In 2019, 40 Democrats Called Ukraine’s Nazi Azov Battalion a Terrorist Org. Now They Send It Billions thumbnail

In 2019, 40 Democrats Called Ukraine’s Nazi Azov Battalion a Terrorist Org. Now They Send It Billions

By The Geller Report

One thing is certain: the full extent of the ties between Ukraine and the posturing, self-righteous, desperately corrupt, hypocritical and self-serving U.S. Democrat establishment is not publicly known, and may never be known. But what we do know should have brought that entire establishment crashing down years ago. First, there was Hunter Biden’s $50,000-a-month job with the Ukrainian gas company Burisma despite his having no experience whatsoever in the industry. This was an obvious instance of influence-peddling despite all the ongoing attempts to explain it away. Then there are the allegations that the U.S. government sent taxpayer money to Ukraine, which then invested in the discredited cryptocurrency firm FTX, which then donated millions to Democrats. The heated denials of any wrongdoing in the latter case recall the denials of the authenticity of Hunter’s laptop. And there is much more, including the fact that yesterday’s Ukrainian Nazi terrorists are now U.S. taxpayer-funded heroes of freedom.

The facts have gotten little attention, but the independent journalism site Kanekoa News reported as long ago as last June that “on October 16, 2019, the top Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee’s counterterrorism subpanel, Rep. Max Rose (NY), led a letter signed by forty Democrats asking the State Department why they had not placed Ukraine’s Azov Battalion on the U.S. list of ‘foreign terrorist organizations’ (FTOs).” The irony couldn’t be richer, for now the New York Times, that reliable organ of far-Left opinion, refers to “Ukraine’s celebrated Azov Battalion,” and claims that “the group’s defense of the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol — the southern port city decimated by Russian forces in the first months of the war — has become a powerful symbol of the suffering inflicted by Russia and the resistance mounted by Ukraine.”

Every last Democrat who condemned the Azov Battalion likely reads and respects the Times, and every last one of them also would likely prefer us all to forget that they once likened the Azov Battalion to the Islamic State (ISIS) and noted that it “openly welcomes neo-Nazis into its ranks.” The Democrats’ 2019 letter added that “the 115th Congress of the United States stated in its 2018 omnibus spending bill that ‘none of the funds made available by this act may be used to provide arms, training or other assistance to the Azov Battalion.’” But that was when Volodymyr Zelensky was widely regarded as some kind of ally or tool of the Left’s Emanuel Goldstein of the day, Donald Trump; after all, the first Stalinist show trial impeaching the America-First president took place over a phone call to Zelensky. So it was in the Democrats’ interest to play up the Nazi element in Ukraine, just as it is in their interests now to pretend that element doesn’t exist.

The Democrats’ letter even declared “Azov has been recruiting, radicalizing, and training American citizens for years according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.” Yet now it seems as if there is no limit to the taxpayer billions that must be funneled to these gallant Ukrainian defenders of freedom. Is anyone exercising any kind of oversight at all? Is Azov still “recruiting, radicalizing, and training American citizens”? Is our taxpayer money now being used to fund such activities?

Among the stalwart Democrat solons and defenders of the people signing the letter were Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, Eliot Engel and Gregory Meeks of New York, Jamie Raskin of Maryland, Sheila Jackson Lee and Al Green of Texas, Ro Khanna of California, and Rep. Al Green. None of them have any curiosity about any of this at all? Now they’re all just certain that Ukraine is 100% on the side of the angels and that there are no Nazis, zero, zip, nada, who are benefiting from American largesse to Zelensky and company? Back in 2018, Ro Khanna, in high moral dudgeon, declared: “White supremacy and neo-Nazism are unacceptable and have no place in our world. I am very pleased that the recently passed omnibus prevents the U.S. from providing arms and training assistance to the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion fighting in Ukraine.” How about now? Kanekoa News reports that on March 10, 2022, Khanna “deleted a tweet saying, ‘the U.S. has been complicit in the rehabilitation and spread of neo-Nazis in Ukraine. Enough is enough! Our government must stand up to the Azov Battalion and other fascist groups.’”

So apparently our government no longer must stand up to the Azov Battalion and other fascist groups. Instead, you and I have to pay for them. Is all this so that Democrats can line their pockets via money-laundering schemes akin to the alleged FTX arrangement? We may never know, since the officials who are supposed to be looking out for our interests are all corrupted themselves. The scammers and money launderers, whatever specifically they are doing or not doing, have a free hand.

AUTHOR

Robert Spencer

RELATED ARTICLE: Secretary of State Blinken: We Had to Surrender to the Taliban for Ukraine

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.