“Of the billions of tax dollars spent by the U.S. Agency for International Development Office (USAID) that are being questioned by the Trump administration, millions went to fund terrorism,” reports The Center Square:
“The case represents one of the most significant diversions of USAID-funded humanitarian aid that USAID-OIG has investigated,” USAID’s Office of Inspector General said.
It involved a Syrian national, Mahmoud Al Hafyan, who was charged with illegally diverting more than $9 million of taxpayer money through USAID to armed combatant groups, including the Al-Nusrah Front (ANF), a designated foreign terrorist organization affiliated with al-Qaida in Iraq….Al Hafyan led a non-governmental organization (NGO) in Syria, managing 160 employees.
Since Syria’s civil war began in 2011, and through 2020, U.S. taxpayers funded more than $12 billion of USAID money to Syria intended for food and medical supplies that was supposed to be administered by United Nations agencies and NGOs.
The NGO that Al Hafyan led received $122 million over a three-year period, diverting food kits meant for refugees to ANF commanders, according to the complaint. ANF…was known for committing human rights atrocities, including conducting mass executions of civilians, suicide bombings and kidnappings.
Al Hafyan allegedly sold the food kits on the black market to the ANF commanders, falsifying documents to make it seem like refugees were receiving the food.
USAID had also been funding programs like a $2 million grant for gender affirming care in Guatemala, and $20 million for the creation of a Sesame Street facsimile in Iraq, according to the New York Times and NPR. USAID and the State Department also spent a great deal on promoting LGBTQ causes overseas, such as $25,000 for a transgender opera in Colombia through the State Department, “to raise awareness and increase the transgender representation“, and also:
$3,315,446 for “being LGBTQ in the Caribbean” through USAID.
$1.5 million to promote job opportunities for LGBTQ individuals in Serbia through USAID.
$32,000 for a comic book “featuring an LGBTQ+ hero” in Peru through the State Department.
$55,750 for a climate change presentation warning about the impact of climate change in Argentina to be led by female and LGBT journalists through the State Department.
$80,000 for an LGBTQ community center in Bratislava, Slovakia through the State Department.
$16,500 to foster a “united and equal queer-feminist discourse in Albanian society” through the State Department.
$8,000 to promote DEI among LGBTQ groups in Cyprus through the State Department.
The State Department’s Global Engagement Center funded the Global Disinformation Index (GDI). GDI blacklisted news outlets critical of the Biden administration in an effort to starve them of advertising dollars. Meanwhile, it praised progressive pro-Biden “news” outlets such as HuffPost that have lost libel lawsuits after repeatedly making false claims, giving them its highest ratings despite their history of factual errors because of how they gullibly repeated Biden administration talking points, praised Joe Biden and attacked his critics.
GDI classified publications that criticized the Biden administration as “misinformation,” even when they made no factual errors. GDI claimed that the 10 “riskiest” news outlets for disinformation are the New York Post, Reason, the American Spectator, Newsmax, the Federalist, the American Conservative, One America News, the Blaze, the Daily Wire, and RealClearPolitics. These are all either conservative publications that criticize the Biden administration, except for Reason, a libertarian magazine that criticizes civil-liberties violations by both Democrats and Republicans, and RealClearPolitics, a political news and polling-data aggregator. Its explanation for giving these publications bad ratings does not even suggest that most of them made factually false claims. GDI’s explanation of its rating for the New York Post admitted that “GDI’s study did not review specific high-profile stories and attempt to determine whether they were disinformation.”
By contrast, GDI gave high ratings to left-wing publications such as HuffPost that frequently make false claims and engage in slanted, sensationalistic coverage. GDI’s co-founder, Clare Melford, wrote for HuffPost in the past. GDI claimed that “HuffPost largely featured fact-based, unbiased content free from sensational text or visuals. This domain also refrained from perpetuating divisive narratives…” It claimed that the “ten lowest risk online news outlets” included Huffpost, Buzzfeed News, NPR, ProPublica, the Associated Press, Insider, the New York Times, USA Today, and the Washington Post.
An entity created by George Soros recently poured $250,000 into the Global Disinformation Index, which attacked the Liberty Unyielding blog for factually accurate statements about crime that were consistent with what the Justice Department and Bureau of Justice Statistics have found in their surveys and reports.
