President Donald Trump and Elon Musk, along with a team of young men at the Department of Government Efficiency, dealt a massive blow to the bureaucratic ‘Deep State’ last week with the temporary pause on funding to USAID. The organization has previously come under scrutiny for its lack of transparency in how it allocates its almost $50 billion in funding, with many suggesting that the organization is a “front for the CIA.”
J. Michael Waller, author of Big Intel: How the CIA and FBI Went From Cold War Heroes to Deep State Villians,” pushed back on the “front for the CIA” claim in a post on X. In it, he claimed, “It’s worse than that. USAID became its own unaccountable covert operations agency. USAID ran covert ops without presidential finding as required by law.”
USAID is not a front for the CIA.
It’s worse than that.
USAID became its own unaccountable covert operations agency.
USAID ran covert ops without a presidential finding as required by law.
— J Michael Waller (@JMichaelWaller) February 4, 2025
While most of the “covert ops” may, in fact, be opaque and without presidential findings, not all are. On Wednesday, Just The News reported on several examples of USAID exerting influence on foreign countries to sway political winds in favor of U.S. interests.
Among them was the East-West Management Institute, a Soros Open Society-backed organization that also received more than $260 million in USAID grants over the years. This money, according to Just The News, was used to “promote rule of law in Georgia, strengthen civil society in Uganda, and advance Serbia’s accession talks with the European Union.”
The group also received $9 million for a “Justice for All” campaign in Albania that was uncovered by Judicial Watch during the Obama Administration. Just the News reported:
The assistance concerned several GOP Senators, who sent a letter to the newly appointed Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in 2017, alleging the campaign funded by the U.S. government helped craft an Albanian judicial reform proposal that may “give the Prime Minister and left-of-center government full control over the judiciary.”
Those same Senators also raised concerns about a similar Soros-backed program in neighboring Macedonia where they said a local affiliate called Foundation Open Society-Macedonia received backing from USAID through the Open Society Foundations and pushed “a progressive agenda.”
While the influence USAID funding exerts on foreign populations to induce and influence regime change may sometimes be subtle at best, other times it is much more apparent. Joe Biden’s trip to Ukraine as Vice President in March 2016 may be one of the more well-known examples.
After the 2020 Election and the exposé of the Hunter Biden Laptop From Hell, quite a bit of attention was given to an outburst that Joe Biden made during a discussion at the Council on Foreign Relations in January 2018.
During his remarks, Biden infamously bragged about pressuring Ukraine officials to fire Viktor Shokin, the special prosecutor who was investigating Burisma, where Hunter Biden was a board member making almost $1 million per year.
Biden recalled going to Kyiv for the “12th or 13th time” to announce a third billion-dollar loan guarantee. He said he had gotten a commitment from Petro Poroshenko, the Ukrainian President who was installed following the ousting of Viktor Yanukovich during the Maidan Revolution, and Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk to “take action against the state prosecutor.” But when Biden arrived, the two Ukrainians had yet to remove Shokin.
“‘I’m leaving here in, what, six hours? If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money,’” Biden recalled saying. “Well, son of a bitch. He got fired!”
In June of 2016, the loan guarantee was signed and entered into force a few months later in September. The announcement of the USAID loan was made on September 30th, 2016 and stated:
Yesterday USAID announced the issuance of a $1 billion loan guarantee from the United States to the Government of Ukraine to support the implementation of key economic and governance reforms necessary for Ukraine’s democratic transition and sustainable economic recovery.
…
“USAID is proud of our ongoing commitment to the Ukrainian people and government to foster critical economic and democratic reforms,” said USAID Administrator Gayle Smith. “This loan guarantee and USAID’s ongoing assistance in Ukraine will bolster the process of implementing meaningful reforms and will bolster efforts to combat corruption and build a more independent, democratic, and financially viable and prosperous Ukraine.”
Ya’ll remember when Joe Biden bragged about withholding that “$1 billion loan guarantee” to Ukraine in exchange until the prosecutor investigating Burisma was fired??
That was USAID.
That is how Nuland and her cronies at the State Department were able to fund the Maidan and… pic.twitter.com/nlhqOdoUiD
— CannCon (@CannConActual) February 6, 2025
Merriam-Webster defines a “coup” as “a sudden decisive exercise of force in politics” that leads to the “overthrow or alteration of an existing government by a small group.” Because there was no violence in the specific actions taken by then-Vice President Biden, it would be considered a “soft coup.”
Whether or not there was violence is irrelevant. Biden utilized the threat of withholding $1 billion in USAID loans to remove the Prosecutor General of Ukraine, a man who was appointed by the Ukrainian President (the US-friendly Poroshenko rather than the Russian-friendly Yanukovich) and was confirmed by the Verkhovna Rada (Ukrainian Parliament) by a vote of 318 out of 382 deputies. He also just happened to be investigating corruption in a company Hunter Biden had a financial interest in.
As the disgraced John Bolton, unburdened from his security clearances and security detail, once eloquently stated to CNN’s Jake Tapper:
John Bolton should be in prison.
Plenty of security from Iran there. https://t.co/jfwTJM0P3x pic.twitter.com/TEj753RL3B
— CannCon (@CannConActual) January 29, 2025
Smoking Gun: Hunter Biden’s “Pay for Play” Contract/Emails Revealed From Days Before the Infamous “Son of a Bitch Was Fired” Trip to Ukraine
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