Trump Fired the People Who Could Dispute His False Claims about Ukraine Aid
Trump is having a tantrum because Volodymyr Zelenskyy called out Trump for parroting Russia disinformation.
The President sent out a post riddled with false claims, including that Zelenskyy has admitted to losing half the money the US has given.
Politifact debunked that claim earlier this month (while catching Elon Musk in — gasp!! — a lie about it).
“One-hundred billion (dollars) of these 177, or 200, some people even say, we have never received,” Zelenskyy said, according to the translation of the clip. “We are talking about specific things, because we got it not with money but with weapons. We got $70 something billion worth of it. There is training, there is additional transport. There are not only prices for weapons, there were humanitarian programs, social et cetera.”
It was not clear what exactly Zelenskyy was including in his accounting of the military support Ukraine has received, but his comments align with the public data on how Ukraine aid is being spent.
The money is not missing or laundered, as some posts claimed. It’s being spent as Congress intended: on U.S. weapons manufacturing, nonmilitary support in Ukraine and support elsewhere in the region.
I’m particularly interested in the disinformation that Trump and Elon are spreading about the money Ukraine has received (though this is not new — it’s one way Trump undercut support for funding last year).
As you know, I’ve been pretty obsessed (one, two, three) by the way that Trump and DOGE have repeatedly pointed to fraud identified by some of the Inspectors General that Trump fired to substantiate their claim there are hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud to find.
Effectively, DOGE is using Trump’s own mismanagement of COVID to justify their assault on the federal government.
But that’s not the only subgroup of Inspectors General Trump targeted on his fourth day on the job. By terminating State Department Inspector General Cardell Richardson and DOD Inspector General Robert Storch, followed weeks later by Paul Martin after he released a report showing the impact of cuts on USAID, Trump has fired the main people responsible for oversight of aid to Ukraine.
Indeed, both Richardson and Storch talked about how their firing will disrupt the work of tracking the aid to Ukraine.
In his declaration submitted with their wrongful termination lawsuit, Richardson emphasized that by firing him, Trump has prevented him from continuing to supervise that oversight work.
4. The work of the OIG advances U.S. foreign policy objectives and the nation’s national security. For instance, my office was responsible for overseeing programs that provided funding to support Ukraine in its war against Russia. Overseeing programs that fund initiatives in other countries makes OIG’s work uniquely challenging.
5. This crucial work is ongoing, and my unlawful termination has prevented me from continuing to supervise it during my lawful term of office.
And Storch tied his role in supervising Ukraine funding to key national security interests. He specifically described the import of tracking “the most sensitive equipment and technology provided to Ukraine.”
3. The work of DoD’s Office of the Inspector General (“OIG”) helps to safeguard U.S. national security. For example, as Inspector General, I was the Lead Inspector General, and then the congressionally-designated Special Inspector General for Operation Atlantic Resolve (“SIG OAR”), which operation includes U.S. assistance to Ukraine. I worked closely with colleagues from the Offices of Inspector General for the State Department, the U.S. Agency for International Development, and others from across the oversight community on this and the other two ongoing overseas contingency operations, which relate to countering ISIS and assisting local partners in Iraq and Syria (Operation Inherent Resolve) and to furthering U.S. policy goals in Afghanistan (Operation Enduring Sentinel).
4. As SIG OAR, I was responsible for all oversight related to U.S. security assistance to Ukraine, and for coordinating and reporting on oversight of all aspects of U.S. assistance. One of many areas where my office’s programmatic oversight has been particularly consequential is evaluating DoD’s efforts to ensure the accountability of the most sensitive equipment and technology provided to Ukraine. As has been publicly reported, assistance to Ukraine became a highly partisan issue, and it was only because of the non-partisan nature of the OIG that we were able to do this impactful oversight and to do it authoritatively and credibly. All told, as of January 2025, during my tenure as Inspector General, my office had (1) issued approximately four dozen programmatic oversight reports covering all aspects of U.S. security assistance, and (2) coordinated with our oversight colleagues on dozens more, all as transparently reported on the public website whose development I led, www.UkraineOversight.gov.
Given Trump’s abject capitulation to Putin and his overt efforts to replace Zelenskyy, I can’t help but wonder whether blinding this oversight was part of the plan. As Storch alludes, the US sent a whole bunch of sophisticated tools to Ukraine, and I’m sure there are people who’d like to put them to uses other than helping Ukraine repel Russia’s attack.
Whatever the case, when reporters push back on Trump’s false claims about Zelenskyy, they might include a question about why, if he cared about oversight of the money spent with Ukraine, one of his first acts in office amounted to gutting it.
Update: Daniel Dale has a fact check of all the lies Trump is telling about Zelenskyy.
Hartmann asks the pertinent question, “Does Putin own Trump?”
https://hartmannreport.com/?r=22nctn&utm_campaign=pub&utm_medium=web
There is no question as to the answer. The other question, “How many ways does he own him?”, is still up in the air.
Sorry about that link, here’s the same piece on dKos.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/2/19/2236080/-Does-Putin-Own-Trump
Storch: “all as transparently reported on the public website whose development I led, http://www.UkraineOversight.gov.”
Ukraine Oversight Special Inspector General for Operation Atlantic Resolve, Promoting Whole of Government Oversight of the U.S. Ukraine Response
There is certainly a lot of information there.
Something tells me that this website may be taken down once DOGE notices it.
Yes.
Today, Storch [along with HHS IG Christi Grimm] was interviewed on PBS
by Laura Barrón-López [includes transcript]:
Inspector Generals Fired by Trump Issue Warning about Lack of Oversight
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/inspectors-general-fired-by-trump-issue-warning-about-lack-of-oversight
Even Pence is calling Trump a liar.
MAGAs are kicking themselves they didn’t finish the job on J6.
And Germany’s UN Rep puts the lie to Trump’s false Ukraine backstory:
https://www.america-times.com/statement-by-ambassador-antje-leendertse-permanent-representative-of-germany-to-the-united-nations-during-the-united-nations-security-council-meeting-on-the-maintenance-of-peace-and-security-in-ukra/
Negotiating in Riyadh with the war-criminal aggressors without the victim nation anywhere in sight is the actualization of 1984’s “War is peace,” a global mindfuck of epic proportions
Not even a need for fiction, this feels a rehash of the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact all over again.
Molotov-Ribbentrop >>>> and then what happened?
1984 is more prophesy than fiction.
“Freedom is slavery” equates to Trump’s framing of the free expression of gender non-conformity and generally non-paleoconservative and non-fundamentalist viewpoints as a form of bondage foisted on his base — thus the need to eradicate the former.
“Ignorance is strength” is as eloquent a definition of the motives and methods of Donald Trump’s ascendancy as any I can think of.
Side note: Elon Musk must seem like a big brother to Don Jr and his sibs.
30 days into this mis administration and I can hardly believe what has transpired so far…
This is such a broad sh*tshow that it is breathtaking.
We are reeling from what is going on at the national level. First and foremost are the concerns about our democracy in tatters and the impact on the most vulnerable folks.
On a material level we have the “luxury” of worrying about an economy that could really go sideways under the Constitutional crisis brought on by the current malevolent, cruel, and unhinged “leadership” (tariffs, worsening inflation, wanton dismantling of a functioning government, a looming global crisis brought on by US debt failures…).
What dystopian world awaits our new granddaughter and soon to be born grandson?
One where China is the superpower, because the US and Russia will be poor.
United States about to be sunk. What a timely metaphor.
https://apnews.com/article/historic-ship-artificial-reef-philadelphia-florida-gulf-818c44d7f3078c4ffa3b8aa39f3329ed
The SS United States, a 1,000-foot vessel that shattered the transatlantic speed record on its maiden voyage in 1952, is being towed to Mobile, Alabama, for planned prep work before officials eventually sink it off Florida’s Gulf Coast.
For many years there was Ghost Fleet” (aka Mothballed) of decommissioned naval vessels stationed in the Carquinez Strait of Suisun Bay (near SF Bay). This was eventually removed, ship by ship, to limit the environmental impact of lead paint and other toxins.
It’s not so much that we are being ghosted now, but gaslit.
That was, for a while, a large fleet. My sis and I would go past there sometimes, avoiding I80, on the way to Davis.
Indeed, it was a fixture for decades. As if those creaky old ships could be modernized and recommissioned at the turn of a switch to fight off the Ruskies or who knows who else.
It’s going to be a thousand-foot reef. Fish will enjoy it,.
reefer madness
…or reefer gladness, for the fish!
Just heard a piece on NPR about it. Apparently it’s going through a thorough cleaning right now for that reason.
According to a German newspaper, the withdrawal of troops from NATO states that joined after 1990 is something they’re negotiating
Seems to me that this whole thing is 1) A great example of the asymmetric messaging Jesses Watters referenced on Fox, 2) Maybe an “easier” event to counter message effectively given that, it seems some R Senators are a bit (initially) taken aback by this turn of events most notably Committee Chair Roger Wicker R-MS (apparently).
Most of the Trump voters that I know personally are also staunchly pro-Ukraine. This might actually change some minds, and some votes. (Of course, I’ve been wrong in hoping that before.)