The Biden administration may have allegedly been involved in an illegal coverup over the Palestinian government’s support for terrorism, a legal watchdog group said on Wednesday.
In a letter, the America First Legal Foundation demanded the State Department Inspector General investigate the Biden administration’s erasure of all mentions of the Palestinian Authority’s incitement to violence, as well as its support for the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel, in a compliance report submitted to Congress last month.
If State Department officials knowingly and willfully omitted or covered up material facts in this report, which is required by law, it could violate 18 U.S.C. 1001, the criminal statute prohibiting lying to Congress,” the watchdog said.
According to the AFLF, the omissions were part of a bid to “to facilitate the transfer of hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to the Palestinians.”
“The Biden Administration’s State Department appears to have taken the unprecedented step of expunging previously reported facts from its report to Congress and the American people,” AFLF board member and former Acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker said.
“This same State Department knows that the PLO and the Palestinian Authority are funding terrorism and supporting terrorists. But to facilitate the transfer of hundreds of millions of dollars, the truth has been made to disappear. Truly dishonest and a gross abuse of their authority,” he added.
The Biden administration “unlawfully [concealed] multiple material derogatory facts regarding the Palestinian Authority’s ongoing economic, political, and ideological support for terrorism; economic warfare against Israel; and opposition to regional peace,” Reed Rubinstein, AFLF’s senior counselor, wrote to acting State Department inspector general Diana Shaw.
“It seems these derogatory facts were deleted, expunged, and concealed not because circumstances on the ground had changed, but rather because officials in the Department’s Bureau of Near East Affairs and in the Biden White House decided to cover them up, at least in part to facilitate the planned transfer of hundreds of millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars to the Palestinian Authority in potential violation of U.S. law.”
The watchdog called on the State Department demanded an immediate probe into the matter.
The Biden State Department also erased a section of the Congressional report outlining how Palestinian schools and PA’s official media outlets promote and glorify violence.
“Some PA schools and media outlets continue to promote the idea that Israel does not have a right to exist and support the elimination of Israel on maps that show ‘Palestine’ covering over Israel with indication ‘Palestine’ will be ‘liberated’ in the future,” the Free Beacon quoted the Trump administration’s October report stated in a since-removed section.
“We are concerned by attempts to conceal material facts regarding the PLO’s support for terrorism, commitment to the destruction of the State of Israel and the concomitant murder and/or expulsion of the Jews now resident there,” the ALFL’s FOIA request stated.
Breitbart
