President Donald Trump's envoy for special missions, Ric Grenell, told Newsmax on Monday that on the surface the U.S. Agency for International Development sounds like a good idea, but when you look closer, the devil is in the details.
"The whole idea for USAID sounds amazing on paper — just to promote our values and to help make America stronger. But the problem is when you look at the details of what's been happening over the last 10 to 15 years, it really is a scandal," Grenell told "Rob Schmitt Tonight."
Grenell added that investigations into USAID "are starting."
"I've seen a couple of details of how we're digging in to figure out where that money went, places like in the Balkans and down in Latin America. We need to figure out how this money was spent.
"I don't think that it's enough just to say we're not going to do it again. I want to go back and look at how this money was spent, who was in charge of it," he said.
"And we may need to prosecute people if they abused taxpayer money, and they allowed it to go for programs that were truly not helping America, but were political in nature."
Former USAID Director John Gilligan claimed, "At one time, many AID field offices were infiltrated from top to bottom with CIA people. It was pretty well known in the agency who they were and what they were up to ... The idea was to plant operatives in every kind of activity we had overseas, government, volunteer, religious, every kind."
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Nick Koutsobinas ✉
Nick Koutsobinas, a Newsmax writer, has years of news reporting experience. A graduate from Missouri State University’s philosophy program, he focuses on exposing corruption and censorship.
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