A federal judge ruled that Kari Lake’s service as acting CEO of the U.S. Agency for Global Media was illegal.
The court, in a decision issued Saturday, found that her appointment did not comply with the Vacancies Act, which prohibits delegating CEO duties and instead allows certain temporary assistants or Senate-confirmed candidates to take on the role.
Since Lake was neither an assistant nor authorized by Congress, she did not fulfill the necessary provisions, District Judge Royce Lamberth said.
Lamberth said that any action Lake took during her tenure as CEO between July 31 and Nov. 18, 2025, is null and void.
Kari Lake reacts to the VOA ruling
Lake is an ally of President Donald Trump. Before she was appointed as a senior adviser and acting leader for the U.S. Agency for Global Media, the parent agency of Voice of America, Lake ran as the Republican nominee in the 2022 Arizona gubernatorial election and the 2024 U.S. Senate election in Arizona. She lost both contests.
Lake, in a statement, said the ruling from the “activist judge” is in the way of Trump’s “mandate to cut bloated bureaucracy, eliminate waste, and restore accountability to government.”
“Lamberth is the judge who slept through the J6 defendants’ trials, then woke up and threw them in prison for absurdly long sentences. And he also ruled that violent male convicts who claimed they were trans should be housed in women’s prisons. Sick and dumb,” she said.
What we know about the plaintiffs
The plaintiffs, Patsy Widakuswara, Kate Neeper and Jessica Jerreat, issued a statement, saying they “feel vindicated and deeply grateful,” they said.
“The judge’s ruling that Kari Lake’s actions shall have no force or effect is a powerful step toward undoing the damage she has inflicted on this American institution that we love,” the plaintiffs said.
These whistleblowers previously worked for VOA. Widakuswara served as White House bureau chief, while Jerreat led as press freedom editor, with 2½ decades of experience under her belt. Neeper was the director of strategy and performance assessment.
They asserted that VOA failed to fulfill its legally required purpose by asking staffers not to return to work, suspending contracts, turning off service and locking the agency’s doors.
“Even as we work through what this ruling means for colleagues harmed by her actions, it brings renewed hope and momentum to the next phase of our fight: restoring VOA‘s global operations and ensuring we continue to produce journalism, not propaganda,” the plaintiffs added.
VOA is the largest U.S. government-funded international broadcaster. With primarily a foreign audience, VOA strives to be a “consistently reliable and authoritative source of news.”
Lake’s time leading VOA
As the Deseret News previously reported, the network, which broadcasts to international audiences, including countries that don’t have freedom of the press, went dark for the first time in over eight decades under Lake. Following Trump’s March 14 executive order to “reduce the scope” of many agencies, including USAGM, Lake quickly moved to suspend more than 1,300 employees at VOA and banned them from entering the media network’s offices.
Under her tenure, VOA went from broadcasting in 49 languages to four. That includes Persian, Mandarin, Dari and Pashto. Lake also revoked funding from VOA sister networks like Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia, and the Middle East Broadcasting Networks.
She also canceled the USAGM’s lease on a new office space that would have helped the agency save money.
