A combine harvests soybeans in Marion, Kentucky, on October 14. Jan Sonnenmair/Getty Images

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins burst into the White House last week explaining that her team had found a legal way to help unlock billions in relief funds for US farmers caught up in the trade war with China, sources familiar with the matter tell CNN.

By tapping into a Depression-era fund and moving around leftover money from the prior fiscal year, Rollins was able to scrounge together enough funding to reopen all 2,100 USDA county offices by paying two employees per office to come back to work. Only then could they get the crucial assistance funds out the door, the sources said.

“We had to pay the employees in order to bring them back. We had to find the money,” a USDA official told CN

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