So some directors opted to use staff for this review and some did not?
Yes.
Okay.
What did you do?
What did I do?
So they did their work, they did their review, and they submitted it.
I remember looking at the graph, the spreadsheet, and making some suggestions to Brett about the presentation of it.
That was mainly my role at that point.
So you didn't review individual grants to determine whether they were DEI?
I did not.
Okay.
So when you wrote here the Doge cut grants having nothing to do with DEI, at what point did you review the grants that were cut and make a determination that many did not relate to DEI?
So right, so that came afterwards.
Chair Lowe at that point had left the agency.
Michael at that point was the acting chair.
He had been named the acting chair.
And again, I think it was my impression initially that it was just about DEI and the other categories, Climate stuff.
And in a way, I thought our job had been done because we had submitted, as requested by the administration by OMB, we had submitted that spreadsheet to OMB.
It was submitted by Pranitha, I believe, who's my counterpart.
She oversees all the administrative divisions in the agency, and she's our liaison with offices like OMB.
What's Pranitha's last name?
Raghavan.
Raghavan.
And what's her title?
She's the Assistant Chair for Operations.
Okay.
So she oversaw the process of putting together the first spreadsheet in response to the executive orders?
I wouldn't say she oversaw it.
Once it had been completed, she submitted it to OMB.
Okay.
I think that's my understanding.
I believe that's correct.
You don't know for sure?
Not 100%, but I'm pretty sure.
Deficit Reduction Review00:02:02
Okay.
And do you know who instructed her to submit that spreadsheet to OMB?
I think Michael.
McDonald.
Yes, because he was acting chairman at that point.
Okay.
And who instructed him to have someone from NEH send a spreadsheet to OMB?
Objection.
That was the executive order gave us a date by when it had to be submitted.
So again, that was sort of a train already in process before he assumed his duties as acting chair.
Okay.
And this is before you met Mr. Fox and Mr. Kavanaugh from Doge.
This is between the time the executive order came out and when Doge came into the agency, is that right?
Yeah, that train was well out of the station before they ever came, right?
So we were already working on that in order to make sure we were in full compliance with the executive order.
They came not long after, I don't know the exact day that Michael became acting chair in mid-March.
Okay.
But it was very soon after.
Okay.
And so, and I apologize, I'm jumping around a little bit in terms of timeframe, but you wrote here that Doge cut grants having nothing to do with DEI, and your understanding is that the ones that they cut that have nothing to do with DEI were related to wasteful spending?
Yeah, I think it was just deficit reduction and spending that wasn't in accord with what this administration felt was important for NEH.
Okay.
And how did Doge go about deciding which grants to cut for deficit reduction as opposed to DEI?
Email Communication Context00:03:02
Objection.
Yeah, that I don't know.
You'd have to ask them how they went about that.
But you worked with them on that process, right?
I think work with them would be too strong of a word.
My interactions with them were very limited.
Okay.
let's do another exhibit and we'll mark this as we'll send exhibit three
Okay.
This is the top email on the, I'm sorry, this is a document.
Wilson Exhibit 3 is begins on page US000000771.
Mr. Wilson, is this a is the top email here one that you sent to Mr. McDonald on March 14th?
Yes.
Okay.
Do you remember sending this email?
but let me just quickly read the email.
Yes?
Okay.
You remember sending it?
It's certainly my email.
I don't remember like the, you know, sitting at my computer and sending it, but yes, this is my email.
Okay, so fair to say you have no reason to doubt the authenticity of this email?
It is definitely my email.
Okay.
And what is your email to Mr. McDonald saying?
Let me look at, right, he sent me an email.
Yeah, so I think the context, I think, is that they had sent us some figures, right, and their own spreadsheet.
Pushing Back On Designations00:04:21
I think Michael wasn't sure what it all meant, and I certainly did not know.
And again, just by the email, it looks like he's asking me if I could let him know what they mean.
And I evidently talked with Nate and Justin, and that was my answer that I gave based on what they told me.
Okay.
And so when you said I have sent them Brett's and the director's spreadsheet, is that the spreadsheet that we were just talking about a moment ago?
Yes, that's correct.
They had their own spreadsheets and whatnot, which we found very confusing.
And I think they and we had explained to them we had our own spreadsheet that we had been using.
And I think they offered to make life easier for us to use that spreadsheet.
Okay.
Combining their stuff.
And when you reference here adding their evaluations to the work already done by the directors, do you see that?
And they will now work off of it instead adding their correct.
I see it.
You're saying that the Doge folks will add their evaluations to the work already done by the NEH directors, is that right?
Okay.
And evaluations in this context means evaluations as to which grants were DEI?
Again, I think DEI and these other categories of concern to the administration.
Okay.
Like climate, for instance.
Yeah.
Okay.
At this point in mid-March, Doge was not, or at least had not told you that they were reviewing for wasteful spending, correct?
Well, you see, you can see, right, Michael had written to me that you have a chance to ask Nate what he meant by da-da-da-da-da, presumably, can presumably be clawed back, so.
So it seems like that was on Michael's mind, that that's what they were intending, if I understand your question.
I guess, when you're talking here about the evaluations that DOGE is going to do, that they're going to add to the I don't know at the precise point when they, when they again, at least in my mind went from just concerned about grants on certain using, a certain framework or that or as such, to this broader review,
but it it was, it was within days.
Okay yeah, I just, I don't know the, the precise turning point.
Okay, so you don't, you don't know when that turning point was, but there was such a turning point, right?
Yeah, I mean, as you know, as I saw it yes okay, and am I right that before that turning point, when they had sent you materials flagging certain grants as DEI, you and Mr. McDonald tried to push back on some of those designations?
Is that correct?
We, we certainly pushed back at various points.
I don't.
I'm not quite sure what point you're referring to.
I guess I'm trying to understand.
I'm trying to understand the category of grants that DOGE initially said they wanted to cancel because of DEI and then later said they want to cancel because of wasteful spending.
There were such grants right, there were such grants.
What are you referring to?
There were grants that DOGE had originally told you they believed was DEI objection?
Spreadsheet Assessment Details00:15:14
Yeah, and I think so, and that you, Mr. McDonald or others at the agency, replied, you know annotated, and said no, not DEI.
And then they came back and said well, wasteful spending, right objection.
I don't know if that's how it transpired.
Okay, I'm sorry.
Yeah okay, what did you have any disagreements with mr Mr. Fox and Mr. Kavanaugh about?
Which grants were DEI?
When they had on their did we have a disagreement about some that were DEI specifically?
I don't remember their, I can't remember a specific example of conversations with them about is this grant DEI or not.
Okay.
Do you remember reviewing a spreadsheet that they provided to you that had an explanation for why they believed it was DEI and your disagreeing with any such explanations?
Objection?
Yes, they shared with us spreadsheets at various points.
It was a little confusing, at least for someone like myself who's not a spreadsheet whiz kid.
That's why we asked them to use our spreadsheet.
And some of what they had written in their columns didn't necessarily make a lot of sense to me.
Okay.
Let's look at some of those now.
We'll mark this as Wilson exhibit four.
And we're going to maybe use the screen for the spreadsheet.
Is it very well remarked?
Okay.
And this is Bates.
The email is Bates US-000045042.
Mr. Wilson, am I right that this is a document, I'm sorry, this is an email that Justin Fox sent to yourself and Mr. McDonald on March 17th, 2025?
Yes.
Okay, so this is just a couple days after the document we just looked at, which is March 14th, I believe, right?
Okay.
Do you remember seeing, do you remember receiving this document?
Actually, I have to say, I don't remember seeing this particular.
Okay.
It's not in my active memory.
But you don't have any reason to doubt the authenticity of this?
No, absolutely not.
Okay.
And Justin Fox sends the email from an NEH.gov email address.
Do you see that?
I do.
Okay.
And do you recall him?
I think you testified earlier that he was not an employee of NEH, right?
To the best of my knowledge, again, I can't speak to his status.
Okay, you didn't understand him to be an employee of NEH.
I did not understand him to be that.
Okay.
And he CCs Nate Kavanaugh at gsa.gov and then CCs JustinFox at gsa.gov.
Was that a common way for him to communicate with you and your team?
Objection.
I don't remember, and I really don't, I didn't pay attention to email addresses, so I wouldn't know.
Okay.
Let's walk through the email.
So Mr. Fox writes to you, Michael Adam, I hope you both had a good weekend.
See attached for our review of NEH grants, census, and contracts.
It will be easier to connect over the phone when convenient and discuss what we've pulled together.
Let me know when works for you tomorrow.
Below summarizes the attachments along with the key areas for your input.
Did I read that correctly?
Yes.
Okay.
The first bullet says grants.
We reviewed all active grants for DEI involvement and marked them accordingly.
Page one is a summarized view of the grant details on page two through 89.
Grants are shown on page 2 through 89 in descending order of dollar amount by division.
Page 2 through 89 shows details for active grants, which were flagged as having DEI involvement only.
It does not show details for active grants without DEI involvement or grants which are expired/slash ended.
Please review the active grants flag for DEI involvement and mark your decision in the column titled MM/AW in the Excel.
Did I read that correctly?
Yes.
Okay.
And so am I right that this is the spreadsheet you were referring to earlier where Doge sent to you their assessment of which grants were and were not DEI?
I think that's true.
They sent us, as I said, there was a lot of confusion with the spreadsheets in different versions.
So I can't say precisely.
Okay.
But yes, there was a spreadsheet that was shared with us for our review.
Okay.
Let's look at that spreadsheet now, which I think was attached to this email.
And this is Bates 43, I'm sorry, US-00004312.
45132.
Apologies.
And Ms. Vaughn's going to pull it up.
Can we move that computer closer to the witness?
This is for me to look at.
Yeah.
I'm going to need it a lot closer, actually.
I just can't.
My eyes are not that sharp.
Can I pull this?
Yeah, pull.
Is this part of exhibit force?
Yes.
It's attached to the email.
When you get a chance, you just email that to me, please.
OK, we'll do.
Okay.
Can you see on the first tab there?
Am I right that this is a summary page of their conclusions about various grants?
I think so.
I just don't remember this particular page, yeah.
But you see where it says grants by DEI involvement and division.
Yes.
Okay.
And so, for instance, in Preservation and Access Division, they say there are 237 grants that are DEI for a total of 43,984,492.
Yes.
Okay.
And then if you scroll down to the header at the bottom, proposed remaining active grants.
Oops, I'm having a lot of charge at the very bottom, proposed remaining active grants.
Okay, yeah, I see that.
And you see where it says proposed reduction?
Yes.
Okay.
And am I right that this is a reduction that Doge was proposing by canceling grants?
Objection?
I'm really not sure.
I found their spreadsheets confusing.
And yes.
Do you see where the bottom line under proposed reduction is net savings of $223,900,000?
I'm having trouble moving this.
What are you looking at?
Are you moving the one?
I think my colleague Amanda is the one controlling.
Oh, okay.
Yes.
Oh, thank you for that.
Yeah, no, that would be frustrating.
Okay.
Do you see in the bottom it says the total proposed reduction is approximately $224 million?
Yeah.
Okay.
Where would NEH be able to reduce spending by $224 million if not with grants being cut?
Objection.
I'm not the budget person.
I'm not a budget person.
I just can't speak to that.
You don't know whether this sheet is related to cancellation of grants.
Yes, no, I believe this is related to grants.
Okay.
Yes.
But again, I'm not a budget person, so I just wouldn't want to say yes or no to budget questions.
But your understanding is that this page is about proposed terminations of grants in order to save money.
Objection?
Again, it's probably better question to ask the Doge folks.
I mean, if you look at this, you know, the email you sent me, they say see attached for a review of NEH grants, census, and contracts.
So I don't know if in their mind this included other things.
I really don't know what they were doing in terms of the spreadsheets and the numbers.
Okay.
Yeah.
If we could go to the next tab, an EH grant detail, do you see that?
Yes.
Okay.
And do you remember seeing the spreadsheet when the folks at Doge sent it to you?
Yes.
Okay.
And so the first column on the left where it says yes, no, DEI, you see that?
Yes.
Okay.
And am I right that where they said yes, that is reflecting Doge's conclusion that that particular grant is DEI?
I believe that's the case.
And that's how you understood it at the time?
I think so.
Okay.
Do you see a few columns over, about five or six columns over, where it says DEI rationale?
Oh, I'm sorry.
Yes, yeah, yeah, DEI rationale.
Yep.
And again, Doge created and filled out this spreadsheet, right?
Yes.
Okay, so am I right that this column where it says DEI rationale is what Doge filled in to explain why they believed certain grants were DEI?
I believe that's the case.
Objection?
Again, questions about their spreadsheets and the spreadsheets, it would be better addressed to them.
I appreciate that.
Yeah, so.
Okay.
Do you have any other, is there anything else you think that this category DEI rationale could mean?
Objection?
No.
Okay.
And so your best recollection is that they filled this in to explain their determination that a grant was DEI.
Objection.
Can we go down to row 33, Amanda?
And over.
Yeah.
And then over to the grant description.
Do you see, Mr. Wilson, this particular grant that starts with National Hispanic Cultural Center, University of Minnesota, University of Texas, Rio Grande Valley?
You see that?
Yes.
Okay.
And to the left of that, under the DEI rationale column, the rationale listed here is NEH identified DEI involvement.
Do you see that?
Okay, yes.
Okay.
So is it your understanding that when this column says NEH identified DEI involvement, that would have been from the review you were talking about before that Chair Lowe and the program directors did with or without their staff, right?
I believe so, yes, the historical review as we called it.
And you don't, sorry, restrict that.
Who at NEH would have identified DEI involvement on a grant like this?
That goes back to what we were discussing earlier when we had asked the directors to do the historical review and flag grants that were in some way implicated by the executive orders for DEI or these other categories.
Okay.
When NEH sent that review, that spreadsheet, to OMB, I believe you said they sent it to OMB?
Yes.
Okay.
Was NEH's plan at that point to cancel the grants that NEH had identified as DEI?
Objection.
I don't think we had a plan one way or the other.
We were just responding to the executive order at that point.
Okay, so you were told by the executive order to make a list of grants related to DEI.
You did that, and you left the next step up to the administration?
Yes, we sent it in.
Okay.
If we look down to row 34, and let's look at the grand description in column M.
It says, in connection with the recently, this is the grant description.
In connection with the recently completed collections and facility assessment, the ONITA Indian Nation proposes to upgrade its archival facility to increase the safety and security of its cultural artifacts.
Did I read that correctly?
Yes.
Okay.
Am I right that this is something that would fall under the purview of preservation and access?
It sounds that way, yes.
Okay.
And so under the column to the left of that, column K, with the DEI rationale that Doge gave for why this was yes DEI, it says the proposed upgrade aligns with DEI by promoting the preservation and protection of cultural artifacts of the ONITA Indian Nation.
Do you see that?
Yes.
Okay.
Disagreement Over DEI Scope00:15:25
Do you agree with that statement?
On its face, in my personal view, this doesn't necessarily seem like necessarily a DEI application.
but they I think Nate and Justin had a more capacious view of what it meant, DEI.
Okay.
And so do you agree with the statement that this preservation and access grant was DEI?
Objection.
Again, it aligns with DEI, as I've said, in my, I don't know if I would have categorized it that way, but they had a much larger, I think, view of what was a DEI grant.
Okay.
And so in the email that we looked at before, you were asked, you and Mr. McDonnell were asked to assess this spreadsheet and give your feedback.
You remember that?
Okay.
And so would you or Mr. McDonald have replied on something like this where you disagree with the DEI assessment and said disagree?
Objection.
As I recall, we did try to pull it, we pulled out certain grants that we thought were in accord with the administration's priorities and that they were that in their view should be terminated and we did not believe that.
Okay.
And this is a grant that when NEH had conducted its review under Chair Lowe, it did not identify as DEI, right?
Objection.
Again, they weren't, we weren't, again, you're using language that we didn't use within the agency.
Okay.
But that was a grant.
Certainly, Chair Lowe was very interested in supporting grants having to do with Native Americans.
And so that was certainly an area that she wanted to support.
Sorry, I'm not talking about when this grant was awarded.
I'm saying when a month before this, NEH had been reviewing grants to comply with President Trump's executive order.
It looks from the spreadsheet, so if you look at the column right, I'm sorry, the row right above this, that grant that we just looked at says NEH identified DEI involvement.
This grant says the proposed upgrade aligns with DEI by promoting the preservation and protection of cultural artifacts of the ONITA Indian Nation.
So is it safe to assume that when NEH did its review, it did not determine, I'm sorry, it determined that this grant was not DEI.
Objection.
I think I understand what you're saying.
One would have to go back and look and see if the preservation access team had identified it along that scale, low, medium, high, in any way, or whether it had been identified as not applicable.
So who wrote this and how it came to be written, I can't be sure if they were relying on some of the work of the staff or in this case not.
Okay.
Do you know any employee of NEH that would review this grant description?
Objection.
And conclude that this grant was DEI for the reasons given here.
Objection.
I'm not sure I can really speak to all of the people at NEH and how they would view things.
People here have a lot of different views when it comes to humanities and grants, so I offhand I can't say.
Okay, but you testified that you don't believe that this grant is DEI, right?
Yeah, having just read that language, Right.
In the very short grant description, it doesn't sound to me like something that kind of as we were talking about earlier that is necessarily agenda-driven in some way, going back to our earlier conversation.
But I think the folks from Doge had a different view of what counted as DEI as reflected in the spreadsheets.
Okay.
And I asked earlier, and I think because we hadn't laid this groundwork, you had trouble understanding what I meant.
At this time, so this is March 17th, was when they sent, when Justin Fox sent you this spreadsheet, at this time, Doge was flagging grants for termination related to DEI alone, not overall wasteful spending.
Do you remember talking about that?
Objection.
Again, I don't remember, as I said, the turning point, the date when it became evident to Michael and me that the cancellation of grants was going to be larger than just DEI and these other categories.
Okay.
The email that we reviewed to which this spreadsheet was attached, when it refers to grants, it only talks about DEI, right?
Oh, I'm sorry.
Oh, you're referring to the.
To Mr. Fox's email of March 17th.
Oh, March 17th.
Yes, we reviewed all active grants for DEI.
Okay, so the date is March 17th.
Yes, so probably some point, it was probably a later point that became evident.
So if you and Mr. So Mr. Fox is asking you and Mr. McDonald to review this spreadsheet and give your feedback on these DEI determinations, right?
Yes.
Okay.
And so do you recall whether you and Mr. McDonald wrote back saying that some of these that Doge had flagged as DEI were not in fact DEI?
I can't speak for Michael.
I don't recall any emails to that effect.
There was a meeting with them, again, in this general time period, when they made clear to us that it was about more than just DEI.
It was sometime after this email, right?
I'm guessing.
I'm sorry.
I'm guessing.
I don't have an exact timeframe in my don't have it all mapped out.
My memory isn't that good.
Okay.
But is it fair to say that this email only references DEI and not wasteful spending?
Objection.
And that this spreadsheet only references DEI and not wasteful spending?
Objection.
That seems to be the case.
It's not my spreadsheet.
Okay.
So if there were grants that were flagged by Doge as DEI in this spreadsheet and you and Mr. McDonald, as you were asked to, replied and said, you know, either we agree or we don't agree, this is DEI or it's not.
For grants that you all said were not DEI, like promoting the security of our collection, you're aware that some of those grants were canceled, right?
Objection.
Yeah, I don't know what the aftermath of it all was.
Would it surprise you to learn that the grants that were canceled were the same grants initially flagged as DEI by Doge?
Objection.
Again, We replied as we were asked using that spreadsheet, and I never went back and looked to see whether what exactly had been canceled and had not.
I don't have that many hours in the day to do that.
And this was a, just for context, this was a really hectic time because we were in the midst of our March council.
And that was certainly the focus of my attention at that time.
Okay.
And so is it fair to say then that it would have been Mr. McDonald then who would have reviewed the more than a thousand grants listed here as DEI, yes, to determine whether that was an accurate characterization?
Objection.
We went through them together at various points.
You and Mr. McDonald?
Yes.
And you went through all of the more than 1,300 grants in this spreadsheet?
Objection.
The two of you.
Again, there were various spreadsheets.
And so I don't know if it was this spreadsheet, but yes, we did our best within the timeframe within that timeframe to go through it.
And it wasn't easy.
So setting aside whether it was this particular spreadsheet or a different one, at some point, you and Mr. McDonald, just the two of you, reviewed more than 1,400 grants that Doge had flagged as DEI.
Objection.
To the best of our ability.
Okay.
And what was the purpose of your review to determine whether Doge's characterization of each grant as DEI was correct?
I think what we're not sure if we're talking about the what I remember and what stands out in my mind is going through some of the spreadsheets and pulling out grants that in their view should be canceled,
that to our mind were in accord with the administration's priorities and there was no need, it didn't make sense to us.
Okay, so I understand that you there were particular grants that you flagged as grants that should not be canceled because of the subject matter aligned with this administration's priorities.
Yes.
And so for instance, was one of those grants related to the papers of George Washington?
Yes.
Okay.
Right, there were for, right, they had flagged for cancellation, yes, papers of the presidents and so on and so forth.
As DEI?
I don't remember if it, I think, yes, I think in some cases DEI.
And so did that cause you to question their ability to make accurate determinations of whether something was DEI, that they were flagging the papers of George Washington as a DEI-related grant?
Objection.
Yeah, I'm not, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't feel they had the necessarily the training or background to make those judgments.
To your knowledge, did they have any training and background in humanities grants at all?
I don't know about their backgrounds.
Did they come across to you as experts in the humanities like the experts you were talking about before?
I don't think so.
I think their expertise was in computer technology and so on and so forth.
Okay.
And so when you see a grant about the preservation of the papers of George Washington flagged as DEI, I guess first I should say you would disagree with that assessment, correct?
Yes.
And you think that that's pretty obviously not a DEI-related grant, right?
Yes.
Okay.
Were you concerned that when they make a mistake so blatant, that's one of more than 1,500 grants in the spreadsheet?
Were you concerned that there were going to be a lot of grants that were going to be canceled because of their DEI affiliation that had nothing to do with DEI?
Objection.
So, again, I think what became clear to us was their concern or their objective wasn't just DEI.
It was the cancellation of grants that, in their view, didn't fit the administration's priorities.
And so, yes, a lot of grants were going to fall under that category.
Okay.
And they made the determination which grants didn't align with the administration's priorities.
Well, apart from the exceptions, like those spreadsheets, yeah.
I mean, that represented their point of view, I assume.
Okay.
And setting aside the examples like the papers of George Washington that you flagged as this subject seems very much in line with the administration's priorities for other grants that you disagreed with their assessment that it was DEI related.
How did you or Mr. McDonald convey that to Justin Fox and Nate Kavanaugh?
I don't remember how that was conveyed beyond the spreadsheet that was initialed.
Okay.
can we go to row 37 we're going to go through a couple more of these to try to better understand this process So do you see in row 37 a project description that begins with the Clements Library is applying for funding to support grant?
Okay.
And it looks like it was an application for funding to support the rehousing and digitization of the papers of British General Thomas Gage.
You see that?
Yep.
Okay.
And looks like General Gage was a British commander in the colonies before the Revolution.
Okay.
If you look over to the left, the DEI rationale that Doge gave for flagging this grant about British General Gage as DEI was: quote, the project does relate to DEI as it aims to preserve, digitize, and make accessible historical materials related to British General Thomas Gage's service in North America, promoting inclusivity and diversity in historical research.
Final Cancellation Decisions00:14:58
Do you agree with that?
Objection?
As we've discussed, that does not fit my definition and understanding of what would cause of a DEI grant in the sense that I understand what we're talking about when we talk about DEI.
Not just a grant, but right, anyway.
Do you know anybody who would consider a grant related to a white British general in the American Revolution era to be a DEI grant?
Objection.
I'm not sure how I can.
Yeah, well, I don't.
They obviously thought so.
Okay, they thought so because what are the reasons they give here?
Promoting right because they think it promotes inclusivity and diversity in historical research.
Okay.
Isn't that something that could be said about any project if it can be said about this one?
Yeah, I mean, again, you have to ask them for their this is no doubt their description.
And you said whether, you can't remember whether it was this spreadsheet or a different version, but you said that you and Mr. McDonald reviewed more than 1,400 grants and the more than 1,400 DEI rationales that Doge gave you.
Do you remember that?
Again, we did the best of our ability.
Right.
It was not easy, you know, working off a screen, but we tried.
Okay.
Do you remember seeing anything in that review like this that in your view clearly was not DEI?
Objection.
I think in some instances we were surprised to see things listed as DEI.
Right.
I think they had a different view.
They were only interested in projects that were directly related to the priorities of the administration as they understood it.
Okay, but in this document they're saying it's DEI in the column we just read, right?
Yeah, evidently.
Okay.
Does this explanation of why the grants about British General Thomas Gage is DEI?
Does reading this cause you to question the competence of Mr. Kavanaugh and Mr. Fox to make determinations about humanities grants and their work?
Objection.
They were not humanities experts.
I'm pretty sure they wouldn't claim to be so.
And so if this grant about General Gage was canceled, is it your view that it was canceled because it was DEI?
Objection?
Not necessarily.
I don't know why it would have, right?
As I said, there was sort of this key turning point when they made clear that the parameters were much broader.
And any number of grants that might be seen as trivial or not significant were going to be, they believe, should be canceled as a part of, as they said, budget reduction or some such thing.
I see.
So by the end of the process, the DEI designation didn't really matter that much.
Objection.
It's just wasteful spending.
Objection?
I'm much, I don't know.
In their minds, it was clearly a combination, but that became a big part of it, yes.
Okay.
And so did NEH make a determination that this grant related to General Gage was wasteful spending?
I don't recall any such determination.
Okay.
Did it make determinations that other grants were wasteful spending?
I don't recall that, no.
Okay, who made that determination?
Objection.
Again, these are this is all sort of the, if you will, pre-decisional, as we call it agency, right, pre-decisional work.
The final person to make that call was Michael as the acting chair.
And so if this grant was canceled, and I'll represent to you that this grant was canceled.
Okay, thank you.
It was because Michael made a determination that it's wasteful spending and/or DEI?
Objection.
I think you'd have to ask Michael in specific instances.
Okay, but you said that the final call was Michael's, right?
Yes.
Okay, so that means he identified this grant as one to be canceled or someone else identified it.
Well, as you can see, it was identified, presumably, If we're getting our facts right, not by the directors in this case, but by the Doge folks.
So it was identified by them, but it would have been Michael, because that's the nature of the agency who made the final decision.
Okay.
And is it your belief that if this grant had not been flagged by Doge that this grant would have been canceled by Mr. McDonnell?
Objection.
I can't say.
You have to ask him.
It seems like a speculative question.
Probably best to direct that question to him.
Okay, but if you look above the one we're looking at, that's another one where it says the DEI rationale is NEH identified DEI involvement.
And so this grant does not fall into that category, right?
Objection.
In which category?
A category of documents, I'm sorry, of grants that NEH identified as having DEI involvement.
NEH identified DEI involvement.
This is the Haitian Arts Digital Crossroads.
So right, this, it appears, was identified by NEH as such.
Right, so if that grant was canceled, it was because it was initially flagged by NEH, right?
Objection.
Again, best to ask that question to Michael.
That seems like a reasonable assumption.
Did you talk to Michael at all about the process for deciding which of grants to cancel?
I mean, I think we've been talking about the process.
I mean, it kind of was what it was.
You said that you and Michael did the best you could under the limited time frame to review more than 1,400 grants to determine whether to cancel them, right?
Objection.
And so I'm asking for your sense of how the final decision was made.
You said you were involved in that process.
Objection.
The final decision was made by Michael.
Okay.
I mean, yeah, he was the one who, yes.
Okay.
Pulled the switch, so to speak.
Okay.
And you referenced earlier the short timeframe under which you and Michael had to do this review, right?
Why was the time frame short?
That I don't know.
That was Nate and Justin saying it had to be done by, I can't remember, it was April 1st or April 2nd or something.
And that only became evident later.
And you guys complied with their instructions about the timeframe, right?
Objection.
We did our best.
Okay.
But it wasn't you or Michael who came up with the April 2nd deadline, right?
No.
Okay.
It wasn't mine.
Were there any grants for which you and Michael, other than the ones that you said might be embarrassing to the administration, like the papers of George Washington?
Were there any grants that you two in the review you discussed earlier said should not be canceled?
I don't remember offhand.
Okay.
It would be reflected in the spreadsheets.
Okay.
If we can go back to the email that attached, that the spreadsheet was attached to.
Yes.
Okay, and so do you see the bullet below grants that says employees?
And this is on bates 45 ending in 45042?
Employees, yes.
Yeah.
Can you read out the first two sub-bullets for me?
Under employees, we used a percent reduction in grants related to DEI to inform a reduction in headcount by office division.
Page one summarizes the detailed changes to the census on pages two to five.
Okay.
So am I understanding correctly that this was their recommendation for which employees to terminate?
Objection.
It would seem that way.
I did not oversee the reduction in force.
That's not within my lane.
That was overseen by Pranitha, the individual I mentioned earlier, and HR.
But you testified earlier that the reduction in force that did take place is unlike anyone that came before it in your 20 years at the agency, right?
Yes.
Much, much more substantial, is that fair to say?
Objection.
Yeah, I think so.
And based on your recollection of your interactions with the folks on this email, Mr. McDonnell, Mr. Fox, Mr. Kavanaugh, was the size of the reduction that would need to take place proposed initially by Doge The number of people who would need to be terminated.
Yes, I believe they were the ones who said you need to reduce by a certain amount.
Okay.
And what about the decisions about which individual employees to fire?
That was all overseen by Pranitha and HR.
I was not involved in that.
Okay.
And am I right that Mr. Fox is saying here that the percentage reduction in force that they propose is tied to the percentage reduction in grants related to DEI?
Do you see that?
I see that, yep.
Okay.
Does that accurately reflect your recollection of how things occurred?
I don't believe it worked that way.
I believe that HR followed whatever the OPM rules are for how you conduct a reduction in force, a RIF.
Okay.
But it was Doge that initially proposed the size of RIF that eventually reached.
I believe they are the ones who said this is the mark you need to reach.
Okay, and what would happen if you didn't reach it?
Objection.
I don't know.
I mean, our fear was that, as we had read in other newspaper in the newspapers, that the reduction could have been more severe.
You were afraid that that might happen?
Objection.
Just based on what was happening at the time, reading the newspapers.
Were you afraid around this time, mid-March of 2025, were you afraid about losing your own job?
Objection.
There were a lot of questions, yes.
I would just say that in my case, a reduction in force generally goes by tenure, and I happen to have been here for a fair amount of time, so I was probably less exposed than others.
Okay.
And turning back to the grants for a moment, were you concerned that many of the grants that you, when you were chair as acting chair, described as important to fostering public knowledge, that many of those grants were being canceled?
Objection?
Was I concerned?
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, look, my job is to do the best I can to fulfill the vision of a particular administration.
That's what I did when I was acting chair and working for Chairlow when she arrived.
And that's what I always seek to do.
If I have concerns, that kind of thing, for the most part, those would be things I wouldn't necessarily voice.
Yeah, I'm not asking whether you voiced them.
I'm just asking whether, I mean, in 2021, you touted, and this is just an example, 225 grants as important to NEH's mission and furthering public knowledge.
And most or all of those grants were canceled, and I'm wondering whether you were concerned.
Objection.
Again, concerned meaning, can you explain it more?
Troubled.
I wouldn't have necessarily, I think my personal view was, no one asked me for my personal view, my personal view, but that's what I'm supposed to do here as I understand it.
is that that's not necessarily the best way to proceed.
If someone had asked you for your personal view, would you have told them that they shouldn't have canceled these grants?
Objection?
Depends who would ask.
Meeting Timing And Concerns00:14:19
If it's McDonald had.
As I reported directly to him, and I would yes.
Okay.
And you were never asked that by the Doge folks?
No.
And if you had been asked, would you have told them you were concerned about the cancellation of so many grants?
Objection.
Sort of a speculative question.
Who knows what one says under the circumstances?
Yes, I may have.
I don't know.
Can we go to row 48 of the same spreadsheet?
Council, we're coming up on almost an hour and a half, so maybe once we're finished with the spreadsheet, we can do a lunch break.
That sounds good.
Thanks.
I'm sorry, 49.
Okay, so do you see the grant description listed on row 49?
Oh, I'm sorry, I was looking at the wrong one.
This project will process and digitize four collections totaling 122 linear feet from YVO's Jewish Labor and Political Archives?
Yes.
and the DEI rationale given there by Doge.
Do you see that?
Yes.
Can you read that for the record?
These collections represent Jewish labor unions that fought for workers' rights, showing the intersection of Jewish immigrant experience and labor movements.
Okay.
Do you agree with the conclusion that based on those reasons this grant is DEI?
Objection.
Again, kind of going by my view of what a DEI grant is, it being sort of agenda-driven, having an ideological edge to it, based on this description in the grant description column, I don't necessarily see it.
Okay.
And is this one of the kind of grant that you and Mr. McDonald had talked about on the anti-Semitism piece we talked about earlier?
Objection?
I'm sorry.
I'm not sure what you're talking about, conversations with Michael about.
Remember when we looked at your text messages with Mr. McDonald and he had sent you an article about Jewish-related grants being canceled?
And would you say that this grant that we're looking at now falls into that category?
I don't know if this particular grant was discussed in the forward article or not.
No, but I mean, you had said that you talked about how you and Mr. McDonald had talked about how an administration purporting to care about combating anti-Semitism had canceled grants for being associated with Jewish topics.
That was the, I think that was the, right, that was kind of the gist of the article.
He sent it to me.
I responded, as you can see.
I don't recall any discussions with Michael.
Okay.
Did you have discussions with anyone else at NEH about how many of the grants that Doge was flagging for cancellation related to Jewish studies?
No.
Okay.
And so when you wrote here that Doge cut grants having nothing to do with DEI, would you agree that this grant falls in that category?
Objection.
This one here.
Do I agree that it Do you agree that it's a grant cut by Doge having nothing to do with the EI?
Jackson.
To my mind, no, this would have fallen into their efforts of just calling back me.
and the same with how they viewed it I don't know And the same with the general gauge grant we talked about before.
Yes, objection.
You would say that that's a grant that Doge cut that had nothing to do with the EI?
Objection.
I don't, personally, I don't see how it fits within the DEI category.
Okay.
And I understand that you were likely not thinking about these two specific grants when you sent this text message.
But you do still agree with the statement that Doge cut grants having nothing to do with the EI.
Yes.
Absolutely.
Okay.
We can take a break.
Okay.
What time are we reconvening for?
All right, stand by.
I'm sorry.
All right, please stand by.
The time is 12.26 p.m.
And we are off the record.
The time is 1.18 p.m. and we are on the record.
Welcome back, Mr. Wilson.
Did you have a good lunch?
I did, thank you.
I hope you did as well.
Thank you.
And you recognize that you're still under oath?
Yes, okay.
Let's see.
I'm going to introduce as exhibit four, um, this document.
Uh, we'll send exhibit four.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I'm sorry, exhibit five.
I'm sorry, exhibit five.
And Exhibit 5 has the Bates number of U.S.-000041106.
Am I correct, Mr. Wilson, that this is an email that you sent to Mr. Kavanaugh and Mr. Fox ceasing Mr. McDonald on March 13th of last year?
Yes.
Do you remember sending this email?
Yeah, I mean, it's definitely my email.
You don't have any reason to doubt the authenticity of that?
No, absolutely not.
And you sent this email in the ordinary course of your business?
Yes, you know, the context seems like, right, I was sending them the work of the directors in NEH.
Yep.
Okay.
So it says here: hi, Nate, hi, Justin.
Great meeting you yesterday and catching up today.
Did I read that correctly?
Yes.
And so you sent this on March 13th.
So am I correct in understanding from this that you first met Mr. Kavanaugh and Mr. Fox the day before this, on March 12th?
It must be.
I don't precisely remember the date, but yes, must be.
Okay.
And then you write, as discussed, I've copied below the link for the award spreadsheet created by Brett that the program directors used for their historical review of NEH's grants since January 2021.
Did I read that correctly?
Yes.
Okay.
And then you write, it's broken down by program office, each one having its own tab.
The directors reviewed the grants made through their office and entered comments for the three relevant categories: DEI/slash/DEIA, gender ideology, and environmental justice, and rated them based on level of involvement with any of these categories: high, medium, low, not applicable.
Did I read that correctly?
Yes.
Okay, and so this is the document you were referring to before that initially at Chair Lowe's direction, you and the NEH staff had put together in response to the executive orders, is that right?
Yes.
Okay.
And it's clear from the timeline of this email that you all began putting that together before you met Mr. Kavanaugh and Mr. Fox.
Is that fair?
Yes.
Okay.
When you met them the day before you sent this, am I right that they asked you to send them this list?
That must be.
Okay.
When you had begun compiling this initial list at Chair Lowe's direction, did you expect that it would eventually be sent to Doge?
Objection.
At that point, Doge was not in the picture.
It was sent to the directions where it was sent to OMB.
Okay.
But having put it together for OMB, you figure this is a good starting place for Doge?
They must have asked for it or it must have come up.
Okay.
What do you recall about that initial meeting with Mr. Fox and Mr. Kavanaugh on March 12th?
I don't recall a lot.
I think I was there.
Michael, Pranitha, maybe Lizette, but I'm not sure.
I don't recall.
And it was just kind of a meet-and-greet type of meeting.
Okay.
Who asked for the meeting?
That I don't know.
Okay.
You think it was someone at NEH or someone at Doge?
Objection.
This would be just guesswork.
I'm assuming it was Doge that requested the meeting.
Am I right that if someone from outside of NEH had not asked you to interface with and meet with Doge, NEH wouldn't of its own accord met with Doge?
Objection.
That seems like a fair assumption.
There weren't discussions before, you know, this week that you sent this email of within NEH of saying, hey, let's meet with Doge.
Maybe they could be helpful.
No.
Okay, so someone from outside of NEH told you guys that you should meet with Doge?
Objection.
And I don't know how that meeting was set up or how it transpired, but I was at the meeting.
Right.
I'm asking about the initial contact with Doge.
Am I right that it was not Chair Lowe or Acting Chair McDonald's impetus that led to a meeting with Doge?
It was some other person, whoever it was, was saying, was directing you guys to meet with Doge?
Objection.
Well, Chair Lowe was gone at that point, if I'm not mistaken.
Michael was the acting chairman.
How the meeting was arranged and who, that I'm not aware of.
Okay.
But you said you don't recall any conversations internally to NEH about NEH wanting to about NEH wanting Doge to get involved with grant terminations.
No.
Okay.
So it's fair to assume that that idea came from outside of NEH?
Objection.
I think that's a reasonable conclusion.
Okay.
And I think we talked about this before.
I apologize.
But this was sent on March 13th of last year.
About when did Chair Lowe and senior staff begin the process of compiling the spreadsheet that you sent here?
I don't remember the exact timeline.
The executive order was towards the end of January.
I think we began work shortly thereafter, so it would have either been, again, you know, the last week or so of January or the beginning of February.
I know the, I recall the directors were eager to, we were all aware of it, and they realized it would take some time.
So it began end of January, early February.
And about how much time did it take?
You know, I think it was completed sometime.
I don't remember exactly when it was completed.
We submitted it on time to OMB.
So it was a couple of months.
Okay.
It took a couple months to put together, to conduct the review required to comply with the EO?
By OMB, they had set a deadline and we wanted to make sure we complied with the deadline.
Okay.
Is it fair to say that that process of compiling the spreadsheet would take more than a week?
That the directors put together?
Yeah, the spreadsheet, the initial spreadsheet that you all put together in order to try to comply with the executive order.
That process take more than a week?
Yes, I think that's fair, yeah.
Took more than a month.
Again, I'd have to kind of go back and put together the timeline of exactly how long it took.
And remember, all of us, and especially the program directors, are doing a lot of different things at this time.
This was hardly our only responsibility.
The big responsibility that we were all really focused on was March Council that we were assuming was going to be overseen by Chair Lowe at that point in time.
But that is a huge, that's one of the most time-consuming things we do is the preparation for a council meeting.
Okay.
Is it fair to say that you all, and this is just the best of your recollection, that you all took more time putting together this initial spreadsheet than it took for you than the time it took between meeting Fox and Kavanaugh and the cancellations on April 2nd?
Objection?
What are the two comparison points?
I'm going to try that again.
So you met Fox and Kavanaugh on March 12th?
Council Preparation Duties00:09:32
Yeah.
The vast majority of grants outstanding that NEH was administering were canceled on April 1st, 2nd, and 3rd, right?
Yes.
Okay, so it's about two and a half weeks?
Yes, something like that.
Okay, so within two and a half weeks of your meeting Fox and Kavanaugh, you canceled the vast majority of grants that were, strike that, within two and a half weeks of your meeting Fox and Kavanaugh, the vast majority of NEH's grants were canceled?
Yes, Michael's letter was sent out, I think, April 1st or April 2nd, as I recall.
Okay.
And that was the result of the process that began with Fox and Kavanaugh, right?
Yes, although this was incorporated into it, right?
Right.
Do you remember approximately how many grants were canceled on April 1st or 2nd?
I think as I mentioned before, I don't know the exact number.
It's fair to say it's the vast majority of outstanding grants.
Objection?
Dating back to January of 2021, that's my understanding, yes.
The vast majority of grants that were still outstanding, for which there was still money to be paid, were canceled, right?
I believe so.
Okay.
Do you recall whether the spreadsheet that you all put together of your own accord, whether that recommended canceling a majority of NEH's grants?
I never added it up, right?
And it wasn't, again, it wasn't, we were rating them high, medium, and low.
And, right, so I don't know the, I don't recall.
Okay.
Yeah, I'm sorry.
Is it fair to say that more grants were canceled than you originally sent in this spreadsheet here?
Jackson.
Then we, I'm sorry, which spreadsheet now?
The spreadsheet that you sent in this email to Kavanaugh and Fox.
Were more grants canceled than was in that spreadsheet?
Yes.
Yes, because as we've been talking about, the parameters were enlarged.
Who enlarged them?
As I've discussed, Nate and Justin, the Doge folks, made clear that it wasn't just about these categories.
Okay, so they enlarged them.
I think that's fair to say.
Okay.
And we'll mark this email chain as Wilson Exhibit 6.
OK.
And it's Exhibit 6 has a Bates number beginning US-000002731.
Mr. Wilson, is this an email that you sent to Mr. McDonald on April 29th of last year?
Yes.
Okay.
And it's an email about a University of Utah project?
If I can just read it quickly.
Yes, okay.
Do you remember sending this email?
Again, I don't remember actually sending it, but yes, this is my email.
Okay, and you have no reason to doubt the authenticity of this document?
No, I'm sorry, no.
Okay.
So why did you send this email?
Again, I think that, you know, from the chain, it's clear, I think it's pretty clear what happened.
Carol, Carol Peters was one of the directors involved in that historical review that we've been talking about.
She was the director of the Education Division.
And she explains, Lindsay, who works in the Office of Grant Management, contacted her about a particular award that was not terminated, but did have a note indicating the need for a second review.
OGM has requested that she, Carol, confirm how Micah would prefer this award to be handled.
So it seems like that's the origins of it from OGM to Carol to me.
Okay.
And to Mike.
Okay.
And you say in your email to Mike, see Carol's email below regarding an application that was approved by Chair Lowe from November Council 2024.
This proposed University of Utah project entitled Environmental Humanities and Transformative Justice must have somehow fallen through the cracks in Doge's sweep.
Did I read that correctly?
Okay.
And I think you sort of explained this in your previous answer, but what did you mean by fallen through the crack?
Well, it seems as right, as Carol indicates, her division, right, so this was her oversight had marked it as a high risk in terms of the DEI.
But it, anyway, I think I'm remembering this correctly.
In any event, so she was just conscientiously bringing this to the attention of the chair's office, that it, in her view, that apparently, in her view, it seems, this was something that should have or might well have been canceled, but was not based on the criteria.
Okay.
So this is something that she wanted us to know having been prompted by Office of Grant Management.
Okay.
And so when you mentioned just now that it had been marked as high risk in our grant review database, that marking is the marking that NEH did before Doge arrived that we were just talking about a few minutes ago.
Yeah, that's my assumption as she's referring to the, right, because we had those categories, high, medium, low, not applicable.
So that's what makes me think that this was from that list.
And Doge's categories were just yes, no, right?
Yes.
Okay.
And so when you write that this grant must have somehow fallen through the cracks in Doge's sweep, you meant that, well, what did you mean by that?
I think what I must have meant was that it wasn't On the list, right, that became the list that was reviewed for final termination decisions by Michael.
Right, so right, somehow it wasn't on that list even though it was on the earlier list.
I think that that's what I must have meant.
This is the list of grants that Doge canceled?
No, I think what I'm trying, what I meant was I'm assuming a lot here, just based on the context and what Carol is writing.
I'm assuming that it was on the list that I've been calling the historical review that began under Chair Lowe and was overseen and worked on by the division directors.
At some point, again, as we've discussed, the Doge folks combine their list with NEH's self-generated list.
And so I think my loose language here, somehow falling through the cracks, means that it probably wasn't on that list.
That final combined list.
Sorry.
So it probably wasn't on the list that Doge prepared.
Yes.
Objection.
And those were the grants that got canceled.
Objection.
Yes.
Okay.
And so it didn't get canceled because it wasn't on the list that Doge prepared.
Objection.
That's my sense of it.
Again, I'm just going by this, you know, these two emails.
But that's, am I right that that's your understanding sitting here today of what you meant when you said fallen through the cracks and Does this sweep?
Objection.
Right.
Reading it now, that's my sense.
Okay.
My best sense.
Okay, we'll
Cooperative Agreement Termination00:15:31
mark as exhibit seven, this email and related attachments.
Okay, for the record, Wilson, exhibit seven begins on page bates numbers US-00002796.
Mr. Wilson, do you recognize this email?
Yes, that's my email.
You sent this email.
Right to Scott, Richard, Pranifa, and Brett.
Okay.
And who is Scott?
Scott was the head of the Cherilo had created a new office.
It was our data office.
We had never had a data office, and he was the director of that office.
It was a startup, a new office.
Okay, what's his last name?
Scott Weingarten, I think.
And does he work at NEH still?
He no longer does.
Was he terminated as part of the reduction in force?
You know, I actually don't quite remember.
I think he may have, I think he may have resigned earlier, but I don't remember.
Okay.
And Richard is Richard Brundage?
Yes.
And does he still work at NEH?
Yes.
He's the head of our grants office.
Okay.
And it's Pranita Raganoff?
Yes.
And Brett Bombly, I think you said?
Yes.
Okay.
So if we go to the first and time email, the second meltdown, Mr. McDonald writes on March 30th to you and to Ms. Voyazis.
This is another agreement that will have to go by the wayside.
Maybe we should have Richard at least give AAAS and ACLS 30 days notice.
Did I read that correctly?
Yes.
Okay.
And am I right that AAS stands for American Academy of Arts and Sciences?
Yes.
Okay.
And ACLS is one of the plaintiffs in the related case, American Council of Learning Societies?
Yes.
Okay.
Do you remember sending this email?
To Scott Richard Prince?
Yeah, the one above it.
Yes.
Again, I don't actually remember, but yes, clearly it's mine.
And you have no reason to doubt its authenticity.
No.
Okay.
And then so Mr. McDonald wrote to you and Ms. Voyazzis, this is another agreement that will have to go by the wayside.
Why did this agreement have to go by the wayside?
Objection?
I think that would be a question for Michael.
I don't know offhand what his answer is.
It's probably best to ask him.
You have no idea.
I believe my understanding would be that this was an initiative begun under the previous administration.
And the view probably was that it did not in any direct way support or further the aims of the new administration, the Trump administration.
And I assume that's the reason.
Okay.
Did you expect that this cooperative agreement would be canceled?
Objection.
I don't remember my expectations one way or the other.
I think it's not surprising given the termination of the other grants.
And why is that?
I think for the reason that I mentioned the effort to cancel grants that were no longer perceived as not being supportive of the administration.
And what makes a grant supportive of the other administration?
Objection?
Again, I think that would be a question more for Michael, but I right there was a sense of what the Trump administration's priorities were.
This was a data collection effort.
I don't remember the ins and outs of the application.
It was spearheaded and initiated by Scott, who reported to Brett.
And it just, I guess, wasn't seen as important.
Wasn't seen by the new leadership, Michael.
Okay.
Is this in your experience normally how grants are terminated?
Is the chair just emails the acting chair for programs and says this one no more?
As I said, as we discussed earlier before lunch, there are very few terminations and there is a termination process overseen by OGM.
This is prior to the Trump administration?
Yes.
Okay.
So prior to this current administration, it would be unusual for an individual grant to be terminated in this manner.
That is to say, an email from the chair to yourself and Ms. Voyazzi saying this agreement has to go and providing no explanation.
That would have been unusual before this administration, right?
Objection?
Yes, in the sense that as we discussed, in my experience, very few grants were terminated.
Okay.
Period, yeah.
And do you know whether Mr. McDonald had any reason to believe that the American Academy of Arts and Sciences or the American Council of Learned Societies had not been complying with the terms of their grant?
I'm not aware.
Right, you could ask him.
Okay.
And it says here that both Mr. McDonald, when he first emailed you and then you, when you forward this, that Richard should give AAAS 30 days' notice of the termination.
Do you know whether such notice is actually given?
I don't.
Okay.
Who would I ask to figure that out?
I think probably Richard would be the person to ask or Pernifa.
Okay.
Thank you.
Mark, this is in Wilson Exhibit 8.
And the Bates number for this exhibit is US-00002842.
And this is an email exchange that initiates between yourself and the division directors at the bottom of the page.
Is that right?
Yes, that's right.
And then Mr. Bobley was one of the division directors that received your initial email?
Yes, he oversaw the office.
He wore two hats.
He oversaw the Office of Digital Humanities, and he was also our Chief Information Officer, CIO.
Okay.
And this is on Thursday, April 3rd of last year, right?
Yes.
So this is after the majority of NEH's grants were canceled?
Right, yes.
Okay.
And do you remember sending that bottom email on April 3rd of last year?
Yeah, it's certainly my email.
Again, I don't remember seeing it, typing it out, but yes, it's mine.
Okay.
And you wrote, dear directors, in the event you or your staff receive inquiries from grantees about the termination of their awards, you should respond that the reasons for the terminations are set out in the communications that the grantees received.
and that you, meaning you or your staff, can provide no additional information.
Program staff should simply leave it at that.
Thanks, Adam.
Did I read that correctly?
Yes.
Why did you send this email?
I think given the context, I think there, you know, part of my job, I meet regularly with the directors, and I imagine there must have been some concern about how to respond to questions.
And I would have asked Michael for how he wants program staff to respond when they get these inquiries.
And so your best recollection is that you're channeling something here that Michael told you?
Objection?
Yes.
I wouldn't have come up with this by myself.
Okay.
And when you tell that staff should limit the explanation to the reasons set out in the communications the grantees received, am I right that what you're referring to there are the termination letters?
Yes, the termination letters that Michael sent out, correct.
And the termination letters, who drafted those?
I wasn't part of that drafting experience, so I don't know who put it together.
It's my understanding that the Doge folks played some role.
Okay.
And the termination letters refer to the three executive orders we talked about earlier as the reason for the cancellation, is that right?
Yes.
As I recall the letter said something like, I don't remember that.
I don't want to try to recap the letter.
But in your recollection, they referred to multiple executive orders as the reason for the cancellation?
I think that's right, yes.
And they were...
I don't.
Again, I'd have to pull up the letter.
Okay.
And it was effectively the same letter sent to all grant recipients whose grants had been terminated?
I think they all got the same letter, yes.
Okay.
Signed by Michael.
So no individualized explanation?
I don't think so.
Okay.
Mr. Bobley responds to you later on Thursday, April 3rd, saying, do you know the scope of the cancellations?
I take it the scope was increased beyond only those that conflicted with the EOs.
Did I read that correctly?
Yes.
Okay, and then you respond, that's correct, right?
Yes.
Okay, so that's correct that the scope of grants that were canceled was beyond those that conflicted with executive orders.
Yes, as we've discussed.
Okay.
And then Mr. Bobley responds to you saying, we're getting emails about totally non-controversial projects being canceled.
For example, apparently we canceled a preservation project at the Center for Jewish History.
Did I read that correctly?
Yes.
And continuing on, did we cancel every single open award?
If not, do you know the criteria that Mike used?
If we can't fund the preservation of a library of Jewish rare books, I'm not sure we'll be able to find much of value going forward.
Did I read that correctly?
Yes.
What did you understand, Mr. Velpley, to be saying here?
Objection.
When you asked me that question, what are you referring to exactly that you want me to try to explain?
Let me rephrase it.
Do you agree with his statement about there being totally non-controversial projects being canceled?
Objection.
Yes, I think I would agree that there were many projects that were not controversial that were canceled.
Okay.
And he lists here as an example a preservation project at the Center for Jewish History.
Do you remember that particular grant?
I don't remember that particular grant.
But you have no reason to doubt Mr. Vobley's assertion that such a grant was canceled?
I have no reason to doubt that.
Okay.
Would you agree that cancellation of a preservation project at the Center for Jewish History is an example of a totally non-controversial project that was canceled?
Objection.
I'd have to look at the application, but yes, I imagine it was not controversial.
Okay.
And why was that grant canceled then?
Objection.
I'm guessing it was canceled as we've discussed before because of the enlargement of the parameters of what was to be canceled beyond DEI, environmental justice, and so on to just grants that were not viewed as in some way directly supportive of the administration's goals.
Okay.
Obama Administration Findings00:13:31
And who initiated that enlargement, as you put it?
Again, I think as I indicated in this morning's session, it was really, I think, the folks from Doge who said they were interested in a much larger group of grants, not just DEI for budget reduction purposes and so on.
Okay.
Do you remember strike that?
Did you receive other e-mails like this asking internally, asking new questions about the scope of the cancellations that had taken place that week?
I don't.
I don't remember.
I don't think I received other emails of this sort.
Did you talk with anybody here at the office about the fact that most of the grants that had been outstanding were canceled?
Objection.
I think it was the topic of the day.
Did you all talk about what this meant for the future of the agency?
Objection.
I think there was, again, I think people had different views, but certainly there was concern about what it might mean.
What was your view?
I think my view was we were fortunate that Michael McDonald had been asked to oversee the agency and be acting chair since he had been there for, as I said, well over 20 years.
And In addition to his law degree, he has a PhD in the humanities and literature.
And it's good to have someone at the helm who knows what the humanities are.
Okay, I wasn't asking about who was leading the agency.
I was asking about the fact that two days before this, the vast majority of grants that this grant-making agency had given were canceled summarily.
How did you feel about that?
Objection.
I think it's sort of similar to the question you asked earlier in the day.
In my time here, it was unprecedented, and my view would be don't look backward, look forward.
In your time at NEH, both in your current role and your past role as acting chairman and as head of the research division before that, do you interact often with NEH grant recipients over email or conferences?
et cetera?
Not a lot, more so when I was in the research division.
Not so much as the assistant chair for programs.
Okay.
And in your view, does an academic receiving an NEH award provide something of value to that person?
Objection.
I think we know from what people say is that, yes, it is valuable in terms of advancing their research and their careers and their humanities endeavors.
They appreciate the financial support.
So in addition to the financial support, is it fair to say that receiving an NEH grant that has gone through the peer review process we talked about earlier provides other benefits to grantees besides financial?
I think they probably see it that way.
Reputational?
I'm not quite sure what reputational means, but I think it is sort of seen as a badge of honor and helpful to them.
And do you think that a project receiving an NEH grant increases the likelihood that that project will receive publication?
Objection.
Will be published?
Objection?
That's a good question.
We once did a study in the research division during the Obama administration because OMB had requested that we do so.
And it was conducted by the staff.
And I think the conclusions of the study were that based on the various methodologies they had used, questionnaires and whatnot, to recipients of fellowships, was that the book would have gotten done and published without the grant, but that with the grant they were able to do more in-depth research and get it done more quickly than they otherwise would.
I think that was, it was a published report.
It's probably somewhere on our website.
So the research itself got the benefit of more substantive attention, it sounds like?
I'm not quite sure I understood that question.
Well, when you say that the, sorry, you said that the work would likely still have been completed and published, but that the report you referenced found what?
Yes, so OMB had asked us to put together a report.
This is again under the Obama administration, so I'm working off some old memories.
And it was to gauge the effectiveness of our funding.
And so the staff in the research division that was then headed up by Jane Aiken, who was the director, she was the author of the report, did a lot of surveys and questionnaires and other things looking at people who received fellowships.
They were only looking at fellowships, as I recall.
And their conclusion, again, it would be helpful, you know, the report is published.
But as I recall, the conclusion was that the book most likely would have gotten completed and published, but there was a sense among people who received the grant that enabled them to improve the quality of the book by improved research and that they were able to get it done more quickly than they otherwise would have.
So it improved the quality because they were, due to the grant, able to focus more resources on the study?
Yeah, I think it would differ from individual to individual, but right, if let's say you're doing some kind of work that requires travel to archives in wherever, Japan, France, Russia, or something like that, that could be part of the grant.
And perhaps, right, and perhaps without that grant, you wouldn't have been able to visit that archive.
You still would have been able to do the book, but not with that.
I'm kind of making this up to try to explain, I think, what is meant by that.
Right.
And this is just all part of my broader question about benefits that an NEH grant provides folks who receive that grant.
And so one finding of this report back in the Obama administration is that substantive work might be a little bit more in-depth because of the funding might allow for research that might not otherwise take place, right?
Yes.
Okay.
And I think you said that it also might be done on a faster timeline because they're able to dedicate more attention and time to the project than they otherwise would.
Yes, that's my memory of the gist of the findings of that report.
Okay.
I think we also said there's a reputational benefit.
Yes, I think...
Objection.
Yeah, I think most people feel it's an honor to get an NEH award.
Do you feel that it's an honor to get an NEH reward?
Objection?
Yes, it's probably a yeah, I don't know.
And that's all before we talk about the financial piece, which obviously is what the award itself is giving is a grant of money, right?
And you're aware, aren't you, that some of the grants require that the applicant, if they're awarded the grant, forego other paid work opportunities while they focus on the work that's being funded, right?
Right.
Maybe just repeat it again, so I can...
You're aware, are you not, that for some of NEH's grants, and I'm thinking just for the record of the Public Scholars Program, one of the conditions of receiving the funds from NEH is that they will forego other money-earning work.
Yes, they're required to devote full time to the project.
That's correct.
Which has the benefits we talked about before of letting them focus on the projects that they care about.
Yes.
Okay.
And so you weren't concerned at all about more than 1,400 people and institutions losing that financial wherewithal and losing those other benefits?
Again, projection?
Personally, I feel bad, right?
It's not, and I can understand why people would be upset that I try to keep my personal feelings out of the workplace.
Okay.
Did you ever talk with Mr. McDonnell about how you felt bad about those effects on these people?
Objection.
Again, I don't recall, so I try to keep my personal feelings this way or that outside of the workplace.
I've worked for a lot of different chairs, and they have different ways of doing things, and I try to find ways of working effectively with them.
So, did you ever talk with them about it?
Objection.
I don't think so.
Okay.
Did you think it was fair to the awardees who had their grants canceled that their grants were canceled summarily?
Objection.
Again, I don't know what you mean by fair.
There's no doubt that they would have felt that it was not fair.
And I can understand that.
The administration obviously felt that, you know, felt that they wanted things done a certain way.
So I wasn't asking what the recipients felt or what the administration felt, which is what your answer was.
I'm asking what you felt.
Did you feel it was fair to grant recipients, most of whom were mid-cycle, having performed the obligations that they were required to, having their grants summarily terminated with no process for appeal?
Did you think that was fair?
Objection.
I think as I said, I try to keep my judgments, my personal views, my values, right, outside of the workplace.
I think in an ideal world, yes, you would go through the process.
That's why we have the processes for termination in this case.
So I appreciate and I believe your testimony that you keep your personal feelings outside of the workplace.
I'm asking what those personal feelings were.
Did you think it was fair?
Objection.
Yes, my personal feeling is ideally you would follow the internal procedures of the agency that existed at that time.
I'm not asking about ideally what you would do.
I'm asking about what happened in early April of last year.
Yes.
Did you think that was fair to grant recipients?
Um, um, if, if, right, no, I, right.
Whatever we mean by fair, it was not fair.
It was not fair.
Yeah.
Did you feel like your hands were tied?
Objection.
No, again, I'm not the decision maker.
My hands weren't tied one way or the other.
I'm a civil servant.
I try to, right, as a civil servant, I try to be neutral and to assist the leadership of the agency in accomplishing what they want to accomplish.
Okay.
Yeah, that's kind of a basic to being a civil servant.
And here, what was the goal the leadership of this agency was trying to accomplish?
Objection.
In respect to the cancellation of grants?
Grant Reinstatement Requests00:06:14
Yeah.
I thought we talked before about the wasteful spending coming not from this agency but from Doge.
Objection.
Maybe you could start again with the question.
I'm not following.
Sorry.
No, strike that.
It's fine.
Okay.
We'll mark this as, I think, Exhibit 9 on Exhibit 9.
Exhibit 9 begins on Fates, US-000062953.
And this is an email.
Ms. Chain originates with an email from Mr. Brian Greenfeld.
Is it Ms. Miss?
It's a Miss, yes.
Yeah.
Is it Brianne?
Brianne, she pronounces it.
Brianne.
Sorry, Council, could you give me a copy?
Oh, I'm sorry.
Yes.
Sorry.
Thank you.
And this is an email from Ms. Brianne Greenfield to you sent on April 9th.
And I'm talking about the lower email, the first in time email.
Who's Ms. Greenfield?
She was the director at the time of the Division of Preservation and Access.
And she's writing to request consideration for reinstatement of a recently canceled grant, it looks like.
Is that right?
That's correct.
Okay.
Do you remember receiving this email?
Offhand, I don't remember, but clearly it's an exchange between me and Brianne.
Okay.
And you have no reason to doubt this document's authenticity?
No, I do not have any reason.
Do you remember thinking about when receiving this email this particular award, the National Digital Newspaper Program award that Ms. Greenfield's writing about?
Oh yeah, let me just read it.
Yes, I've read it.
Okay.
Okay.
And so this email is talking about 24 open NDNP awards that were terminated, right?
Okay.
And Ms. Greenfield is requesting reinstatement?
Yes.
Okay.
And she's a director of the Preservation and Access Division, you said?
Yes.
Is she still there?
No.
She got caught up in the RIF, unfortunately.
Okay.
Did someone replace her?
Yes.
Who's that?
It's Margaret Walker-Clare, and she's now head of the renamed Division of Collections and Infrastructure.
Okay.
It covers the same things, but more things in addition.
And how long had Ms. Greenfield been at the agency before she was terminated?
I'm trying to think.
I think she was brought on board.
Her predecessor left, Nedina.
I think that was at the start of Chair Lowe's administration.
Yes, towards the start of the Biden administration, I think, is when she was hired at NEH.
HR would have the records.
Okay.
And Mr. McDonald made the decision to fire her?
Objection?
No, I think as I said before, the RIF all went by the rules established by HR overseen by Pranitha, the assistant chair for operations.
So Mr. McDonald did not make the decision to fire her.
Objection.
Again, as I understand it, again, this is not my bailiwick or my lane or my expertise, but a RIF has to follow very clear instructions established by OPM that were done by our HR office.
It's not at someone's discretion, is my understanding of the process, but Pranitha could explain it better.
Okay.
So she writes requesting that 24 open NDNP awards that were terminated with a total of approximately $4 million in funds left to spend be reinstated.
Am I right about that?
Yes, we're terminated with April 2nd.
That must be, yes.
Okay.
And you reply, hi, Brianne.
This is out of my hands, but let me see what can be done.
When you say it's out of your hands, does that mean the decision to cancel this grant or to reinstate it was in someone else's hands?
Objection?
Yes, it means I'm not the decision maker.
The chair, the head of the agency, is the decision maker.
Okay.
And so when you said, let me see what can be done, does that mean you talking to the chair?
I think that's probably what I did in this case, yes.
Feedback On Grant Characterization00:10:32
Okay, do you remember the results of that conversation?
I don't remember the result.
Okay.
And why did the chair cancel this grant?
Objection?
I don't know the exact answer.
You'd have to ask Michael, but I think the NDNP grants were the ones that got caught up in this, you know, when the parameters had been enlarged.
Right, you had to show that the grant somehow directly supported the administration's goals.
Is it Mr. McDonald enlarged the parameters?
Objection.
As I said, I think that initially came from the Doge folks.
Okay.
That view.
Okay, do you want to do a spreadsheet?
No.
Ah, okay.
We're going to do another spreadsheet that my colleague Ms. Vaughn will put up on the screen.
if we can pull that over to the witness.
And this will be Wolfson Exhibit 10.
Can I pull that closer to me?
Thank you.
And the bates is NEH-sorry.
The base for this exhibit is NEH underscore AR underscore zero zero zero zero two four.
Okay, Mr. Wilson, do you see that spreadsheet in front of you?
Yes.
Yes, I see it.
Okay.
Is this another version of the spreadsheet we looked at earlier that was sent to you by Doge?
It must be.
I don't recall this offhand.
Okay, but this is in the same format as the one we looked at before that was sent by Justin Fox, correct?
Exactly.
This looks like the handiwork of Doge, yes.
Okay.
Okay, if you can go to the second tab where it's active grants.
Someone else is doing that for me, right?
Yeah, Ms. Monas.
Okay, and again, this looks familiar to the one we looked at before, is that right?
In terms of how it's structured?
Yeah.
And like in the one we looked at before, do you see it's column K, but you see several columns over a DEI rationale?
Yes.
Okay.
And then next to that, at the top of the document, there's a column that says MM/slash AW.
Yes.
Am I right that that's a column for you and Mr. McDonald to provide your feedback?
Yes.
Okay.
Do you recall providing feedback on a document like this?
Yeah, I think something like that, this.
There was at various points confusion with the various spreadsheets, but yes.
Okay.
If you look down at column 35, I'm sorry, row 35.
I just wanted to move that up.
Yes.
35, okay.
And this is our good old friend General Gage from the British Army.
Yes.
Remember talking about that before?
Yes.
And so it has the same rationale here that we talked about before: Doge's decision.
I'm sorry, Doge's conclusion that this grant was DEI.
Remember talking about that?
Yes.
Okay, and you said earlier that you disagreed with that assessment, calling this grant DEI.
Yes.
Action.
Okay.
In the column for your and Mr. McDonald's initials, there's no entry there, right?
It doesn't look right.
Okay.
No initials.
When you guys reviewed this spreadsheet and provided feedback, what did it mean when you left the column blank?
I don't remember exactly.
I think we were, I think we were, as I recall, we were initialing grants that we thought should not be canceled.
So can you go down to row 236?
I see.
So unless you affirmatively said do not cancel, your recollection is that when you left it blank, that meant find to cancel?
Yes.
Okay.
Even though you disagreed with that DEI characterization?
Yes.
I'm not the decision maker.
And what was in the back of all of our minds was that the administration had a very high bar for being able to show that a grant was supportive of its goals.
I think I'm just trying to give you my internal sense of it.
Okay.
You say you're not the decision maker.
Why did Doge create a column that asked not just for Mr. McDonald's initials, but for yours?
Objection?
I don't know the answer to that.
I think I can all assume I'm the assistant chair for programs.
I oversee the divisions, and I think Michael must have asked me to participate and assist him.
That's part of my job is to help the person I report to.
And in this case, that was Michael.
If you look at Road 235, column M is the grant description.
We don't have to go through it in detail, but it begins with the Einstein Papers Project at Caltech publishes the collected papers of Albert Einstein.
You see that?
Oh, yes, right.
Oh, you're looking at the other column.
Yeah, yeah.
And then under DEI rationale, Doge had said, well, on the far left, Doge had said DEI yes for this grant.
Yeah, right.
And their rationale was, quote, the Einstein Papers Project's publication of his writings and correspondence highlights an influential figure in history, culture, and science.
It contributes to the diversity, equity, and inclusion by providing access to diverse perspectives and promoting intellectual inclusivity.
Did I read that correctly?
Yes.
Do you agree with that assessment?
No, I do not.
Okay.
You think that's an incorrect determination that this grant is DEI?
Objection.
Correct.
That does not fit my understanding of what we mean by DEI, as we discussed earlier.
Does that rationale read like it was written by someone who read the grant description and actually thought about it?
Objection.
I don't know what the Doge folks and what their process was and how they wrote this stuff.
I don't know what their internal process was.
I mean, you have to ask them.
Well, let's just talk about your assessment, I guess.
If you had an assistant or a staffer that you wanted to go through grants, and they give you this rationale for why they thought this paper was DEI, what would you tell them?
I'm sorry, in other words, if a program officer?
If a program officer sent you a document that said, this Einstein paper's grant is DEI for the reasons listed here, what would you say to them?
I'm just saying.
It's kind of speculative, but I would say I disagree.
Okay.
Would you consider this that person performing their job in an adequate manner?
Objection.
If it were, right, the example is a program officer in this hypothetical.
I think I'd want to sit down with their direct supervisor and talk about their thought process and kind of have a conversation about why they thought that and why I or we would disagree.
And you wouldn't do that if a program officer just made any mistake in their work.
This would be a particularly glaring mistake, is that right?
Objection.
For a grant to be characterized in this way.
Objection.
This is such very hypothetical.
Program officers don't do this sort of thing.
But yes, I don't see how one could see the Einstein papers projects as promoting the DEI in the way that I understand it.
And even on its own terms, the rationale given doesn't seem to make sense, does it?
Objection.
What do you mean on its own terms?
It doesn't make sense.
It says that it highlights the writings and correspondence of an influential figure in history, culture, and science.
It contributes to the diversity, equity, inclusion by providing access to diverse perspectives and promoting intellectual inclusivity.
Do those two statements follow from one another?
Objection?
In my view, this doesn't seem to make a whole lot of sense to me.
And is that why you wrote no next to it?
Well, it was Michael who, I remember, entered the no's and was the one who decided.
You know, it was a compressed amount of time.
Compressed Timeframe Compliance00:03:46
We were trying to go quickly and pull out grants that seemed clearly like they should not be canceled.
And we looked earlier at the grant related to General Gauge.
Remember that?
Yes.
And you guys did not write no next to that one.
Right.
Why is that?
Again, I don't remember what the discussion was on that particular grant.
Do you think if you said it, you've mentioned a few times the compressed timeframe, right?
Do you think that if you had had more time to do your review, there were other ones that you would have flagged as should not be canceled?
Objection.
I don't know the answer to that.
Again, it seems very speculative.
And at this point in the process, it had become, if I'm not mistaken, this is kind of close to the end point, and it had become clear to us then that the parameters had been enlarged and it was a high bar to show that it was in accord with the administration's priorities.
Okay.
And you mentioned the rush time frame.
Who set the deadline by which you had to provide your responses on this document?
I think, as I mentioned, I don't know exactly, but I think it was the Doge folks who said this needs to be done by X date.
And why did you take that as a direction you needed to follow?
Why did you attempt to comply with that instead of saying there's more than 1,000 grants here any more time?
Objection.
I think that would be a question better directed towards Michael.
He was the acting chairman.
He was in more direct communication with them than I was, but I think they made it clear to him that it had to be done by a certain date, these decisions.
It had to be done.
Why?
Objection.
Again, I don't know why the Doge folks came up with a particular date.
Do you know why you guys felt the need to comply with that date?
Objection.
I think it was Michael's view that we're part of the executive branch.
And just like we have to comply with an executive order telling us to come up with a list of grants that were implicated, this too, we're part of the executive branch.
The executive branch is telling us to do something, and so we do our best to comply, make a good faith effort.
When you say the executive branch in this instance, you mean Doge?
Yes, right.
I think they were somehow related to the executive branch.
Okay.
You weren't getting instructions on this process from anyone else in the executive branch outside of Doge, right?
Not that I know of, no.
Okay, so when you say the executive branch said we had to do something or we had to do something by a certain time, you mean Doge?
Yes.
Yes, it was Meyer say it was Doge that gave the date to Michael.
Right.
Decisions need to be made.
Okay.
So on the ones that you and Mr. McDonald, Mark, know on this spreadsheet, do you remember having any discussion with those about those responses?
I don't know.
Mechanics Of Cancellation00:14:01
No, I don't recall.
What exhibit are we on?
Excuse me.
This will be 10?
11.
Okay.
Do you want to draw your computer back?
What?
I'll leave it right there.
I'll mark this document, Wolfson Exhibit 11, and its base, US-000054016.
Mr. Wilson, do you recognize this email?
Yes, yes, I do.
So the first and time email is from Justin Fox at gsa.gov to yourself and Mr. McDonald, CC Nate Kavanaugh, sent on March 28th, 2025, right?
Yeah, I should read that one too.
Thanks for the productive time today.
Yeah, yep, okay.
Okay.
And it's this is, I guess, three or four days before the grants were canceled.
Is that right?
And so Mr. Fox writes, Mike/slash Adam, thanks for the productive time today.
Did I read that correctly?
Yes.
And so I assume you met with him in person?
Yes.
How many times did you meet, approximately, did you and Mr. McDonald meet with Mr. Fox and Mr. Kavanaugh in March of last year?
Yeah, I don't recall the exact number.
It seems to me there were not many of them.
There was the initial meeting, and at least in my case, I can't speak for meetings that Michael may have had.
To the best of my recollection, say half a dozen at most of actual meetings.
Over the two weeks approximately since you met them.
Yes.
Okay.
And then Mr. Fox continues.
He attached active grants for your review for DEI or wasteful spend, approximately 440 grants.
You see that?
Yes.
And so unlike before where in March, on March 13th, when we looked, and he's just talking about DEI here, he says DEI or wasteful spend.
So am I right that this is after they made that change?
Yes, this is what I'm talking about, the expansion of the parameters, yes.
Doge is expansion of the parameters.
Objection.
My understanding, yes.
Yeah.
Flagging these are the ones NEH staff marked as not applicable for DEI.
It may be easier to review these in the Excel format so you can mark yes, no in the active Excel, right?
Yes.
And then above, Mr. McConnell replies, Hi, Justin.
Hi, Nate.
To recap, you have the first spreadsheet from Brett that Adam and I reviewed and sent to OMB.
So pausing there for a second, am I right that that's the spreadsheet that you all created before Doge got involved?
Yes, and internally we refer to it as the historical review.
Okay.
Listing all of the applications implicated by the EOs minus the NAs, the non-applicables, right?
We were getting ready to cancel them today, but understand that you will do so.
Did I read that correctly?
Yes.
Do you recall that?
This is a good question.
Do you recall getting ready to cancel the grants, but then understanding that Doge would do so?
That was, again, I wasn't involved in the processes that actually lead to the sending out of notices and things like that.
You weren't involved in the processes?
The mechanical process of when something is sent out, Michael's letter, and that kind of thing.
So when he's saying we, what is he talking about?
Objection, Michael.
We are getting ready to cancel them today.
I think he means NEH.
Okay.
So you're on both of these emails and you were at the in-person meeting referenced in the first and time email, right?
Yes.
But you're saying you weren't involved in the process?
Objection.
No, no, no.
Please, you misunderstood.
I wasn't involved in the actual sending of the letters.
As we've discussed all morning, I was involved in reviewing the spreadsheets, working with the program directors and putting together the lists and so on and so forth.
Okay.
You were involved in the mechanics of cancellation.
Correct, the mechanics.
Okay.
And so you have no reason to doubt Mr. McDonald's statement here that whoever is responsible for that, they were getting ready to cancel them, but understand that Doge will do so.
Yes.
Okay.
And is that what ended up happening, is that Doge canceled them?
Objection?
Yes, I think that's what ended up transpiring rather than it.
Usually notices like that, I believe, would go out by our Office of Grant Management, just as they send out the award letters.
And in this case, as Mike writes, we understand that you will do so.
Okay.
And he continues, attach to the second list the NAs that you prepared and we reviewed today.
You see that?
And so am I right that you reviewed that list of hundreds of grants that day?
That's what this is saying?
Objection.
Again, I don't remember the exact time period, but as I've said, it was a very compressed amount of time, and we did our best with the time we had.
Why didn't you or Mr. McDonald asked for more time?
Objection.
I think you'd have to ask Michael.
I didn't think it was my role to interact with the Doge folks in that way.
Did you not feel like you'd be able to ask them for more time?
Objection.
I guess I'm just trying to describe how I see my role.
I report to Michael.
I wouldn't do things without consulting with him.
That's how I do my job, whether I'm usually reporting to the senior deputy, not the chair.
Were you concerned at all that if you didn't comply with Doge's instructions, that something worse could happen to NEH, like the agency shutting down or even more grants or employees being let go?
Objection.
I don't know.
I think, as I mentioned, I did think it was fortunate that Michael was overseeing the agency.
This is one of the reasons you thought that, that he might have averted some worse situation?
Objection.
I think in my, again, this is just speculation, in my personal view, yes.
I think he negotiated some difficult waters.
And how did he negotiate them?
Objection.
By doing things like this?
Objection?
Yeah, I think it's hard to put into words, yeah.
I think other agencies were reduced much more than we were.
Okay.
In his next paragraph, he says, attached to the second list the NAs that you prepared and that we reviewed today.
As you instructed, we have only excluded the ones that seem not to conflict with the administration's priorities, such as the papers of George Washington.
We understand that you will cancel this list of projects as well.
Did I read that correctly?
Yes.
So the papers of George Washington we looked at on the last spreadsheet, right?
And you all had written no.
And am I correct that Mr. McDonald's writing here to the Doge folks, we understand that you will cancel this list of projects as well.
Junction.
Right, we've only excluded the ones that seem not to conflict with the administration's priorities.
For example, the papers of George Washington and the other projects will be canceled.
He says you will cancel.
Right?
In this case, we're talking about the mechanics of the cancellation.
Michael is deciding, right, it's a mechanical process.
Does it go out through the Office of Grant Management or is it going to go out through the Doge folks?
And as Michael writes here, we understand that you, the Doge folks, are going to cancel.
The ones other than, e.g., papers of George Washington.
Yes.
Okay.
If you had had more time with that spreadsheet, would you have flagged more grants for retention?
Objection.
I think it's possible, but it was what it was, and we dealt with the time we had.
And you felt like you, I think you testified earlier, you felt like you couldn't or shouldn't ask for more time.
Objection?
Yes, I didn't feel that was my place to do so.
Okay, and Mr. McDonald did not ask for more time.
You have to ask him.
Okay, but never on any email you were on or in any meeting you were in, did he say, can we have some more time?
Not that I recall.
Okay.
Did you and him ever talk yourselves about how compressed the timeline was for all this?
Jackson.
Especially while the March Council was going on?
Jackson.
Yes, I think we both felt there was a lot going on and it was a lot of work in a short amount of time with March Council.
And is it fair to say that if it were up to you and Mike, you wouldn't have placed this trumpeter review during the same month that March Council was taking place?
Jackson.
If it were up to you and Michael.
Yeah, I think it's fair to say that, again, I can't speak for Michael, but I think it's fair to say that neither of us we would have preferred a different time.
We will
mark this next one, Exhibit 12.
Wolfson, exhibit 12.
and the Bates is US-00002771, and we can take a break after this exhibit.
Okay.
Regulatory Conditions And Letters00:14:59
This is an email from Mr. Brundage to yourself and Ms. Raghavan on April 1st of last year.
Is that right?
Yes.
Okay.
And this is around the time that the grants were being canceled, right?
Yes.
Okay.
And Mr. Brundage, you said, what was his job title?
He's the director of the Office of Grant Management, OGM.
Okay.
And so would something like the procedures that should be followed and the communications that should be made related to the cancellation of grants be something within his purview?
Yes, that's my understanding.
We have an office of, we have a, we have a we have a grant manual, grant management manual, which is of the GAM?
Yes, the GAM, yes.
And that includes the termination procedures in the event that a grant needs to be terminated.
That's overseen by his office.
He reports to Principa.
Okay.
And he writes: Good afternoon, Adam Pranitha.
Attached are the termination procedures for your review.
Before we can proceed with executing the terminations, the office of the chair needs to make several key decisions.
Additionally, a signed memo will be required for the terminations.
I recommend preparing one memo per division as not all listed, sorry, as not all awards listed may ultimately be terminated.
If possible, I'd like to request a meeting tomorrow to discuss the decision points, the list of awards affected, and the procedural considerations.
Let me know your availability or if Gina might be able to find time for us.
Did I read that correctly?
Yes.
Do you have any reason to doubt the authenticity of this email?
No.
And this is the kind of email that Mr. Brundage would send in the ordinary course of his duties as an employee of NEH?
I think so.
Again, he doesn't report to me, but this is with grant termination is within his purview.
He oversees it.
Okay.
If you go to the attachment, and this is Bates US-000002772, it's titled Award Termination Process for Doge Requested Terminations as of April 1st, 2025, right?
yes um and do you see where he's listed out uh decision points on halfway down the page Oh, yes.
Okay.
Yep.
And where he states in the first bullet there: Has the recipient demonstrated a material failure to comply with terms and conditions?
And response: No.
In these cases, the terminations are not based on performance or compliance with terms and conditions.
Did I read that correctly?
Yes.
And do you agree with Mr. Brundage's assessment there?
Objection.
I'm not sure I understand.
With his assessment, I think he's just describing the procedures in the GAM.
Yeah, the GAM is not my way we put it, I'm not the owner of the GAM, as we put it.
He's the owner of the GAM.
I think that's fair enough, but he's talking about the Doge requested terminations as of April 1st, the date he sent this.
And he's saying, Has the recipient demonstrated a material failure to comply with terms and conditions?
Now that may be from the GAM, right?
I'm assuming this is a condensed version of what's in the GAM.
But the sub-bullet below it, where it says no, in these cases, the terminations are not based on performance or compliance.
Isn't he referring to the Doge cancellations that he sent this email about?
Objection.
I'm not sure where this is in the process, but right, it would be the.
April 1st.
Yeah, Michael's can't.
Right.
Michael's cancellations.
Yes.
Okay.
But at the top here, it says Doge requested terminations, right?
Understood, but as I've said, Michael was the final decision maker.
Okay.
Anyway, do you agree with that statement?
No, in these cases, the terminations are not based on performance or compliance with terms and conditions.
Objection.
As you see, yes, in response to that question, the way he's framed it, that seems, I have no objection to what he's written there.
Okay, let's try this another way.
Okay.
The hundreds and hundreds of grants that were canceled this very day and the following day.
Yes.
You know those, right?
Yes.
Okay.
Were those canceled because of a material failure to comply with terms and conditions?
Objection by the grantee?
Objection.
Right.
So that's not my understanding.
Right.
The terms and condition, anyone who gets an award, they're sent a fairly long document by the Office of Grant Management in which all the terms and conditions of the award are laid out.
These are various regulatory and legal conditions.
And this is why it's outside my bailiwick.
And right, so you would write if there were a discovery that somehow you had failed to comply with those terms or conditions, as he's saying, that would be a decision point for termination, in his understanding.
And you testified earlier that in your experience before this current presidential administration, the only grant cancellations that had taken place were due to a failure to comply with material terms and conditions, right?
Objection.
So I don't know what hook those were put on at the time.
It was a different head of the grant.
There was a different head of the Office of Grant Management in those cases.
And so I don't, right, and there are different reasons why your grant can be terminated.
So in those two cases that I mentioned, I don't know what the justification was that OGM decided on.
But yes, the grant was terminated because it did not, right, because there was a sense that things had gone amiss.
On the grantee's side.
On the grantee's side.
The grantees had done something wrong.
Yeah, and I described the two examples I could think of.
Right, but that's not what's going on here.
No.
Right.
The grantees haven't done anything wrong.
Objection.
That you know of?
Yeah, not that I know of.
Okay.
And you never talked with Mr. McDonald about grantees failing to comply with the terms and conditions of their grants, and that's why they're being canceled, right?
That's correct.
Okay.
They're canceled because of the process we've been talking about today, not because of individuals' failure to meet the terms and conditions, correct?
That's correct.
They were canceled for exactly those reasons we've been discussing today.
Okay.
Do you know what the term allowable costs means?
No, this is really...
Where are you reading that?
The bottom black bullet on this first page debates anymore 772.
It says, will NEH allow reasonable close-out costs?
And then the sub-bullet says, per regulation 2 CFR 200.472B, reasonable close-out costs are permitted.
Administrative costs associated with the closeout of activities of a federal award are allowable.
You see that?
Yes.
And I take it you're not too familiar with that regulation.
I'm not familiar with that regulation.
Okay.
How about the bullets immediately above?
Will NEH allow the recipient to draw down NEH funds for costs incurred prior to date of termination?
You see that?
Yes, I see it.
Okay.
Do you understand what question that's asking?
Again, I'm not familiar.
This is certainly not my area of expertise.
And I'm not familiar with exactly what this means, and that's why we have a head of, that's why we have a grants office, grant management office.
Which Mr. Brunage is the head of, right?
Yes.
Okay.
Correct.
But is it fair to say that he's saying here that both allowable costs incurred prior to date of termination and reasonable closeout costs, both are permitted under the regulations to be paid to grantees who have their grants terminated?
That's what he seems to be saying, yes.
And you have no reason to doubt it.
I have no reason to doubt it.
Okay.
And then on the second page, Bates ending in 2773.
The back side of that page?
No.
You see where it says timeline for terminating awards?
Yes.
And then it's a site to 2 CFR section 100.341?
Yes.
Okay, and then he gives a number of dates here laying out a sort of schedule for termination.
Right?
Yes.
Okay.
Did you all follow this schedule in terminating the grants we've been discussing today?
No, right.
As we've discussed, my understanding is that this timetable and the other procedures in the GAM were not followed, and other justifications were provided in the cancellation letter that went out by Michael.
Okay, so your understanding is that this timeline provided for by the regulation, Mr. Brundage sites, was not followed.
That's my understanding.
Okay, and then who made the decision not to follow this timeline?
Jackson.
Again, I think Michael was the decision maker, and so that would have been his decision to make.
I thought you testified earlier that the mechanics of termination were handled by Doge.
Yes, but you're talking about a seems to me you're talking about a larger question here, the mechanics concern, right?
How letters are sent out and things like that.
That's what I'm talking about.
This particular question about whether this timeline would be followed, I don't think Richard would have made that decision.
I think that was probably a decision made by Michael.
Okay.
But again, you'd have to ask him.
Okay.
Let's mark this, and we'll be quick, as exhibit 13.
Wilson Exhibit 13 and it states US-00002579 so those emails we were just looking at I'm sorry that email from Mr. Brundage was on April 1st right?
Right.
Okay.
And this email chain takes place on April 1st.
If you look at the first and time email on the last page of the emails, do you see that?
The look at the very last one, you mean?
The email from Mr. Brundage that kicks off the chain.
On April 1st, okay.
Yes.
That's the email we just looked at, right?
Yes.
Okay.
And just for the record, this is Bates ending in 2581.
Okay.
Okay, if you go up to the previous page, Bates ending in 2580, Ms. Voyazzi writes, Hi, Richard.
Michael forwarded me your outline of NEH termination procedures and asked me to follow up.
You see that?
Yes.
The main point, she writes, of which you may already be aware, is that agency leadership has agreed to allow Doge to handle the termination notifications to grantees.
We understand that the terminations will go out today and will be effective immediately.
NEH will not allow recipients to draw down NEH funds for costs incurred prior to termination or for closeout costs.
Did I read that correctly?
Yes.
Okay.
And so I think we've covered this, but am I right that the decision to not follow the decision to not go with Mr. Brundage's recommendation for how notifications should go out was made by Doge.
Is that right?
Objection?
Agency leadership has agreed to allow Doge to handle the termination notifications.
My reading of that would be agency leadership means Michael.
Michael agreed to allow Doge to handle?
I'm sorry.
I don't want to be misunderstood.
The main point is that agency leadership has agreed to allow Doge to handle the termination notifications to grantees.
I think what that means to me is that Michael agreed to allow Doge to handle what we've called the mechanics of the terminations as opposed to it going out as it usually would have under Office of Grant Management.
And would the mechanics include the drafting of the termination letter?
I believe so.
I believe that would be typically handled by Richard, maybe in consultation with OGC.
I'm not sure.
This is an area of the endowment that I don't typically, I'm not involved in.
Okay.
When it says OGC in the paragraph that has some redactions, what's OGC stand for Office of General Counsel?
Office of General Counsel.
Okay.
OGC has not seen the wording of the termination notice.
Did I read that correctly?
Yes.
And that must mean it was prepared by someone else, right?
Objection.
How could they have prepared it if they haven't seen it, right?
Yeah, fair enough.
Sounds that way.
Okay, so who prepared the termination notice?
Again, it would be better to ask Michael.
It's my understanding that it was drafted by the Doge folks or others.
Michael reviewed it.
I don't know if he made revisions or changes or not, approved it, and then it was sent out under his by him.
Harmless Projects Questioned00:16:41
And I think for the termination notice,
the attachment, is that right, the termination notice?
I'm sorry, you're asking me?
Yes.
You see the attachment?
Yes, this right here.
Okay, is that the termination notice?
Yes, I believe this is the termination notice.
And had you seen that before you received this email?
I don't think so.
But I'm not sure.
Okay.
And you don't know who prepared this, who drafted it?
I don't know who drafted it.
Okay.
Okay.
I think we can take a break, if that makes sense.
Sure.
I want to be starting again.
Okay.
Please stand by.
The time is 2.57 p.m.
And we are off the record.
Time is 3.16 and p.m. and we are on the record.
Mr. Wilson, I only have a few more documents to go through with you.
Let's mark this one as exhibit 13.
14, exhibit 14.
Bates is U.S. dash 000050461.
Is it 14 words?
All right.
Mr. Wilson, this is an email chain, it looks like, with you, Mr. McDonald, Mr. Fox, and Mr. Kavanaugh.
The latest date in it is April 2nd, 2025.
Do you see that?
Okay.
You see how the top email is Mr. McDonald responding to Justin at Doge.
I approve the language in the termination letters.
Okay.
Do you remember this email chain?
I don't remember the particular chain, but yes, it's all authentic.
Yes.
Okay, you have no reason to doubt its authenticity.
No, I have no reason to doubt it.
Okay.
And am I right that on this first page, Bates ending in 50461, it looks like emails between Mr. McDonald and Justin Fox about both the language in the termination letters and the language in the cover email, both of which were drafted by Doge.
Is that right?
Objection.
I approve the language and termination letter.
He writes, Mike, please see the attached grant, which we use for the humanities councils.
Additionally, you see below typical language.
Yes, so your question was?
Just that these emails on the first page look to be about both the grant termination letter and the language of the cover email that would accompany that letter.
Yeah, the grant termination.
Maybe I'm dismissing the language for the email.
So I see.
I see.
Yes.
Please see attached grant termination letter, which we plan to use.
If you turn to the, I guess it's the second page, since date's ending in 50462.
Mr. Fox writes to you and Mr. McDonald's, he's seeing Mr. Kavanaugh at the bottom of the page there.
Do you see?
Yeah, Mike, as discussed.
Thank you.
Mike, as discussed, we've collected the grants you've flighted to keep and a few of those pertaining to America 250th or within priorities of the administration.
Did I read that correctly?
Yes.
Am I right that the grants you flagged to keep, as he put it, are the grants that either you or Mr. McDonald wrote no in that spreadsheet, like the papers of George Washington?
Yes.
Okay.
And America 250, What is that?
That just refers to the 250th anniversary of the country.
It's not an NEH program?
No, no, we didn't have a I don't think that we have some now, but I don't think that early we had specific 250 programs.
Okay, so whose idea was it to keep grants related to America 250?
I think the idea was that there were quite a few executive orders, some naming NEH regarding the 250th anniversary of the country, and so it seemed pretty clear that grants that were related to that should not be terminated.
And what makes a grant related to the 250th birthday of the country?
You know, maybe there's a, I don't remember specific examples, but let's say someone is doing a book on the Declaration of Independence or, you know, adjacent, some topic that's adjacent, like on the Constitution or something like that.
Do you think that it would have to relate to the founding?
Objection?
Yeah, I'm referring to the founding, sure.
Do you recall that you or Mr. McDonald marked the collected papers of Martin Van Buren for not to be canceled?
Yes, I believe that was one of the ones we thought should not be canceled, if I'm not mistaken.
Is that because it relates to America 250?
As I said, adjacent, right?
Our view was that something like a papers project for the president was sufficiently related to the Martin Van Buren, very important figure, in the early days of the Republic, and that was in alignment with the executive orders, as we understood them.
But you'd agree, would you not, that he was one of the least important presidents?
Objection.
Least important presidents?
I'm not a presidential historian.
I can't speak to that.
On the following page, on the following page, Bates inning and 50463.
Do you see the email Mr. McDonald wrote that started with Hijestin?
Yes.
Okay.
In the second paragraph, you see where he says, as you know, after our staff reviewed all the awards made over the past four years and rated them, quote, high, medium, or low, end quote, in terms of promoting DEI, Adam and I carefully reviewed the staff's work over two full days and sent you that first spreadsheet, which we feel very confident about.
It's also the list that we sent to OMB.
Did I read that correctly?
Yes.
I think we've talked about that spreadsheet, the one that you sent to OMB.
And that's the one where you and Mr. McDonald feel confident in the DEI designations that you and others at NEH gave to various grants?
Yes, that was the whole process I discussed as the historical review that began under Chair Lowe.
Okay.
And do you share Mr. McDonald's confidence he's expressing here about that list?
Yes, I think I would share that confidence.
And is it fair to say you had far less confidence in the DEI list that Doge created and sent to you?
Objections?
Yes, I think personally, I think I would have less confidence in it.
I know the staff who worked on the first one, and I don't know much about the Doge folks.
And you I mean we looked at the spreadsheets, they marked Einstein and the British general as DEI, which doesn't seem to make sense.
Is that fair?
Objection.
Okay.
So you had more confidence in your and NEH's staff's review than you did in Doge's?
Yes.
Objection.
Okay.
When he says at the beginning of that paragraph, over the past four years, we saw a document earlier that mentioned grants awarded in the Biden administration.
Do you remember that?
I'm sorry, maybe start over.
I was looking for the words over the past four years.
It's in the paragraph we just were talking about.
Okay.
Yeah, I'm going backwards a bit.
Oh, I see.
Oh, yeah, okay.
The past four years, you see that?
Is that in the first paragraph?
In the second.
As you know, after our staff reviewed all the awards made in the past four years?
Yes, I see, yes.
Okay.
And do you recall earlier that we saw an email earlier today referencing grants made during the Biden administration?
I believe so.
That would be over the previous four years.
Okay.
Why was NEH focused on grants that were awarded during the Biden administration?
That was just, that begins with that executive order, which commenced the historical review here, which asked our agency and others to provide a list of all grants dating back to January 2021.
Okay.
So do you recall whether you or anyone at NEH that you saw reviewed grants that had been awarded during the first Trump administration to see whether they also were DEI?
Objection.
Do you mean during Chair Lowe's under Chair Lowe, or do you mean as part of this process?
I mean, as part of this process, when Chair Lowe directed you and others to undertake a review of grants to see if they had DEI affiliations, Mr. McDonald references here reviewing grants, reviewing awards that were made over the past four years.
My question is, did you not also review grants or awards that were made during the first Trump administration from 2017 to 2021?
Yeah, no, I think it would have only been awards issued since the start of the Biden administration.
And why was that?
Again, we were just following the executive order that required all agencies to submit a list.
In your in-person meetings with Justin Fox and Nate Kavanaugh, did you or Mr. McDonald talk with them about the Biden administration grants being more focused on DEI and therefore they'd be more likely to find DEI grants if they looked at those?
Objection.
I don't recall conversations of that sort.
Okay, you don't recall any conversations in which either they or you or Mr. McDonald said that grants made under the Biden administration are more likely to be DEI?
Objection.
I don't remember any conversations with the Doge folks and Michael about that.
We were just given that as a date.
Okay.
And you believe you were given that by the executive order?
It's in the executive order, yes.
Okay.
You testified earlier that Chair Lowe had been, I forget how you phrased it, but effectively quite interested in awarding grants to DEI projects.
Do you remember that?
Objection?
Yes, generally speaking.
Okay.
Is it so we talked earlier about your understanding of what DEI is?
Is it your belief that if you compare the awards made during the first Trump administration and the awards made during the Biden administration, that in the latter category you would find more grants that would fall under your understanding of DEI?
Objection.
Would you find more under Chair Lowe than the previous chair, Chair Peaty?
I don't know when the chairs took office, so I'm just talking about the presidential administration.
Again, having not done a review, I have no factual empirical knowledge, but I think that's a safe assumption to make.
Okay.
And did you ever discuss that with either Mr. McDonald or anyone at Doge?
Objection?
I don't recall that.
I don't recall the first Trump administration being discussed.
Okay.
Mr. McDonald continues, the attached list concerns, as you know, applications that staff rated not applicable, that is, involving projects that seemed to have no applicability to promoting DEI, and we feel much less confident about it.
Do you see that?
Do you agree with those two sentences?
Objection?
Yes, I would, yes.
As we previously said, I had more confidence in the earlier list.
Okay.
The one that you all prepared.
Correct.
Okay.
He continues, this is because many of the quote-unquote DEI rationale comments relating to projects on the attached spreadsheet say things such as, quote, does not relate directly to DEI topics, end quote, or more emphatically, quote, there is no direct connection to DEI, end quote.
We think these projects are harmless when it comes to promoting DEI.
Did I read that correctly?
Yes.
And do you agree with those statements?
Yes.
Okay.
And so you agree that the projects that the Doge generated spreadsheet marked as DEI, but that your internal review did not mark as DEI, do you agree that those projects are harmless when it comes to promoting DEI, as Mr. McDonald says here?
Objection.
Yes, that would be my personal view, yes.
Okay.
He continues, but in the interest of time, because we know you want to move quickly, we didn't give these applications the individualized consideration that we did to those in the first spreadsheet.
Accordingly, we only explicitly initialed a few important projects, such as the papers of George Washington, whose cancellation would not reflect well on any of us.
And the same could be said for many other listed projects.
Did I read that correctly?
Yes.
Okay.
What's he saying there?
Justification For Continuation00:07:17
Objection.
Again, I think this is Michael's email to the Doge folks.
What does he mean there?
It would probably be better to ask him.
But I believe he's simply saying that it doesn't make a lot of sense to cancel papers in the category of the George Washington papers or the Van Buren papers because it's not obvious in any way why that wouldn't be in alignment in what the administration was interested in.
And do you agree with his point that because of the time pressure that you and he were under, you didn't give these applications individualized consideration?
Objection.
Yes, as I said, it was a very compressed time period.
I think, you know, I, if right, yes.
And you testified earlier that you didn't feel it was your role or that you could ask for more time, right?
Justin.
Okay, and you don't recall Mr. McDonnell Liber asking Doge for more time to complete this review?
Yeah, I don't know if he did or didn't.
But you don't recall him doing it?
I didn't hear him.
Okay.
So he continues, it would take too long at this point to review the not applicable lists appropriately.
Therefore, our recommendation is that wherever the DEI rationale on the spreadsheet makes clear that there is no DEI component to the project, there is no justification for canceling the project's funding and you should allow it to continue.
Did I read that correctly?
Yes.
Okay.
And when he says you, he's referring to Justin at Doge?
Objection.
You should allow it to continue?
Wait, is that whenever the there is no justification?
Oh, and you should allow it to continue.
It's written to Justin.
I assume Justin?
Yeah.
Okay.
So am I right that this is him asking Justin, I'm sorry, him telling Justin that from NEH's perspective, number one, there was not enough time to review the lists appropriately, and number two, for ones where the DEI rationale makes no sense or says that there's no DEI component, there's no justification for canceling the project.
Objection?
You agree?
Yeah, that's how I would read what Michael's writing here.
And do you agree with that statement?
Objection?
Yes, my personal opinion, yes, I would agree.
And do you also agree with this statement that Doge should have allowed those grants to continue?
Objection.
Yeah, my personal view is many of those grants wouldn't in any, right, the right, everyone's going to have different opinions.
My opinion was that I don't see how these would be against or do harm to the administration and what they were seeking to accomplish.
And do you agree with his opinion that for those such grants, Doge should allow those grants to continue?
Objection.
Yes.
He continues, but you have also told us that in addition to canceling projects because they may promote DEI ideology, the Doge team also wishes to cancel funding to assist in deficit reduction.
Either way, as you've made clear, it's your decision on whether to discontinue funding on any of the projects on this list.
Did I read that correctly?
Yes.
Okay.
Do you remember discussing with Mr. McDonald what he's talking about in that last paragraph?
No, not exactly.
Yeah.
You don't ever recalling, so I'm sorry, strike that.
You don't ever recall discussing with Mr. McDonald the ways in which the Doge team has made clear it's their decision to discontinue funding?
Objection.
So my understanding is that Michael is the acting chairman.
He's the final decision maker.
And he's going to hear opinions from a lot of folks.
He's got the opinions of the staff about what is DEI and what's not.
He's hearing from the Doge folks.
In the end, it's his final decision to make.
He's the one who presses the button or not.
That's not what he says here, though, right?
Objection.
Again, I can't.
I think it would be best to ask him exactly what he may or may not have meant here, but that's been my understanding.
What's your understanding of what he's saying here?
Objection.
Either way, as you've made clear, it's your decision on whether to discontinue funding.
I think he's probably referring to this swath of grants that we've been discussing that were the NAs, the not applicable ones.
that it was clear Doge thought should be canceled because of the broader parameters I've talked about, including deficit reduction and whatnot.
And he's saying that he's saying that he's clearly asking for their opinion.
He's asking for their opinion.
That's your testimony under oath?
Objection.
Your testimony under oath is that this paragraph is asking for their opinion?
Again, I can't speak to what Michael is saying here.
I'm asking your understanding of that paragraph.
It's your decision.
Is asking for their opinion?
Objection.
My understanding, and you see that in some of the emails that we've reviewed in these other documents, you can see the Doge folks saying, do we have permission?
Do we have your approval?
So he was the final decision maker.
That's my understanding.
I think you're correct.
This particular sentence is hard to reconcile with, again, my understanding of what was going on.
And you never once talked with Mr. McDonald about the ways in which Doge has made clear it's their decision?
Objection.
No.
Okay.
That swath of grants, as you put it, are grants that NEH staff marked as not DEI and that the Doge-generated DEI list had explanations that make clear there is no DEI component, right?
Acting Chair Appointment Talk00:04:44
Objection.
Yeah, I'm sorry, was there a question there?
But that's the swath you're talking about?
Yeah, I'm talking about the swath of grants that the NAs where there was no DEI component, but that Doge wanted to cancel as budget reduction and whatnot.
And I think it was my view and Michael's view, not to speak for him, that I think as he says here, they're not going to do any harm.
And they should be allowed to continue, he says here, right?
Yes.
Did they continue?
I think they were canceled.
Okay.
Right?
Okay.
With that, I think I'll pass the witness to Mr. Robinson.
Those people want to take a break or?
Why don't I need to take a break?
Oh, yeah, sure, of course.
Let's go off the record.
Please stand by.
The time is 3.39 p.m.
And we are going off the record.
The time is 3.41 p.m. and we are now on the record.
Good afternoon, Mr. Wilson.
My name is John Robinson.
As I said at the beginning of the deposition, I represent the ACLS plaintiffs in this case.
I just have a few questions for you.
You talked with my colleague Mr. Crooks a little bit about the termination of Chair Lowe last year.
Do you recall that?
She was relieved of her position, yes.
Did you talk to Ms. Lowe about being relieved of her position?
I remember saying goodbye.
Yeah, I don't remember any conversations about the being released or whatever the right word is.
And Mr. McDonald was then appointed acting chair of NEH, is that correct?
How long have you known Mr. McDonald?
Going back to when I first started working at the agency.
So, 20 years?
Yes, about 20 years.
So you've worked closely with him over the course of those ten years?
Yeah, in various capacities.
He was general counsel, so a lot of questions would come up over the course of the years.
Do you consider him a personal friend outside of work?
No, we don't socialize or things like that outside of work.
Did you talk to Mr. McDonald about his appointment as acting chair either before or after he was appointed?
I don't remember conversations.
Do you know why he was appointed as acting chair?
I don't know why.
Do you know whether he would have been the acting chair under like a succession order already in place at NEH?
I think, if I'm not mistaken, the succession order lists Pernitha after the it goes chair, senior deputy.
I think maybe then it's the, I don't know if it's chief of staff, but I think it's, I think, I'm pretty sure it's the assistant chair for operations in the succession plan.
So he would not have been acting chair under the succession plan that was in place, is that correct?
I believe that's so.
Do you know whose decision it was to appoint him as acting chair?
Jackson?
Yeah, I have no way of knowing.
Do you know if he's currently the acting chair?
He's not.
Who is?
We don't have an acting chair because, right, the Federal Vacancies Reform Act?
Yeah, that's it, right.
Right, so he, the clock had run out on him, and so currently Pernitha is overseeing all operations of the agency.
Okay.
Is she performing the functions of the chair?
I'm not quite sure what you mean by functions.
I'm not sure if I'm not sure one of the most important functions of the chair is the ability to sign off on grants.
I don't know if she is empowered or authorized to do that in her capacity.
That would be an office for the lawyers.
A question for the lawyers, I'm sorry.
Fair enough.
I'm going to turn your attention now to the very first meeting you had with Judge.
Again, I think you talked about it a little bit with Mr. Crooks, but do you recall that first time you sat down in person with Nate Kavanaugh and Justin Fox?
Yeah, not photographic, but yes.
Legal Challenge Awareness00:06:55
Sure.
Was that here at NEH?
Yes.
In which room?
If I'm not mistaken, it was in this room.
It could have been in the chairman's office, but I think it was in this room.
It was just the four of you?
I think Pernitha may have been at that first meeting, but I can't say 100%.
Okay.
And to the best of your recollection, what exactly did Mr. Kavanaugh and Mr. Fox say at that first meeting?
At that point, I think what stuck out in my mind was they said we're here as consultants to help you out in various ways.
That's kind of the that's not verbatim, but that's sort of what I remember them saying.
How long did that meeting last?
I don't think it was very long.
Did Mr. McDonald say anything at that meeting?
I don't remember.
Did you say anything at that meeting?
nothing more than pleasantries.
I'm going to show you at least one document.
Are we up to 15?
Yep.
Okay, I'm marking as Exhibit 15 a document based stamped U.S. 61273.
Is this a team mark?
Should I share this copy?
Oh.
Do you need a copy or can that go to the wait?
Just mine, for me?
Switch the marked copy.
Okay, there you go.
I'll represent to you, Mr. Wolfson, that this document was produced to us in this litigation.
Appears to be handwritten notes of some sort.
Do you recognize these at all?
No, I don't think I've ever seen these.
Any idea who wrote them?
No.
At the top of the notes, it says OCP weekly.
Do you know what that refers to?
I don't.
Did you attend weekly meetings?
OCP meetings?
Objection?
I don't know what OCP is or what the notes are.
Okay.
I've never seen them.
I'll read a few parts of them and see if it jogs your memory at all.
If you look down at the entry for April 1st, 2025, it says AW and MM had a Doge MTG meeting on Friday, major shift to move drastic and swifter action.
You see where it says that?
Yes.
Does that refresh your recollection as to whether there was a meeting where this was discussed with NEH staff?
No, it doesn't.
But again, this fits with, I think, what I've been saying to you about how there was all of a sudden we had to move quickly.
And if you turn to the next page, this is base label 61274, the second bullet says...
I'm sorry, what am I looking at?
On page 61274, the second entry from the top says Doge said they don't care if there is a backlash and legal challenges.
You see where it says that?
Yes, I see that.
Is that something that you heard Doge say?
I do recall them saying something to that effect.
Who said that specifically?
It would have been one of the two Doge folks, either Nate or Justin.
Do you remember specifically what they said?
I don't remember, but I do remember they said something to the effect that they didn't care if there were legal challenges.
Do you recall when they said that?
No.
There's a date given here.
Yeah, April 1st.
So we're here today because there has been a legal challenge.
Presumably at some point you heard there was a legal challenge, right?
Yes.
How did you hear that?
Again, I think it would have been from the Office of General Counsel that informed me.
Did you hear at any point that the judge in this case entered a preliminary injunction in this case?
I think so.
I'm not an expert on all the legal terminology.
Do you recall hearing that the judge found that the plaintiffs in the author's guilt case were likely to show that there was a First Amendment violation here in the mass termination of grants?
Objection.
I'm not sure I recall that.
I can't say I studied the opinions.
Okay.
What was your reaction when you heard that there was a legal challenge to the grants?
Well, no, I think no one likes a legal challenge.
Go ahead, sorry.
Yeah.
Were you surprised?
Objection.
Was I surprised?
I don't think I was personally surprised.
And why is that?
Because this obviously, this, right, you know, your people's grants are being terminated and they're going to be upset for, I think, reasons we alluded to earlier.
And it's within their right to pursue legal measures.
Were you surprised when you heard that the judge had found that the plaintiffs were likely to succeed in their First Amendment challenge to the terminations?
Objection.
Again, I can't claim to have read or studied the opinion or to understand these larger questions about how this relates to the First Amendment.
In September of last year, you can set that aside, I think we're done with that document.
Oh, okay.
Thank you.
In September of this year, last year, excuse me, NEH announced the largest grant in its history to the TICVA Center.
Does that sound familiar?
Do you recall the amount of the grant?
I think it was about $10 million.
Were you involved at all in that decision to award that grant to the center?
Conflict Interest Disclosure00:10:43
Was I involved?
Michael, it was, as I recall, it was after the murder here in Washington, D.C. at the Jewish Museum, if I'm not mistaken, of two people attending, and they had been murdered right in cold blood, as we know.
As I recall, Michael had seen some kind of podcast produced by TICFA interviewing various people about what had happened.
And he was incredibly impressed by it and wanted to support them in any way possible to fight anti-Semitism and do something about what we were seeing.
And he asked me to reach out to Eric Cohen, who is the head of the TICFA Foundation, and invite him to submit a grant request for a project that would focus on countering anti-Semitism.
Thank you for that.
So the question was, were you involved?
So it sounds like you were involved.
Mr. McDonald reached out to you after he saw this podcast.
Is that correct?
Yes.
And you said you reached out to Mr. Cohen?
Eric Cohen.
How did you know Mr. Cohen?
I know Eric way back because he worked for a year when I was at the Public Interest Magazine.
This goes back to the 1990s, long before I came to NEH.
He was, I think, at the public interest for maybe a year and a half as the managing or assistant editor.
And you reached out to Mr. Cohen, what did you say?
As I recall, I sent him an email.
I should say we're not in regular contact or anything like that.
And I believe I said I wanted to hope I could talk with him on the phone.
And we talked on the phone, and I explained to him what Michael was interested in.
Okay.
Is that the normal process that a grant applicant would go through to seek funding from NEH?
Jackson?
Well, this was at the invitation of the chair.
The agency in my time here does make sole source awards, as we call them.
We still send them out for peer review, so they're sent out to peer reviewers for review.
And then, of course, they go to the National Council.
And so it wasn't unprecedented, if that's what you're asking.
Was this grant sent to peer review after it was selected?
Yes, it was.
How many times in your 20 years has NEH done a sole source grant like that, would you say?
Jackson?
I'd have to look up the numbers.
They're not that uncommon.
I would say, you know, I'm just, you know, just my time here, the last 20 years, I'd say over a dozen.
Aside from what you said before, any other connection with Mr. Cohen?
Any other relationship with Mr. Cohen?
Yeah, no, I worked with him, as I said, at the public interest.
Any other connection with TICVA?
I don't have a personal connection with TICVA now.
Does your wife work at TICVA?
No, she works, she was at Johns Hopkins.
More recently, she's at the HERTOG Foundation.
Okay.
So she never had any connection with TICFA?
Jackson.
I believe she once was invited to do some sort of support role for one of their programs in New York for whatever it was, three or four days.
She's a professor.
She has a PhD.
This is in her wheelhouse.
She was at Johns Hopkins at the time.
Does NEH have any procedures for where there might be a conflict of interest between someone involved in awarding a grant and the grantee themselves to prevent that person being involved in working on that grant application?
We do have conflict of interest things.
At the time, I remember letting Mike know.
I don't remember the exact sequence, but my wife Dorothea was, I can't remember if she was where she was in discussions with the Hertog Foundation.
That I just don't remember.
But I told Michael all of that.
Okay.
What are the NEH procedures for when there's a potential conflict of interest?
We would bring it to the attention of the general counsel.
So do you believe you follow those procedures in this case?
Yes, I did.
Yes, I didn't.
As I said, I wanted to make sure that Michael knew, since he was asking me to do this.
And again, I was not involved in the review of the application or anything.
I didn't initiate it in any way, shape, or form.
I didn't suggest it to Michael.
But I wanted him to know that my wife, again, I can't remember the exact sequence, was in the process of talking with HERTOG.
And I'm sorry if I missed this.
What's the relationship between HERTOG, if I'm saying that correctly, and TICPA?
I don't think there is any relationship.
You asked me.
So I'm sorry, why did you disclose to him that your wife was involved in HERTOG when you were discussing with him about the grant to TICPA?
I think I wanted him to know that because some of the financial backers of the two organizations, they're very different, but some of the financial backers are the same.
So what do you mean by that?
Who are the financial backers?
Roger Hertog.
Okay.
He funds both of those organizations?
I don't know enough about the funding and where that is.
Okay.
Do you know anyone else at the TICBA Center, TICBA Foundation?
I don't think I do.
Thank you.
I have no further questions.
Let me just walk right there for now.
Please stand by.
The time is 3.59 p.m.
And we are going off the record.
The time is 4.10 a.m. and we are going back on the record.
We have no questions for Mr. Wilson.
Yeah, I would just note for the author of Bill Plaintiff's, I assume the ACL's plaintiffs agree per Judge McMahon's order on this matter.
We're holding this open pending the resolution of a privileged dispute.
We understand the government objects.
Well, we certainly recognize her order and are following her order.
That's okay.
So, which, you know, she rules that it would be open for purposes of if its continuation is warranted by her decision on that.
And so if that happens, we will obviously comply.
Okay.
Yeah, just getting on the record that for the purpose stated by Ms. Dallas, we're holding the deposition open.
Then we have the same understanding.
Okay.
I think that's it.
Thank you.
Okay, please stand by.
This is the end of the deposition of Mr. Adam Wilson.
The court reporter will now take orders for the transcript.
So that's the importance.
Will you be ordering the original transcript?
We'd like the original and a rough too, please.
Let's see.
Attorneys Robinson, would you like a copy?
Yeah, I'll take the rough.
We'll let you know on the final.
Okay.
And that's our sandwich here, ladies.
We're going to have to follow up on that, but what's the normal delivery time frame?
Usually it's about 10 to 12 business phase.
Okay.
Okay.
Yeah, we'll let you know.
Thank you.
Attorney Singh, would you like a, I'm sorry.
Attorney Snow is getting the video of today's deposition included in their appearance fee.
Attorney Singh, would you like to order a copy of today's deposition?