Feds Compile Hamas Aid Theft Evidence, Undercutting Leaked USAID ‘Report’
Plus, meet the 'many Jewish voters' the NYT says back Zohran Mamdani
Fact vs. fiction: Some two weeks ago, Reuters published what it presented as a big scoop: that an "internal U.S. government analysis" found no evidence that “Hamas systematically steals” humanitarian aid. Ongoing federal investigations have found the opposite.
The probes come from the USAID inspector general's office, the chief oversight body for tracking American foreign assistance. They center on occasions in which Hamas "commandeered U.N. aid trucks," embedded terrorist operatives in "U.N. agencies or at U.N. facilities," and ensured humanitarian goods were "directly delivered to Hamas officials," our Adam Kredo reports. The office "has obtained evidence of those practices and is investigating 'credible allegations of Hamas interference, diversion, and theft of humanitarian aid in Gaza,'" according to an internal memo transmitted to Congress and obtained by the Free Beacon.
Though the Trump administration dissolved USAID itself earlier this year, its inspector general's office, an independent entity that Congress established to provide oversight of U.S. foreign aid programs, remains in place as its investigators probe "diversion, fraud, product substitution, smuggling, and other misconduct compromising lifesaving humanitarian assistance intended for civilians in Gaza." They have used whistleblowers on the ground to conduct those investigations; the USAID report leaked to Reuters, by contrast, relied on official information from U.N. agencies and was "completed" days before the agency's dissolution.
Checking in on the paper of 'record': The New York Times wants you to know that there are in fact "many Jewish voters" who back Zohran Mamdani, as it reported in a recent piece. To prove the claim, the Times quoted a small handful of Jewish Mamdani voters. They include Chuck Schumer's anti-Israel rabbi, Rachel Timoner—as well as three people who either volunteered or worked for Mamdani's campaign, our Jon Levine reports.
One of those three, Mamdani canvasser Ruby Edlin, is a Middlebury College feminist studies graduate who participated in and defended a violent protest against conservative academic Charles Murray. Her fellow campaign canvasser, Ben Sadoff, told the Times he knocked on 1,000 doors for Mamdani. Less than two weeks after Oct. 7, he signed a petition calling for "an end to Israel's settler colonial, genocidal violence against the Palestinians."
Timoner, for her part, penned an op-ed endorsing "Palestinian self-determination" days after Hamas's attack. Schumer, who has embraced Mamdani following his Democratic primary victory in New York City's mayoral race, has acknowledged that Timoner has influenced his political decisions. The New York Democrat credited her for his decision to denounce Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the Senate floor in March 2024.
READ MORE: Meet the ‘Many Jewish Voters’ the NYT Says Back Zohran Mamdani
Hypocrisy swirls in the Windy City: Texas Democrats are in Chicago to protest and attempt to prevent Republican gerrymandering. They arrived via private jet to O'Hare International Airport on Sunday. Three days later, the airport experienced a flight backlog that forced planes to park in areas of the airport they would not normally use. The city's House districts are so infamously gerrymandered, our Collin Anderson reports, that those planes were parked in two different congressional districts.
"Much of O'Hare, including its four terminals and the bulk of its eight runways, are located within Illinois's Fifth Congressional District. Incoming planes typically taxi to those terminals," Anderson writes. "But 'technical issues' impacting United Airlines on Wednesday forced the airport to hold departures, creating a backlog that prevented incoming planes from reaching their gates. As a result, a map from live flight tracker Flightradar24 shows O'Hare began parking incoming United flights on the airport's northern end, which is located within the fifth district, as well as its western end, which is located within the neighboring third district."
"The ordeal illustrates the extent to which Illinois Democrats gerrymandered their state's House districts to send as many of their partymates to Washington, D.C., as possible. It also illustrates the unforced error Texas Democrats committed by traveling to Chicago to block Republicans from passing a new map in their own state." Both the third and fifth districts "start at or near downtown Chicago before thinly stretching west, boundaries that allow Democrats to place as many of their urban and suburban voters as possible within separate districts."
In other news:
Back in June, our Andrew Tobin reported that Israel planned to take full control of the Gaza Strip if Hamas did not agree to lay down its weapons and agree to a deal in two months. Now, two months later, no such deal is in place—and Benjamin Netanyahu says Israel will take full control of the strip.
Israeli airline El Al's Paris offices were vandalized with "genocide" graffiti one week after French president Emmanuel Macron said he would recognize a Palestinian state—an announcement Hamas celebrated as part of "the fruits of Oct. 7."
Jasmine Crockett is an "all diva, no wow" boss who "terrorizes" staff and prefers to work from her luxury apartment building rather than her House office, according to congressional aides.
Kamala Harris used a joint campaign committee with the DNC to promote her upcoming book—and the DNC is distancing itself from the move.
Our full lineup is below.
That’s a lie, Israel has evidence of stolen aid & selling it