February 13, 2024
Permission to republish original opeds and cartoons granted.
Sen. J.D. Vance exposes Ukraine foreign aid impeachment trap. Is Biden or Trump allowed to end the war in Ukraine?
By Robert Romano
The U.S. Senate has approved by a 70-29 vote a $95 billion foreign aid package including $60 billion for Ukraine, $14 billion for Israel, $9 billion for Gaza and $5 billion for Taiwan even as Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) warned the body that the war funding for Ukraine could make it impossible for the President to end the conflict now or in 2025, regardless of who wins the election.
Vance pointed out that former President Donald Trump is running in 2024 on a promise to end the war in Ukraine, which he views as a potential powder keg that could lead to nuclear war, with Trump saying, “We got to get that war settled and I'll get it settled." Trump has promised he could get the war ended within 24 hours.
But Vance noted that the legislation’s funding for the war would run all the way until Sept. 30, 2025, almost a year into the next presidential term: “includes $1.6 billion for foreign military financing in Ukraine, and $13.7 billion for the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative. These funds expire on September 30, 2025…”
Meaning, it might take a little longer than 24 hours for the next president, whether Trump or the incumbent President Joe Biden, should he be reelected, to move to end the war. Why?
Vance warned, “These are the exact same accounts President Trump was impeached for pausing in December 2019. Every single House Republican voted against this impeachment resolution,” adding if the President “were to withdraw from or pause financial support for the war in Ukraine in order to bring the conflict to a peaceful conclusion… it would amount to the same fake violation of budget law from the first impeachment, under markedly similar facts and circumstances.”
Vance called it a “Supplemental Impeachment Time Bomb,” and raises a very valid question: Are we allowed to have a president who can negotiate for peace? Or has Congress prohibited diplomacy with Russia and Ukraine to end the war, or even running for president on an anti-war platform for that matter?
It is worth noting that when Trump ran for president in 2016, it was his opposition to U.S. intervention in Ukraine that got him the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant against Trump campaign advisor Carter Page in Oct. 2016 , as the then-Obama administration spied on the opposition party led by former President Donald Trump, in an election year, using made-up charges the candidate was a Russian agent because his opponent and the incumbent party disagreed with his take on the Ukraine civil war.
The FISA warrant application stated: “The target of this application is Carter W. Page, a U.S. person, and an agent of a foreign power… The status of the target was determined in or about October 2016 from information provided by the U.S. State Department…” Those allegations relied on the Clinton campaign and DNC-financed Christopher Steele dossier that there was a “well-developed conspiracy” by Russia and the Trump campaign to hack the DNC and John Podesta and give their emails to Wikileaks.
But it was Trump’s anti-war stance that truly predicated the surveillance, with the Justice Department complaining to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that Trump allegedly “[made] sure [the GOP] platform would not call for giving weapons to Ukraine to fight Russian and rebel forces” and that he “might recognize Crimea as Russian territory and lift punitive U.S. sanctions against Russia” citing news reports as the Justice Department used an Aug. 2016 Politico story highlighting Trump’s positions on Ukraine, including his suggestion the people of Crimea preferred to live in Russia, and his doubts that the territories Russia had seized could be reclaimed without World War III.
At an Aug. 2016 Columbus, Ohio rally, Politico quoted Trump saying a military conflict to take back Crimea would risk nuclear war: “You wanna go back? …You want to have World War III to get it back?”
And the FISA warrant application quoted Trump on ABC’s “This Week” on July 31, 2016 suggesting the people of Crimea supported Russian annexation: “The people of Crimea, from what I’ve heard, would rather be with Russia than where they were.”
But the matter would not end with surveillance under the congressionally enacted FISA. Because Trump ran as an anti-war candidate, his chosen National Security Advisor Michael Flynn was politically decapitated within a month of taking office in 2017.
The now-released transcripts of Flynn’s phone calls with Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak on Dec. 23, 2016, Dec. 29, 2016 and Dec. 31, 2016 confirm that Flynn was engaging with Kislyak to stop a dangerous escalation in U.S.-Russian relations from occurring during the transition, and for that, Flynn had to go.
The investigation into whether Flynn was a Russian agent had been closed on Jan. 3, 2017, only to be reopened by Strzok based on the intercepted conversations between Flynn and Kislyak. This came at the time the Obama administration was levying sanctions against Russia and expelling many Russian diplomats from the U.S.
Flynn told Kislyak on Dec. 29, 2016 that “we need cool heads to prevail” and advised that Moscow only respond in a “reciprocal” fashion. By Dec. 31, 2016, Kislyak had reported that Moscow had received Flynn’s message and would only respond in reciprocal fashion.
Flynn had also proposed improving U.S.-Russia relations, appearing in the Steele dossier because of his speaking engagement, which was really an interview led by a Russian reporter, Sophie Shevardnadze, in a public forum, at the Russia Today 10-year anniversary in Moscow in Dec. 2015. Steele wrote in Aug. 2016: “Kremlin engaging with several high profile U.S. players, including… former DIA Director Michael Flynn… and funding their recent visits to Moscow.”
Flynn was there to sell the idea that the U.S. and Russia had a common enemy in Islamic State and more broadly radical Islam, a proposal candidate Trump would adopt in 2016.
Flynn stated, “This back and forth, and I do appreciate it… and I respect it, because we have to have this debate, we absolutely have to have this debate, and we have to have it now. And we can’t—the United States—and I’m speaking as a really a private citizen—the United States can’t sit there and go, Russia, you’re bad, and Russia can’t sit there and say, the U.S., you’re bad. What we have to do, like we have done in the past, and I could go into a couple of historical examples where Europe would not be the Europe that it is today, thriving, had it not been for Russia and the United States working together 75 years ago, and in other places [is] where we have worked together. So, this idea of us not being able to work together is a misnomer, and I think we have to step back and we have to say, okay, what are the common interests, and then, what are the common goals that we want to achieve, and those goals I believe the number one goal is to… eliminate the cancerous idea that exists inside of the Islamic religion, we must do that.”
On how to generate trust between the two countries, Flynn flatly stated, “Stop being like two bullies in a playground. Quit acting immature… with each other and know that I have… a disagreement with you, you have a disagreement with me. You know, this is a funny marriage between Russia and the United States, but it’s a marriage… whether we like it or not. And, that marriage is very, very rocky right now, and what we don’t need is we don’t need that marriage to break up. We’ve had our break ups in the past, but we need to… look at this, I mean, I’m deadly serious about this, because I know this enemy… and I think there’s some in this country that know this enemy from having dealt with it in Chechnya and Dagestan and other places. This is a very, very deadly enemy.”
Finishing out his interview, Flynn expressed hope that his idea for cooperation would be accepted in both Washington, D.C. and Moscow to defeat their common enemy and to avoid a larger conflict: “My wish and my hope is that we figure out a way strategically to work together, I think that that’s the way ahead. Whether or not we work together 20 years from now, I don’t know, but I know if we don’t work together right now, the potential for going to a larger conflict against each other or the potential for this enemy to do far more damage than they already have is very, very real.”
In 2016, Paul Manafort was Trump’s campaign chairman and removed by Trump after the NYT ran an erroneous hit piece in Aug. 2016 about a supposed “black ledger” from Manafort’s time as the campaign manager of deposed former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych in 2010.
Carter Page was similarly removed from the campaign when a Sept. 2016 Yahoo! News story appeared alleging, falsely as it turned out, he was a Russian agent, which was circularly used in the FISA warrant application.
Ultimately, former Special Counsel Robert Mueller found in July 2019 there was no Trump campaign conspiracy with Russia to hack the DNC and give the emails to Wikileaks.
According to Mueller’s final report to the Attorney General, “the evidence was not sufficient to charge that any member of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with representatives of the Russian government to interfere in the 2016 election.”
Mueller stated “the Office did not find evidence likely to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Campaign officials such as Paul Manafort, George Papadopoulos, and Carter Page acted as agents of the Russian government — or at its direction, control or request…”
Manafort was brought up on unrelated tax and bank fraud charges and convicted in 2018 but ultimately pardoned by former President Trump in 2020. As for Michael Cohen, per the Mueller report, “Cohen had never traveled to Prague…” and so couldn’t have been meeting with Russian intel. We knew that as early as Jan. 2017 when Buzzfeed published the dossier and Cohen showed his passport.
Carter Page was never charged with anything.
The civil war in Ukraine that began in 2014 actually started out as a policy disagreement over a pair of competing trade agreements with the European Union and Russia, at least, that’s the story former Vice President Joe Biden tells in his book, “Promise Me, Dad: A Year of Hope, Hardship, and Purpose,” published in 2017.
“A popular demonstration,” Biden wrote, “which started at a square in Kyiv in late 2013, when President Viktor Yanukovych reneged on his promise to take the country into the European Union, had grown from a spontaneous eruption to a real political movement — one President Yanukovych mishandled badly.”
Here, Biden is referring to the pro-Europe, anti-Russia trade agreement, the Ukraine–European Union Association Agreement. It was a trade deal Yanukovych’s then-adviser Paul Manafort had advised him to adopt, but in 2013, he rejected Manafort’s advice, pulling out of the deal. What followed was a revolution in Ukraine that ultimately ousted Yanukovych from power in 2014, embroiling Ukraine in civil war that led directly to the annexation of Crimea by Russia and several separatist uprisings in eastern Ukraine. Yanukovych then fled to Russia on Feb. 22, 2014, and the trade deal was signed in March 2014 by interim Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk.
By Biden’s account, it was his pressure that prompted Yanukovych to flee: “I made the last of many urgent calls to Yanukovych in late February of 2014, when his snipers were assassinating Ukrainian citizens by the dozens and we had credible reports that he was contemplating an even more vicious crackdown. I had been warning him for months to exercise restraint in dealing with his citizens, but on this night, three months into the demonstrations, I was telling him it was over; time for him to call off his gunmen and walk away. His only real supporters were his political patrons and his operators in the Kremlin, I reminded him, and he shouldn’t expect his Russian friends to rescue him from this disaster. Yanukovych had lost the confidence of the Ukrainian people, I said, and he was going to be judged harshly by history if he kept killing them. The disgraced president fled Ukraine the next day…”
U.S.-Russian relations have been worsening ever since, even after Trump who ran on a peace platform was elected as he was encircled by his own administration and Congress to ensure that weapons would go to Ukraine. And then when Trump tried to stop it, as Vance notes, he was impeached.
Vance cited a Washington Post report from Jan. 26 that said the war funding bill seeks to “future-proof” it from any president who seeks to undo it: “Not incidentally, a U.S. official said, the hope is that the long-term promise — again assuming congressional buy-in — will also ‘future-proof’ aid for Ukraine against the possibility that former President Donald Trump wins his reelection bid.”
This all has made the war in Ukraine simultaneously predictable, preventable and inevitable — regardless of who wins the election.
Meaning, even if Trump’s proposed policy to end the war proved to be very popular, and he won the election this year, Congress might not let him pursue that policy once again. And as the $95 billion foreign aid bill heads its way to the House for consideration, the American people may not have a choice in the matter.
Robert Romano is the Vice President of Public Policy at Americans for Limited Government.
To view online: https://dailytorch.com/2024/02/sen-j-d-vance-exposes-ukraine-foreign-aid-impeachment-trap-is-biden-or-trump-allowed-to-end-the-war-in-ukraine/
Video: Ukraine Funding Bill REJECTED By Speaker Johnson
To view online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7hJRllZ1lo
3 Years Later: Revocation Of Houthis As Terrorists Opened Door For Iranian Aggression
Feb. 12, 2024, Fairfax, Va.—Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning today issued the following statement marking the three-year anniversary of the State Department’s announcement that the Houthis would no longer be considered a terrorist organization:
“Three years ago today, the U.S. State Department and the Biden administration announced that they were revoking the terrorist designation of the Houthis as a Foreign Terrorist Organization. One month ago, the United States and the British bombed Houthi rebels is bombing the Houthis in retaliation for their attacks on cargo ships on the Red Sea heading to and from the Suez Canal. The Suez Canal handles 30 percent of the entire world’s sea-going container traffic.
“While the Biden administration seems to have forgotten this three-year anniversary which opened the door to Iran’s funding of its terror network in Yemen, it would be a shame if the rest of the world forgot about how kowtowing to Iran has made the world a much more dangerous place. Just another Biden blunder – shrinking America’s prestige, power and dollar one screw up at a time.”
To view online: https://getliberty.org/2024/02/3-years-later-revocation-of-houthis-as-terrorists-opened-door-for-iranian-aggression/