By Spencer Brown, TOWNHALL | October 09, 2023 12:00 PM
As AP explained of the Biden administration’s frantic efforts to avoid criticism:
Another point of criticism leveled at the administration by Republicans is that its decision shortly after taking office to reverse a Trump-era ban on assistance to the Palestinians, including civilians in Gaza, may have helped fund the operation.
Administration officials roundly rejected this, saying their efforts to help Palestinian civilians in Gaza and elsewhere do not involve money that Hamas can use or divert.
But that’s a lie. The Biden administration did know that such aid — as they admitted in internal documents — came with a “high risk” that Hamas would benefit as a result.
According to reporting from The Washington Free Beacon’s Adam Kredo in August, the outlet obtained internal documents that showed the Biden administration “pushed through plans to distributed hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer aid” to areas controlled by Hamas “despite internal assessments that those plans could boost the Iran-backed terrorist group.”
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More from the Free Beacon’s report:
State Department officials in 2021 outlined the concerns in private communications, asking the Treasury Department to exempt them from laws that bar the U.S. government from injecting taxpayer aid into territories controlled by Palestinian terror groups. The Biden administration needed this authorization in order to move forward with its plans to unfreeze more than $360 million in U.S. funds for the Palestinian Authority that were cut off during the Trump administration due to the authority’s support for terrorists.
“We assess there is a high risk Hamas could potentially derive indirect, unintentional benefit from U.S. assistance to Gaza. There is less but still some risk U.S. assistance would benefit other designated groups,” the State Department wrote in a draft sanctions exemption request circulated internally in March 2021, shortly after Biden took office. “Notwithstanding this risk, State believes it is in our national security interest to provide assistance in the West Bank and Gaza to support the foreign policy objectives.”
The documents—obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the watchdog group Protect the Public’s Trust—show the Biden administration was privately worried its efforts to restart Palestinian aid could benefit Hamas and other terror factions operating in the Gaza Strip. As officials publicly provided assurances to Congress and the press that this aid would be doled out “consistent with U.S. law,” the State Department was scrambling to secure a sanctions exemption that would let it skirt anti-terrorism laws.
The State Department claimed it needed broad authorities to conduct work in the West Bank and Gaza Strip “that would otherwise be prohibited by the Global Terrorist Sanctions Regulations and the Foreign Terrorist Organization Sanctions Regulations,” according to a draft version of the request.
“Such authorization would enable activities, including assistance activities, that are critical to support the administration’s efforts to advance prosperity, security, and freedom for both Israelis and Palestinians and to advance and preserve the prospects of a negotiated solution in which Israel lives in peace and security alongside a viable Palestinian state,” according to the draft request.
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The internal documents obtained by the Free Beacon include the draft of the exemption request as well as internal emails discussing the need for the Treasury Department to grant it. One email, sent to over a dozen State Department employees, said it was urgently needed to push the Biden administration’s “foreign policy objectives,” which included an immediate resumption of funding to the Palestinian government.
State Department officials said they did not specify what programs or activities they intended to fund if exempted from counterterrorism laws due to the need for “broad flexibility.” Instead, they would only provide the Treasury Department with “illustrative examples” including a list of assistance projects totaling over $200 million, according to one of the emails.
Despite the acknowledged “high risk” of sending taxpayer-funded aid to Hamas-controlled Gaza, the Biden administration green-lit the plan anyway and Hamas terrorists subsequently carried out the deadliest attack against Jewish people since the Holocaust.<
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