(The Center Square) – The U.S. House Oversight Committee is investigating U.S. taxpayer funding for Ukraine after a watchdog report found a large percentage of the equipment has gone unaccounted for since last June.
House Committee on Oversight and Accountability Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., joined by Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, and other Republicans on the Oversight Committee, sent a letter to Department of Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin raising concerns about the funding and asking for documentation of how it has been distributed.
“The Committee remains concerned about the Department of Defense’s (DoD) ability to conduct end-use monitoring of weapons, equipment, and other defense articles going to Ukraine,” the letter said. “It is vital that DoD works to ensure weapons and other forms of security assistance are used for their intended purposes, that they do not fall into the hands of our enemies, and that the risk of waste, fraud, and abuse is mitigated.”
According to the committee, the U.S. has sent nearly $50 billion in military assistance to Ukraine in the last decade, most of that in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Much of that has come through handing U.S. munitions and other military equipment to Ukrainian forces.
Lawmakers have become increasingly critical of funding to Ukraine as the figure grows and questions arise about how the taxpayer money is being spent.
The Inspector General for DOD released a watchdog report last month furthering those concerns. The report found that a significant portion of the equipment inventory were “delinquent.”
“Specifically, the DoD OIG determined that, as of June 2, 2023, serial number inventories for more than $1.005 billion (59 percent) of the total $1.699 billion of EEUM-designated defense articles were delinquent,” the IG’s office said. “Multiple factors contributed to the reporting gaps, including the limited number of U.S. personnel at logistics hubs in a partner nation and in Ukraine, the absence of procedures for conducting EEUM in a hostile environment until December 2022, the movement restrictions for EEUM personnel within Ukraine, and a lack of internal controls for validating data in the SCIP-EUM database.”
Concerns like these are part of the reason lawmakers have held off on passing additional Ukraine assistance.
In another case, an “accounting error” led the agency to overestimate the value of equipment sent to Ukraine by $6.2 billion.
“Despite multiple assurances from DoD that every mechanism is in place to prevent waste, fraud and abuse of U.S. taxpayer funds going to Ukraine, the DoD Inspector General (DoD IG) has alerted Congress of failures by DoD to track enhanced weapons and other defense articles going to Ukraine,” the letter said. “DoD IG’s findings in this report contradict the commitments DoD made to the Committee guaranteeing that effective mechanisms are in place to track American weapons and equipment going to Ukraine.”
“DoD IG’s findings in this report contradict the commitments DoD made to the Committee guaranteeing that effective mechanisms are in place to track American weapons and equipment going to Ukraine.”
Ukraine is black mailing the treasonous, corrupt Joe Biden for Joe Biden’s black mailing Ukraine and for his Hunter Biden’s payoffs.
Joe Biden, while he was vice president of the United States, improperly withheld a loan guarantee to pressure Ukraine into firing prosecutor general Viktor Shokin to prevent a corruption investigation of Ukrainian gas company Burisma and to protect his son, Hunter Biden who was sitting on the board of directors and getting millions in payoffs.
ANY MONEY WE send to a foreign nation, should have checks on WHERE THE HELL that dosh is going. PERIOD!
Save yourself time and frustration looking for the missing Armament money,,,,you gotta know that at least 10% of the Ukrainian money is now in the Biden family laundromats so that more has to be kept on getting paid to Ukraine to keep their mouths shut about Burisma, then Zelinsky and the other ways Biden has leveraged his government influence and power WE GAVE HIM, to get personally rich quick, down and dirty, that have made Joe 50 times wealthier than the sum totals of all his salaries paid over the 50 years he has been in government. The only way criminals live rich, high wide and handsome while still building wealth is they do it with other people stolen money. God knows how much of our money went down Hunter’s nose, paid hookers or hotel bills. The way McConnel has been running the same laundromat thing with the Chinese. Just how rich is he these days? The only difference is he has no Hunter as the smartest guy he knows, and has yet to be caught. Follow the money. The carpet bombing of our enemies ends when the bulging amounts of money gets shoved under the carpet, causing our president to have another nice trip when we see him in the fall, which proves that those who stand for nothing will always fall for anything. McConnell’s same acquired stuttering speech, proves he and Joe have the same self-serving underhanded mindset.
I think we all know where the funds are going.