Court rules Trump appointee overstepped authority when he tried to replace media fund’s leadership

Superior Court Judge Shana Frost Matini ruled that Michael Pack overstepped his authority when he fired the board of an agency that helps dissidents and journalists in repressive countries and sought to replace it with his own slate of directors, including himself. Shortly after taking over the US Agency for Global Media, Pack began a sweeping overhaul of Voice of America, Radio Free Europe and other government-funded media operations, firing five of their directors; two others resigned in anticipation of his cuts. But the board of the Open Technology Fund, which Pack dismissed along with its director, rejected his order, arguing that he didn’t have the authority to replace them, and at one point, it blocked Pack’s chosen slate of directors and his new chief executive designee from taking over its offices in the District of Columbia. The District’s attorney general, which oversees nonprofits in the city, sued on the agency’s behalf. Judge Shana Frost Matini agreed that Pack was not authorized by the fund’s bylaws to replace its leadership and that the board Pack has been seeking to replace is the “valid” one at the agency.