In a hearing conducted by the House Oversight Committee’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) subcommittee, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), the chair of the subcommittee, sounded off on President Biden for what she saw as misuse of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and threatened potential “criminal referrals” regarding those misuses.
As background, that hearing occurred in late February and primarily revolved around exposing what went on with USAID that could have been illegal, with Rep. MTG focusing on Biden’s alleged use of it, when he was Vice President in the Obama Administration, to pressure the Ukrainian government in a way that helped his son Hunter.
Beginning her line of questioning after the witnesses gave opening remarks about the situation, Rep. Greene noted that, if appropriate, her subcommittee will make criminal referrals based on what information it uncovers. She said, “This committee, based on this hearing and witness testimonies, will consider recommending investigations and criminal referrals.”
Then, after noting that Hunter Biden was on the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company, when his father was VP, she noted that it was being prosecuted for corruption and Biden helped quash that investigation. She said, “The prosecutor general of Ukraine at the time, Viktor Shokin, was investigating Burisma for corruption. Biden threatened, and it’s on video, to withhold 1 billion of USAID grant to Ukraine if Shokin wasn’t fired.”
Rep. Greene then started questioning Max Primorac, a former USAID official and current Heritage Foundation senior research fellow, about the situation and what Biden appears to have used USAID for, in seemingly quite illegal and indefensible fashion. Doing so, Rep. Greene asked, “Is USAID supposed to be used as leverage by a president to protect his son?”
Then, when Mr. Primorac told her “No, we call that corruption,” Rep. Green responded by asking him what percentage of the USAID budget has been “doled out to bad actors.” She asked, “In your estimation, roughly what percentage of USAID funding is doled out to bad actors or to efforts that don’t have the best interests of Americans in mind?” Primorac didn’t seem to know, but did tell her that revelations about its massive spending on overhead and bad actors is “extremely troubling.” Watch part of Rep. Greene’s comments here:
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Commenting on much the same issue during the hearing was Middle East Forum Executive Director Gregg Roman, who said that he was sitting before the subcommittee to testify “because there’s a fox loose in the henhouse of our foreign aid system – a system intended to uplift lives abroad that instead has funneled millions of taxpayer dollars to radical and terrorist-linked organizations.”
Continuing, he noted that the issues with American foreign aid needs to be fixed as soon as possible, as it is a major lurking threat that, if not solved, could cause serious issues for American efforts to improve our position abroad. He said, “If we don’t fix these fences now, we risk fueling violence against our allies, our troops, and potentially ourselves.”
He added that criminal charges are justified and necessary, saying, “I urge this committee to make a formal criminal referral to the Department of Justice regarding USAID’s systemic failure to prevent taxpayer dollars from reaching terrorist organizations. USAID’s reckless bureaucrats should be dragged not just in front of this committee, but before a criminal court judge who can get to the bottom of this travesty and lock up any government official who risked the lives of innocent people around the world to advance these radical anti-American pet projects.”