President Donald Trump’s administration has unfrozen the $105 million in congressionally approved military aid to Lebanon that it had been withholding since September without explanation.
According to the Associated Press and CNN, lawmakers were informed on Monday that the aid was released shortly before Thanksgiving.
Though Congress had approved the funds with support from the Department of Defense, the National Security Council and the State Department, the Office of Management and Budget refused to disburse the aid and ignored lawmakers’ questions about the delay for several months.
The mystery enshrouding the aid to Lebanon closely mirrors the administration’s unexplained freeze on military aid to Ukraine. It was later revealed that Trump had withheld the funds as he pushed the Ukrainian government to manufacture dirt on his political opponents.
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT), who sits on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said on Monday that he was “relieved” to hear the hold had been lifted.
“There was no legitimate security rationale to withhold funding, and lots of reasons why withholding aid would actually hurt U.S. interests,” he said in a statement. “But the administration alarmingly decided to delay these funds without explanation and did so at the worst possible time.”
House Foreign Affairs Committee member Ted Deutch (D-FL) said he and committee chair Eliot Engel (D-NY) had asked the administration about the aid delay last month.
“I’m pleased to see this critical aid finally resuming,” he tweeted.
I’m assuming an article will be published in the very near future that will explain the unexplained. And I’m guessing, news of this article was leaked to the White House, which would explain the sudden release.
Of course, this is total speculation on my part. I mean, it’s not like anything like that has happened before.
How many more “unexplained delays” in funding or other Congressionally mandated activities are out there that we don’t know about? We will learn what happened here at some point, the reasons why things were held up will eventually be leaked by someone, or we’ll see an action by Lebanon that helps Trump (or something will happen in the area that can be connected to this).
We’re really looking at a lawless administration at this point, one that things their choices are all that matters, and the laws that uphold the nation are irrelevant when confronted with their wishes. They just need to go, and be replaced with a new administration that will follow the law again…at this point we can only depend on the Democrats to produce that.
Either that, or Lebanon will be holding a press conference about how the DNC set up an office within the Ukraine Embassy in their country for the purposes of purchasing bulk copies of “Triggered” to make Don Jr. look bad.
I suspect they will claim that there never was a hold. Oh well.
Did the Lebanese finally admitted to having physical possession of the DNC server?