Posted on 03/29/2018 5:03:38 AM PDT by MarvinStinson
State Dept., USAID fail to respond to request for records on spending in Romania, Colombia
The conservative watchdog Judicial Watch has filed a lawsuit to try to obtain records from the State Department about the taxpayer-funded political activities of George Soros's groups in Colombia and Romania.
The watchdog said it took the action because the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) failed to respond to its Freedom of Information Act requests last fall for records relating to contracts, grants and other "allocations/disbursements of funds" by Open Society Foundation offices in Romania and Colombia.
The watchdog is also seeking information about Soros's activities in Macedonia and Albania.
"It is time for Americans to be allowed to see State Department documentation regarding the public funding of Soros' Open Society Foundations," Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said Wednesday. "The billionaire George Soros needs zero assistance from U.S. taxpayers to promote his far-left agenda abroad."
Conservative lawmakers and foreign policy activists also expect incoming Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and National Security Adviser John Bolton to heavily scrutinize and likely end the taxpayer-funded support for Soros's projects.
The battle for the information became a flashpoint last fall in the fight between the State Department and Senate Republicans over outgoing Secretary of State Rex Tillerson's support for Joseph Macmanus, a 30-year veteran career foreign service officer, to become ambassador to Colombia.
President Donald Trump agreed to appoint Macmanus to the top diplomatic post in Colombia over the concerns of several White House officials and Republican members of Congress, according to Capitol Hill sources.
Several Republican senators, including Mike Lee of Utah and Ted Cruz of Texas, blame Macmanus for rebuffing their attempts to persuade Tillerson to launch an investigation into the relationship between Soros's groups and the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID.
Lee is now single-handedly blocking Macmanus's nomination over concerns about the Soros groups' funding and Macmanus's ties to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the role he played in helping her handle the aftermath of the Benghazi attacks.
Lee, Cruz, and four other senators last year sought information about how the State Department and USAID were using millions of taxpayer dollars to support the activity of Soros's groups and other left-of-center groups "to push a progressive agenda and invigorate the political left" in countries such as Albania, Macedonia, Romania, and Colombia, which they argued had no clear U.S. national security interest.
The senators wrote Tillerson a letter in March 2017 expressing concern about several Soros-funded projects, including one in Colombia in which USAID funds support a Soros-owned media portal that has criticized Trump, capitalism in general, and "patriarchal society."
Macmanus, in a written response to the senators, defended USAID's work without responding to the concerns about U.S. tax dollars supporting Soros's causes and their call for a State Department review into those decisions.
"The Department of State's foreign assistance programs are rigorously designed, implemented, and monitored to ensure that they are based on core American values," Macmanus said in his letter to the senators last year, according to an op-ed in the New York Post.
The senators viewed the response as a blow-off of their concerns and an indication that Tillerson was keeping Clinton- and Kerry-era officials in key decision-making positions.
The senators, including James Inhofe of Oklahoma, Thom Tillis of North Carolina, David Perdue of Georgia, and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, also expressed concern in their letter that State Department officials with the help of Soros's groups were trying to give left-leaning groups more sway in influencing Macedonia's coalition government.
"We find these reports discouraging, and, if true, highly problematic," the senators wrote, noting that much of the concerning activity in Macedonia has been perpetuated through USAID funds awarded to implementing entities such as George Soros's Open Society Foundations.
"Our foreign aid should only be used to promote a political agenda if it is in the security or economic interests of our country to do so, and even at that, we must be cautious and respectful in such an endeavor," they wrote. "We should be especially wary of promoting policies that remain controversial in our own country and have the potential to harm our relationship with the citizens of recipient countries."
Judicial Watch early last year reported that the U.S. government "has quietly spent millions of taxpayer dollars to destabilize the elected, center-right government of Macedonia" and that President Barack Obama's ambassador to Macedonia "worked behind the scenes with Soros to funnel large sums of American dollars for the cause."
The New York Times also reported that former Prime Minister of Macedonia Nikola Gruevski has called for a "de-Sorosization" of society last year after Trump's win encouraged right-of-center politicians in the country and throughout Eastern Europe.
The senators said the problem is not limited to Macedonia but appears to follow "a pattern of alarming activity in the volatile region." They cited leaders in Albania who have made similar claims of "U.S. diplomats and Soros-backed organizations pushing for certain political outcomes in their country."
"Time and time again, foreign leaders visiting Washington have expressed concerns to us about how taxpayer funds are being used counterproductively in their respective countries," they wrote. "The situations in Albania and Macedonia are timely examples of this, but we have heard similar concerns from Latin American and African nations as well."
Judicial Watch said millions of USAID dollars have flowed into Soros-backed NGOs in Colombia to support a controversial peace deal with the Marxist narco-terrorist group FARC that allowed Colombia President Manuel Santos to consolidate power and eliminate separation of powers. The original peace deal proposal failed when voters narrowly rejected it in a plebiscite in the fall of 2016.
Santos resurrected the peace deal with the help of the Obama administration's USAID and Soros-backed groups, the watchdog said.
Judicial Watch said Soros's groups in Colombia have received millions of dollars from USAID, citing statement on the groups' websites and grant money listed on USAID's online database of projects.
Conservatives argue that the Obama administration worked to unravel the force of Plan Colombia, a U.S. initiative that combined nearly $1 billion in U.S. aid with military and diplomatic support to fight against Colombian drug cartels and left-wing insurgent groups.
Republicans supporters tout Plan Colombia as the country's key stabilizer over the last two decades, while many Democrats argue in favor of the peace deal, which they praise for stopping 50 years of conflict and bloodshed between the Colombian government and FARC terrorists and other rebel groups.
Ex Tillerson failed to drain his part of the swamp.
My goodness....why is any public money going to Soros?
What are the names of the public employees at the Dept. of State handling the authorization for the disbursement of these monies?
Foreign governments began turning off money spigots to the scandal-scarred Clinton Foundation; it received millions from dozens of foreign governments including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the Netherlands, Canada, Sweden and Ireland.
<><> French federal comptrollers began following a trail of tens of millions in government money that ended up in Clinton Foundation coffers, according to a document reviewed by The NY Post.
<><> The Australian government announced that it would end its decade-long affiliation with the Clinton Foundation — amounting to as much as $25 million, according to the foundation’s Web site.
<><> Norway is also scaling back; donations reached $25 million in 2015.
When George Soros dies, I will literally throw a party.
The Trump admin intends to pressure foreign states to probe Clinton Foundation targeting Haiti and Columbia.
A source close to Pres-elect Trump’s transition team indicated plans to pressure its yet unnamed US ambassadors to suggest foreign governments probe its Clinton Foundation financial dealings. “Haiti and Colombia will be key diplomatic posts because of all the money involved,” said the source. Recently leaked e-mails indicate “Friends of Bill” Clinton may have been given priority from the State Department as it prepared to spend some $10 billion in aid after a 2010 devastating earthquake in Haiti. The State Dept denied any special treatment.
Canadian mining magnate Frank Giustra pledged $100 million to the foundation in 2005 and later benefited from the foundation’s philanthropic work in Columbia where Giustra acquired large parcels of Columbian land and set up an oil business in Columbia, according to watchdog groups.
cont
Soros was a NAZI sympathizer at age 14.
He hasn’t changed much. Evil SOB. His sons are even worse.
cont
During Bill Clinton’s term as president he provided ****hole Columbia with hundreds of millions of US tax dollars for a myriad of programs.
Was Clinton’s support of the wretched corrupt Columbia predicated on Payback?
Clinton and Giustra setup in Columbia a Romney-type private equity investment company ....but the operation was quickly closed down when it became global news.
Canadian national Giustra acquired large tracts of Columban land and set-up an oil business in Columbia.
In Haiti the same Clinton MO was used——this time Hillary’s brother said “some guy” gave him thousands of acres of Haitian land......plus he was also given a rare license to mine gold.
He will be immediately replaced with another Soros.
The operation is vast
and is run by unseen operators senior to the visible Soros.
Good. There’s one SOB that needs to be in jail for the rest of his useless life.
I hope I’m invited.
Still a good reason to party though. Like we need a reason.
Macmanus being used by President Trump as a trigger for this investigation?????
glad to see you shining the light of day on clinton foundation & soros NGO rip offs.
imo, this is insane to fund our own enemies.
Funding our enemies is not only insane......some of the State Dept funding tactics are illegal.
Time to unmask these enemies of state in the State Dept.
And it is beyond sad to realize that ‘our (the USA) enemies’ are actually ‘Friends of Bill’. A former pResident, working against the interests of our beloved country..............
Soros, or his money, is not going away if he dies.
His meddling in the internal affairs of various countries to push his personal marxist agenda, will continue unabated with his son in charge.
p
I’ll throw a party with a bus trip, no toilets on the bus, and a lot of beer for the stop at his grave site.
Can’t happen soon enough.
He actually has spawn?
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