“THE RECKONING IS NOW”
by Ren Jander, ©2019
(Dec. 9, 2019) — In a previous report, I proved that the $115 million Foreign Military Financing (FMF) grant at the heart of Schiff’s impeachment inquisition, was legally obligated for Ukraine by March 2019. These funds were neither held by POTUS, nor in danger of expiration at the end of Fiscal Year 2019 (September 30th). That report also convicted Laura Cooper of felony false statements under 18 US Code 1001 for willfully misleading Congress (and the nation) as to the FMF grant. Read it now.
I foreshadowed this follow-up report, alleging Cooper’s deception was even more egregious pertaining to the $250 million Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative (USAI) funds, and that it rose to the level of perjury. The reckoning is now.
Laura Cooper is the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Russia, Ukrainian, and Eurasian Affairs. She is referenced in the May 23rd certification by DoD – as having been directly consulted – concerning obligation of the second $125 million tranche of USAI funds. But let Laura tell you about herself for more clarity (pg. 13, deposition):
“So, in my role, I’m receiving input from the field, from European Command, and from our team at the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv as to the requirements; and then, I am overseeing a team that’s putting together a package packages, really — to support their needs via FMF and via Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative.”
She testified (pg. 13) to expertise regarding USAI procurement:
“But just to give an example of some of the things that we included in the USAI package for this year was a very wide range of capabilities, ranging from night vision goggles and vehicles to counter-battery radars, sniper rifles.”
Her testimony sees her involved in various meetings concerning the infamous (and fictitious) hold on security assistance. And she lied about all of it. I know this, because the entire $250 million appropriation was obligated no later than mid-June, 2019. And, in a pending report, I will account for all $391 million alleged by Schiff’s fraudulent report to have been withheld by Trump from Ukraine. None of it was. Bank on that.
In order to win your faith and attention, however, this report needs to make good on the perjury prophecy. So rather than try to prove every lie told by the Schiff report and co-conspirators, I will focus on a single unassailable deception perpetrated by Laura Cooper in her resistance zeal to remove President Trump from office. Here we go.
THE BULK OF DECEPTION
Pg. 17 of Shiff’s impeachment report frames the exact funds in dispute:
“For fiscal year 2019, Congress appropriated and authorized $391 million in security assistance to Ukraine: $250 million in funds administered by DOD and $141 million in funds administered by the State Department.”
We will focus now on the $250 million administered by DoD generally, and Laura Cooper specifically. She is a star witness for Schiff in the majority report. On pg. 74 of her deposition transcript, Rep. Mark Meadows questions her concerning whether a significant portion of the USAI funds had, in fact, already been obligated in normal due course. Rather than telling the truth, Cooper, in her zest to see Trump removed, commits felony perjury by taking Meadows on a fraudulent ride of epic proportions:
MR. MEADOWS: So let me come back to the obligated, unobligated funds…So your staff, they didn’t — they didn’t know that unobligated funds well typically that happens, end of fiscal year there’s always unobligated funds and there was — they were not aware of not only what happened in this case, but it had happened previously. Is that correct?
MS. COOPER: No, sir. My staff and I am aware that there are frequently unobligated funds at the very end of the year. What we were worried about in this case was that, you know, the bulk of the funds or a significant amount of funding would be unobligated. So absolutely we do understand that, you know, sometimes you can’t actually obligate everything. And I believe last year USAI did not have 100 percent obligation.
There it is, “the bulk of the funds”. We are talking specifically about $250 million in USAI that she was directly responsible for. So when she says the bulk of the funds, what does that mean to any reasonable jury? It means something greater than at least half, more than at least $126 million, but it implies something closer to $200 million, give or take.
On September 25th, Reuters published a report stating that the Trump administration would have approximately $220 million obligated before the September 30th deadline. Keep that number handy.
The $250 million for USAI was funded in Sec. 9013 of the Department of Defense Appropriation Act of 2019. General Provisions are in Title VIII. Read Sec. 8004:
SEC. 8004. No more than 20 percent of the appropriations in this Act which are limited for obligation during the current fiscal year shall be obligated during the last 2 months of the fiscal year: Provided, That this section shall not apply to obligations for support of active duty training of reserve components or summer camp training of the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps.
This is known as the 80/20 provision. It mandates that no more than twenty-percent of a total appropriation can be obligated in the last two months of the fiscal year. The January 2019 Report of the Advisory Panel on Streamlining and Codifying Acquisition Regulations explains:
Partly in an attempt to mitigate the end-period obligation surges that may be incentivized by a period based budgeting cycle, Congress regularly incorporates the 80/20 rule into defense appropriation bills. The 80/20 rule specifies that for single-year appropriation accounts (i.e., Military Personnel and Operation and Maintenance), no more than 20 percent of appropriated funds may be obligated in the last 2 months of the fiscal year.
Now let’s do some simple math. Twenty-percent of $250 million is $50 million. We will assume DoD obligated the $50 million maximum, from August 1 to September 30. And we will also accept the Reuters total of $220 million obligated by the Trump administration in 2019. Subtract $50 million from $220 million, and we get $170 million.
That means something close to $170 million of the $250 million had to be obligated by July 31, 2019. So how can Laura Cooper square that number with her testimony before Congress? She can’t. She lied. Here’s another example from pg. 29 of her deposition transcript:
Q: And do you know how much money had been obligated by this July time period, whether it’s the first or the second tranche?
A. I don’t. It wasn’t very much, though. I know that much, again, because the process for obligating funding, my understanding of it from our experts is that it just takes quite some time. So because the earlier notification, this notification reflected a lot of long lead time items, they were only just starting to be in the window in which we’d be obligating by midsummer.
Mark Sandy testified that all of the so-called holds were applied via OMB apportionment letters that were strictly limited to funds that had been apportioned but unobligated. If $170 million was obligated by July 31, then this entire story is bunk. We have been spoon fed from Schiff and the media over and over that Trump put a hold on the entire $250 million. Impossible.
A. …they were only just starting to be in the window in which we’d be obligating by midsummer.
Laura Cooper is in trouble. She committed perjury. The question now begs who was in this with her? They are in trouble too. President Trump knows. And this doesn’t end well for the deep state.
Written and researched by Ren Jander
Looking for all of your news in one place? Try Whatfinger, your one-stop aggregator of news, opinion and everything else.
Great work!!! Thank you .
While this information is difficult for a neophyte to understand, after a little while, it becomes comprehensible. It is truly important information, and I thank you for writing and publishing this article.