FACT CHECK: It was Obama who denied foreign aid to Ukraine, not Trump, causing the nation to be threatened by Russia
12/16/2019 / By JD Heyes
Central to Democrats’ narrative for impeaching President Donald Trump is that he ‘withheld aid to Ukraine,’ a charge so laughably false and so provably wrong it’s hardly worth mentioning.
In October, Democrats thought they had a “gotcha” moment when acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney appeared to admit that, yes, the president “withheld” the aid.
President Donald Trump’s acting chief of staff acknowledged Thursday that aid to Ukraine at the center of a House impeachment inquiry was withheld in part because of the president’s desire for the country to investigate potential corruption regarding U.S. domestic politics. …Mulvaney said there is nothing wrong with threatening to withhold foreign aid to pressure a country to change a policy – in this case, he said, to fight corruption.
Come to find out there was a temporary delay in sending about $400 million to Ukraine but it had nothing to do with demanding a “quid pro quo” — that Ukraine investigate Joe and Hunter Biden, as well as reported 2016 election interference by Kiev on behalf of the Hillary Clinton campaign in exchange.
But the president delayed the aid for a short while in order to ensure that Kiev was doing all it could to combat corruption, which the White House was obligated to do by law.
In the end, Ukraine got its aid in the form of lethal military assistance — Javelin anti-tank missiles, in fact — and officials in Kiev never even knew the aid had been temporarily halted.
But let’s be clear about one thing: At least President Trump provided lethal military aid to Ukraine. His predecessor, President Barack Obama, never did.
As reported by The National Sentinel, Obama — and Trump, and previous presidents dating back to Bill Clinton — were obligated to provide Ukraine lethal aid under a 1994 agreement known as the Budapest Memorandum.
“In it, Ukraine, a nuclear power at that time, voluntarily gave up its nuclear weapons in exchange for security guarantees,” German publication DW reported.
TNS noted:
Yes, the Budapest Memorandum obliged the United States, Britain and other Western nations to defend Ukraine if it surrendered those Soviet-era nukes.
Ukraine did. And two decades later, when the country needed to be defended, Obama punted (just like he did following his so-called “red line” declaration in Syria).
Trump did more to live up to U.S. commitments to Ukraine than Obama EVER did
It gets worse. (Related: Obama administration was informed by State Dept. official about Hunter Biden’s sweetheart deal in Ukraine but ignored it.)
Shortly after Russian forces (the “little green men”) took over the Crimea, about one-third of Ukraine proper, Obama did nothing. Instead, his vice president, Joe Biden, traveled to Kiev and threatened to withhold $1 billion in loan guarantees just when the government needed the money desperately for self-defense, as Russia-backed forces in Ukraine had launched a civil war in the Donbas region.
Biden later bragged about making the threat.
And why did he make the threat? Because the top Ukrainian prosecutor was, at the time, investigating corruption involving an energy company called Burisma that was paying his son, Hunter Biden, upwards of $83,000 per month to be a “board member.”
“Trump, in other words, did more to live up to the conditions of the Budapest Memorandum than Obama (and Biden) ever did. In fact, Obama/Biden exploited Ukraine at its most vulnerable moment,” The National Sentinel reported.
Are you starting to see a pattern here?
Democrats are accusing Trump and his administration of doing the exact same things members of their party have done to and in Ukraine: Bribery, quid pro quo, extortion, abuse of power, and failure to provide lethal military aid to a country under siege by a foreign power, per our agreement.
This is just one aspect of the Obama-Biden-Ukraine scandal that isn’t being told to Americans regularly enough. There are many others. Stay tuned.
Sources include:
Tagged Under: annexation, attack, barack obama, Budapest Agreement, corruption, Crimea, democrats, foreign aid, Hunter Biden, Joe Biden, lethal assistance, lies, military assistance, President Trump, propaganda, quid pro quo, Russia, threats, Ukraine
