Senator Joni Ernst says she was “stonewalled” and “threatened by” USAID staff when she asked questions about how humanitarian aid was being spent in Ukraine

Senator Joni Ernst says she was “stonewalled” and “threatened by” USAID staff when she asked questions about how humanitarian aid was being spent in Ukraine, saying “It is a nightmare to trying to follow that money and to understand what it is actually being used for”.

Ernst said it took six months of negotiations with USAID before her Senate staff was allowed to see “even limited” data about USAID spending and they found between 50-60% of the agency’s money was spent on overhead rather than direct assistance to individuals.

https://www.radioiowa.com/2025/02/03/iowa-senator-ernst-says-usaid-shutdown-the-right-move/

Unelected staff members of USAID threatening and stonewalling elected officials trying to look into where our taxpayer dollars are actually going through USAID? It seems like USAID has been about 10,000 unelected staff members sending payments of US taxpayer money to who knows where with little to no supervision from elected officials whatsoever. The pushback going on right now for people trying to look into those payments is astounding. Just how much money laundering and secret payments do they have on the books that they don't want getting out there? Surely there wouldn't be this much pushback if it was all merely receipts for payments made by the government and nothing else….

People here have a problem with Elon looking into USAID because he isn't an elected official despite being tasked with this by Trump and this becoming a part of Trump's campaign for the last few months of the election, but these unelected members of the permanent unelected bureaucracy trying to conceal receipts for payments made with US taxpayer money and the pushback they have out of fear of misdeeds being exposed is very alarming in my opinion…. Seems like they stumbled across one of the very deeply rooted weeds in this unelected permanent government bureaucracy and there's going to be a lot of noise until it's finally pulled out and exposed.