Sanders and Warren Greet Bloomberg to the Race

08 November 19

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Sanders and Warren Greet Bloomberg to the Race

Sen. Bernie Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren. (photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty)

Anna Kaplan, The Daily Beast
Kaplan writes: "Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders responded to reports that former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg is expected to file paperwork to run in Alabama's Democratic primary."

The calculator has been updated to include a quick link to “If you’re Michael Bloomberg,” who has a net worth of about $52 billion. The New York Times reported Thursday that Bloomberg has been privately weighing a presidential bid for weeks, but has not made up his mind.

Donald Trump Jr. (photo: Getty)

Donald Trump Jr. Tweets Possible Identity of White House Whistleblower
Nolan Hicks, New York Post
Hicks writes: "President Trump's son on Wednesday sent a tweet that contained the purported name of the anonymous government whistleblower who set off the investigation into whether the White House attempted to strong-arm Ukrainian officials into probing a political rival of the commander in chief."
READ MORE

'A Warning,' a book from an anonymous senior Trump administration official, will be published in November. (photo: Twelve Publishing)

Book by 'Anonymous' Official Describes Trump as Cruel, Inept and a Danger to the Nation
Philip Rucker, The Washington Post
Rucker writes: "In 'A Warning' by Anonymous, obtained by The Washington Post ahead of its release, a writer described only as 'a senior official in the Trump administration' paints a chilling portrait of the president as cruel, inept and a danger to the nation he was elected to lead."

The book is an unsparing character study of Trump, from his morality to his intellectual depth, which the author writes is based on his or her observations and experiences. The author claims many other current and former administration officials share his or her views.

The 259-page book — which was published by Twelve, an imprint of Grand Central Publishing/Hachette Book Group, and goes on sale Nov. 19 — does not re-create many specific episodes in vivid detail, which the author writes was intentional to protect his or her identity.

At a moment when a stream of political appointees and career public servants have testified before Congress about Trump’s conduct as part of the House impeachment inquiry, the book’s author defends his or her decision to remain anonymous.

“I have decided to publish this anonymously because this debate is not about me,” the author writes. “It is about us. It is about how we want the presidency to reflect our country, and that is where the discussion should center. Some will call this ‘cowardice.’ My feelings are not hurt by the accusation. Nor am I unprepared to attach my name to criticism of President Trump. I may do so, in due course.”

White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham derided the book as a “work of fiction” and its anonymous author as a “coward.”

“The coward who wrote this book didn’t put their name on it because it is nothing but lies,” Grisham wrote in an email. “Real authors reach out to their subjects to get things fact checked — but this person is in hiding, making that very basic part of being a real writer impossible. Reporters who choose to write about this farce should have the journalistic integrity to cover the book as what it is — a work of fiction.”

Earlier this week, the Justice Department warned Hachette and the author’s agents, Matt Latimer and Keith Urbahn of Javelin, that the anonymous official may be violating a nondisclosure agreement. Javelin responded by accusing the administration of seeking to unmask the author.

The author’s Sept. 5, 2018, op-ed in the Times, headlined “I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration,” depicted some senior officials as a bulwark protecting the country from the president’s reckless impulses. Trump denounced it at the time as treasonous.

In the book, the author repudiates the central thesis of the column: “I was wrong about the ‘quiet resistance’ inside the Trump administration. Unelected bureaucrats and cabinet appointees were never going to steer Donald Trump the right direction in the long run, or refine his malignant management style. He is who he is.”

The author describes senior officials waking up in the morning “in a full-blown panic” over the wild pronouncements the president had made on Twitter.

“It’s like showing up at the nursing home at daybreak to find your elderly uncle running pantsless across the courtyard and cursing loudly about the cafeteria food, as worried attendants tried to catch him,” the author writes. “You’re stunned, amused, and embarrassed all at the same time. Only your uncle probably wouldn’t do it every single day, his words aren’t broadcast to the public, and he doesn’t have to lead the US government once he puts his pants on.”

The book depicts Trump as making misogynistic and racist comments behind the scenes.

“I’ve sat and listened in uncomfortable silence as he talks about a woman’s appearance or performance,” the author writes. “He comments on makeup. He makes jokes about weight. He critiques clothing. He questions the toughness of women in and around his orbit. He uses words like ‘sweetie’ and ‘honey’ to address accomplished professionals. This is precisely the way a boss shouldn’t act in the work environment.”

The author alleges that Trump attempted a Hispanic accent during an Oval Office meeting to complain about migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border.

“We get these women coming in with like seven children,” Trump said, according to the book. “They are saying, ‘Oh, please help! My husband left me!’ They are useless. They don’t do anything for our country. At least if they came in with a husband we could put him in the fields to pick corn or something.”

The author argues that Trump is incapable of leading the United States through a monumental international crisis, describing how he tunes out intelligence and national security briefings and theorizing that foreign adversaries see him as “a simplistic pushover” who is susceptible to flattery and easily manipulated.

After the 2018 killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi agents, the author writes, Trump vented to advisers and said he would be foolish to stand up to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

“Do you know how stupid it would be to pick this fight?” Trump said, according to the book. “Oil would go up to one hundred fifty dollars a barrel. Jesus. How [expletive] stupid would I be?”

The book contains a handful of startling assertions that are not backed up with evidence, such as a claim that if a majority of the Cabinet were prepared to remove Trump from office under the 25th Amendment, Vice President Pence would have been supportive.

Pence denied this on Thursday, calling the book “appalling” and telling reporters, “I never heard anything in my time as vice president about the 25th Amendment. And why would I?”

One theme laced throughout the book is Trump’s indifference to the boundaries of the law. The author writes that Trump considered presidential pardons as “unlimited ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ cards on a Monopoly board,” referring to news reports that he had offered pardons to aides.

As he ranted about federal courts ruling against some of his policies, including the 2017 travel ban, the author writes, Trump once asked White House lawyers to draft a bill to send to Congress reducing the number of federal judges.

“Can we just get rid of the judges? Let’s get rid of the [expletive] judges,” the president said, according to the book. “There shouldn’t be any at all, really.”

The author portrays Trump as fearful of coups against him and suspicious of note-takers on his staff. According to the book, the president shouted at an aide who was scribbling in a notebook during a meeting, “What the [expletive] are you doing?” He added, “Are you [expletive] taking notes?” The aide apologized and closed the notebook.

The author also ruminates about Trump’s fitness for office, describing him as reckless and without full control of his faculties.

“I am not qualified to diagnose the president’s mental acuity,” the author writes. “All I can tell you is that normal people who spend any time with Donald Trump are uncomfortable by what they witness. He stumbles, slurs, gets confused, is easily irritated, and has trouble synthesizing information, not occasionally but with regularity. Those who would claim otherwise are lying to themselves or to the country.”

New York attorney general Letitia James. (photo: Andrew Savulich/Getty)

Judge Says Trump Must Pay $2 Million Over Misuse of Foundation Funds

Merrit Kennedy, NPR

Kennedy writes: "A New York judge has ruled that President Trump must pay $2 million in damages to settle claims that the Trump Foundation misused funds. The money will go to a group of charities, and the foundation is in the process of dissolving."

The case is tied to a televised fundraiser for veterans held by Trump in Iowa when he was running for president in January 2016. Trump had said the funds raised would be distributed to charities. But according to court documents, the Trump Foundation improperly used $2.82 million it received from that fundraiser.

According to the judgment, that money "was used for Mr. Trump's political campaign and disbursed by Mr. Trump's campaign staff, rather than by the Foundation," which is unlawful. However, Justice Saliann Scarpulla says the funds did eventually reach charity organizations supporting veterans.

"The Trump Foundation has shut down, funds that were illegally misused are being restored, the president will be subject to ongoing supervision by my office, and the Trump children had to undergo compulsory training to ensure this type of illegal activity never takes place again," New York Attorney General Letitia James, whose office filed the case, said in a statement. "The court's decision, together with the settlements we negotiated, are a major victory in our efforts to protect charitable assets and hold accountable those who would abuse charities for personal gain."

The Trump Foundation also agreed last month to distribute its $1.7 million in remaining assets to the same charities that will receive the $2 million in damages ordered on Thursday. According to the judgment, those charities are Army Emergency Relief, Children's Aid Society, Citymeals-on-Wheels, Give an Hour, Martha's Table, United Negro College Fund, United Way of National Capital Area, and U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

The Trump Foundation agreed to dissolve last December in the face of an investigation from then-New York Attorney General Barbara Underwood. She accused the foundation of a broad pattern of illegal activity, including improper political activities and "repeated and willful self-dealing transactions."

The final outstanding issue, according to the judgment, was the amount that Trump would pay in damages over the Iowa fundraiser. James had sought the entire $2.82 million, but the judge determined that $2 million was sufficient because the money raised eventually reached veterans' charities.

This case was prompted by David Fahrenthold's reporting in The Washington Post about the foundation, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 2017.

A statement from the Trump Foundation said it was "pleased to donate" the $2 million to the charitable organizations. It praised the judge for not imposing a penalty beyond the $2 million in damages.

The president tweeted, "I am the only person I know, perhaps the only person in history, who can give major money to charity ($19M), charge no expense, and be attacked by the political hacks in New York State. No wonder we are all leaving! Every penny of the $19 million raised by the Trump Foundation went to hundreds of great charitable causes with almost no expenses."

He said James "is deliberately mischaracterizing this settlement for political purposes," and that she should investigate the Clinton Foundation.

Alan S. Futerfas, a lawyer for the Trump Organization, said last December that "the Foundation has been seeking to dissolve and distribute its remaining assets to worthwhile charitable causes since Donald J. Trump's victory in the 2016 Presidential election."

Three of Trump's children — Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump and Eric Trump — were also named in the lawsuit.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington has been scrutinizing the Trump Foundation for years. "Today's settlement of the suit brought by the New York Attorney General's Office is a fitting and poetic end to this scandal," CREW Executive Director Noah Bookbinder said in a statement.

Vice President Mike Pence. (photo: Getty)

Mike Pence's Office Meddled in Foreign Aid to Reroute Money to Favored Christian Groups
Yeganeh Torbati, ProPublica
Torbati writes: "Last November, a top Trump appointee at the U.S. Agency for International Development wrote a candid email to colleagues about pressure from the White House to reroute Middle East aid to religious minorities, particularly Christian groups."

EXCERPTS:

“Sometimes this decision will be made for us by the White House (see… Iraq! And, increasingly, Syria),” said Hallam Ferguson, a senior official in USAID’s Middle East bureau, in an email seen by ProPublica. “We need to stay ahead of this curve everywhere lest our interventions be dictated to us.”

The email underscored what had become a stark reality under the Trump White House. Decisions about U.S. aid are often no longer being governed by career professionals applying a rigorous review of applicants and their capabilities. Over the last two years, political pressure, particularly from the office of Vice President Mike Pence, had seeped into aid deliberations and convinced key decision-makers that unless they fell in line, their jobs could be at stake.

Five months before Ferguson sent the email, his former boss had been ousted following a mandate from Pence’s chief of staff. Pence had grown displeased with USAID’s work in Iraq after Christian groups were turned down for aid.

ProPublica viewed internal emails and conducted interviews with nearly 40 current and former U.S. officials and aid professionals that shed new light on the success of Pence and his allies in influencing the government’s long-standing process for awarding foreign aid. Most people spoke on the condition of anonymity.

“There are very deliberate procurement guidelines that have developed over a number of years to guard precisely against this kind of behavior,” said Steven Feldstein, a former State Department and USAID official during the Obama administration. When politics intrude on the grant-making process, “you’re diluting the very nature of what development programs ought to accomplish.”

USAID regulations state that awards “must be free from political interference or even the appearance of such interference and must be made on the basis of merit, not on the basis of the religious affiliation of a recipient organization, or lack thereof.”

Last month, USAID announced two grants to Iraqi organizations that career officials had previously rejected. Political appointees significantly impacted the latest awards, according to interviews with officials and other people aware of the process. Typically, such appointees have little to no involvement in USAID grants, to avoid perceptions of undue political influence on procurement.

One of the groups selected for the newest awards has no full-time paid staff, no experience with government grants and a financial tie that would typically raise questions in an intense competition for limited funds. The second organization received its first USAID direct grant after extensive public comments by its leader and allies highlighting what they described as a lack of U.S. assistance to Christians. The two groups — a charity that primarily serves Christian Iraqis and a Catholic university — were not originally listed as front-runners, according to a document seen by ProPublica.

The Wall Street Journal and BuzzFeed have previously reported Pence’s interest in increasing foreign aid to Christians and his displeasure with USAID’s activities in Iraq.

Pence’s spokeswoman, Katie Waldman, did not respond to questions. A USAID spokeswoman did not respond to specific questions, including about Ferguson’s email, but said the latest grants were appropriate.

“The Trump Administration has made responding to the genocide committed by the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) against religious and ethnic minorities a top priority,” said the spokeswoman, Pooja Jhunjhunwala. “Assistance to religious and ethnic communities targeted by ISIS is not a departure from the norm, but rather a continuation of USAID’s rich history of promoting inclusive development and defending human dignity and religious freedom in our partner countries.”

Approximately 97% of Iraq’s population is Muslim, according to the most recent U.S. figures available. Religious minorities — including Christians, Yazidis and others — make up around 2% to 3% of Iraq’s total population.

The Trump administration’s efforts to steer funding to these minorities in Iraq stand in stark contrast to its overall approach to foreign aid. It has repeatedly proposed cutting U.S. diplomatic and foreign assistance budgets by billions of dollars. In August, as the White House was considering cuts to an array of foreign aid programs, it shielded funding for religious minorities abroad, according to news accounts.

As Trump mounts a 2020 reelection effort, he is taking steps to solidify his conservative Christian base, including his decision last week to install his spiritual adviser, Florida televangelist Paula White, in a White House position. Increasing aid to Christians abroad is a core value for his supporters.

In a speech last month at the Values Voter Summit in Washington, a major gathering of the religious right, Trump touted his administration’s work on behalf of religious minorities in Iraq and Syria.

“Other presidents would not be doing that,” he said. “They’d be spending a lot more money, but they’d be spending it on things that would not make you very happy.”

Late in the Obama administration, USAID’s activities in Iraq focused on an effort by the United Nations to restore basic services as soon as cities had been liberated from Islamic State rule.

By the end of 2016, the United States had contributed over $115 million to the effort through USAID, and other countries had contributed hundreds of millions of dollars more. U.S. officials credit the U.N.’s work with enabling millions of Iraqis to return to their homes soon after the fighting was done instead of languishing in refugee camps.

“Here’s another example of when the U.N. and the United States work together, really good things can happen,” said John Allen, the former special presidential envoy to the global coalition formed to defeat ISIS, at an event at the Brookings Institution in September.

Robust U.S. support for the U.N.’s work initially carried over into the Trump administration. In July 2017, the administration announced that USAID would provide an additional $150 million to the U.N. Development Program’s Iraq stabilization fund, bringing the total U.S. contribution to more than $265 million since 2015.

But by then, U.S. officials in Iraq were sensing dissatisfaction among some Iraqi Christians and American religious groups with the U.S. strategy and the U.N.’s work. Trying to head off problems, U.S. officials urged the U.N. in the summer of 2017 to pay special attention to the Nineveh Plains, an ethnically and religiously diverse region of northern Iraq where many of the country’s Christians live.

U.N. officials were reluctant, arguing their assistance could go further in dense urban areas like Mosul, as opposed to the Nineveh Plains, a stretch of farmland dotted by small towns and villages.

“They were going for the biggest bang for the buck,” one former U.S. foreign service officer said.

Dylan Lowthian, a UNDP spokesman, said the agency worked closely with local Christian leaders in 2017 to encourage more people to return to the Nineveh Plains.

“UNDP is one of the largest supporters of minority communities in Iraq in terms of volume of projects, impact, and funding,” Lowthian said.

But the pressure from Washington built. Influential religious groups like the Knights of Columbus and current and former Republican members of Congress advocated throughout 2017 for direct U.S. aid to religious minorities, including Christians and Yazidis. They said that the groups merited special attention because they had been targeted for genocide by Islamic State and that local churches had proven track records of delivering aid quickly and reliably. Furthermore, Christians — who fled the country in droves after the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq — were at risk of disappearing from Iraq altogether if they didn’t receive help, they argued.

Bashar Warda, a powerful archbishop based in Erbil, Iraq, was a key figure in this effort. “The Christians of Iraq desperately need American government humanitarian aid now, and we need it to be delivered in a manner to ensure it actually reaches us and does not get absorbed and redirected in the existing aid structures,” he said in a 2017 interview with Crux, a Catholic- focused publication. “While the U.S. has donated generously to the overall humanitarian aid effort in Iraq, almost none of this aid reached the Christians.”

Warda met with Pence in late 2017 and stood beside Trump in the Oval Office in 2018 as he signed a bill authorizing the State Department and USAID to provide relief to victims of Islamic State, particularly religious minorities. Warda had advocated for the bill’s passage.

Warda’s and others’ argument on the flow of aid resonated with the Trump administration’s distrust of multilateral organizations, especially the U.N., and a desire to help Christians worldwide.

Many career officials at the State Department and USAID supported the broader scope of the U.N.’s work. They acknowledged it wasn’t perfect — it could be slow, and the U.N. was not adept at communicating with local communities — but said the rebuilding had benefited wide swaths of territory that included both Muslims and minority groups.

Privately, some officials felt that Warda’s and his allies’ lobbying efforts in Washington were downplaying how the U.N. projects benefited their communities. And serving Iraq’s Sunni Muslims, they said, was essential to ensuring that Islamic State, which drew its ranks from Sunnis, did not make a resurgence.

“We were focused on the overriding policy priority of making sure that areas where young men with guns and other weapons were wandering around got the vast majority of the funding,” one current U.S. official said in an interview.

As of July, USAID and the State Department had announced nearly $373 million in funding for “persecuted ethnic and religious minorities in Iraq” since 2017. Jhunjhunwala, the USAID spokeswoman, said the U.S. government had provided over $1.5 billion in assistance to Iraq in 2017 and 2018, “the vast majority in areas inhabited by Sunni and Shia Muslims.” The Obama administration did not publicize its spending on Iraqi religious groups in the same way, making an exact comparison difficult.

Stephen Rasche, who works closely with Warda and serves as his spokesman, told ProPublica that U.N. reports detailing its rebuilding work in 2016 and 2017 “were highly misleading and could not be substantiated as they applied to assistance in the Christian towns.”

“In all our interactions with State/AID they were relying almost exclusively on the U.N. reports rather than making their own, first-hand inspections,” he said in an emailed statement. “Our position was that we were there on the ground and could not find evidence of the work that the U.N. said was being done.”

Lowthian said that all UNDP projects are tracked by a “rigorous and robust” monitoring effort, and that project details are shared regularly with partner countries.

Career officials also expressed concerns at the time that targeting federal funds toward particular minority groups on the basis of religion could be unconstitutional. USAID rules bar providing funding for explicitly religious activities such as worship or proselytizing. But faith-based groups can still receive U.S. funding, as long as they are inclusive and do not use the funds for religious programming.

USAID regulations mirror the U.S. Constitution’s establishment clause, which broadly prohibits government actions that favor one religion over another. Over time, Trump appointees have grown exasperated at pushback that mentioned the clause, one official said.

“They find it very constraining,” this person said. “They get frustrated that we can’t just do direct support.” Still, several officials said, career attorneys at USAID painstakingly review its programming in Iraq to ensure it is legal.

And USAID and State Department officials questioned whether Christian groups were significantly needier than the broader Iraqi population victimized by Islamic State, including Shiite and Sunni Muslims.

“There was a pushback, a feeling like we shouldn’t be doing this, first of all because of our own policies and regulations, and secondly because they’re not worse off than the others,” a former USAID official said.

Initially, Pence’s office and political appointees at USAID were focused on helping Christians, with little attention to Yazidis, a small, ancient sect that was targeted in an especially cruel manner by Islamic State militants, said a current official and a former foreign service officer. Over time, career officials “helped educate” political appointees on the extent of the Yazidis’ suffering, in hopes of getting their support for directing some aid at non-Christian groups, the former foreign service officer said.

“There was a very ideological focus on Christians, and most of the questions were about Christians,” this person said. “We were trying to get them to focus on others in the minority communities that might need assistance.”

Some also felt that if the U.S. were perceived as openly favoring particular groups, it could lead to further tensions in a country with deep and complicated sectarian divisions. Even some Christian Iraqis, several current or former U.S. officials said, did not want to be singled out by USAID for help, because they feared that preferential treatment would only add to instability.

But Trump appointees at USAID in favor of sending more aid to Christians — including Middle East bureau official Hallam Ferguson and Bill Steiger, the agency’s chief of staff — discounted career officers’ concerns, arguing that they had heard differently from the Christian groups focused on Iraq with whom they were in touch, one former USAID official said. Trump appointees “seemed convinced that an imbalance did exist” in how Christians were being treated, a U.S. official said.

Steiger, who served at the Department of Health and Human Services during the George W. Bush administration, has been a key conduit through which Pence’s office has exerted pressure on USAID, several officials said.

Trump appointees in Washington pressed officials to frequently visit the areas where Christians lived, seemingly unaware of the weeks of preparation and security logistics needed to make even one such visit happen, one current U.S. official and the former foreign service officer said.

By September 2017, Steiger was holding meetings with USAID officials to discuss how to help religious minorities in Iraq. And by early October, USAID’s leadership had decided to try to satisfy Pence’s preferences through new grants focusing on northern Iraq.

While the grant process was being worked out at USAID, Pence blindsided officials in October 2017 when he declared to an influential Christian group in Washington that Trump had ordered diplomats to no longer fund “ineffective” U.N. programs. USAID would now directly help persecuted communities, he said.

“It sent us scrambling the next day,” one U.S. official working on Iraq at the time said. “That seemed to me, in retrospect, a turning point in saying, ‘We’ve got a real interest in doing more to help minorities, especially Christians,’ to, ‘OK, now we’re really going to shift some funds.’”

The $150 million that USAID had pledged to the U.N. effort in Iraq in July 2017 had been divided into two tranches of $75 million each. After Pence’s comments, USAID renegotiated its agreement with the U.N. so that the majority of the first payment, $55 million, would still go to the U.N. but would be earmarked for religious and ethnic minorities in Nineveh Province.

For new grants, which were separate from the U.N. funding, USAID hosted 33 organizations at a two-day March 2018 Baghdad workshop. They included large, established faith-based groups like Samaritan’s Purse and Catholic Relief Services, as well as smaller, little-known Iraqi organizations, according to a list of attendees obtained by ProPublica through a public records request.

The attendees included two Pence aides: Sarah Makin-Acciani and Steve Pinkos. Before joining Pence’s team, Makin-Acciani worked for Republican lawmakers, as a lobbyist for the U.S. Consumer Coalition and for the Trump campaign. Pinkos had worked for a lobbying firm, as an aide to Republican Rep. Kevin McCarthy and in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Neither of them appear to have expertise in development or foreign aid issues. Neither Makin-Acciani nor Pinkos responded to messages requesting comment.

Their presence at the Baghdad meeting, which was first reported by The Wall Street Journal, unsettled participants, according to four people who attended the event or were briefed on it. White House officials rarely, if ever, are so deeply involved in agency grant-making.

People “assumed they were there for a political reason or to put pressure on the process,” said one participant.

After introductory remarks by then-U.S. ambassador to Iraq Doug Silliman, attendees split into smaller groups to discuss possible collaborations. Makin-Acciani and Pinkos mostly observed and asked questions, several people who attended the meeting said. But at one point, the pair objected to a programming idea, saying it would take too long and not be valuable, two people who witnessed the interaction said.

“They were looking for quick fixes,” said one of the people.

Back in Washington, Mark Green, the head of USAID, expressed discomfort to a colleague about potential interference by Pence into the grant process, one former U.S. official said.

Ultimately, later that spring, career officials made the final grant decisions and gave millions of dollars in funding to large, established organizations: Catholic Relief Services, Heartland Alliance and others. Awards were structured as umbrella grants that included sub-awards to small Iraqi organizations. USAID rejected some bids by smaller, untested groups with no prior experience with the agency.

“We still try to stick to our principles, that you gotta have a good proposal and you gotta have your qualifications there and so on, and they didn’t meet the standards,” a former USAID official said.

One rejected application was a bid by the Catholic University in Erbil and the Nineveh Reconstruction Committee, a coalition of three major Christian denominations in Iraq. Warda, head of the Chaldean Catholic archdiocese in Erbil, also heads the board of trustees at the university. (Chaldean Catholics, an Eastern Rite of the Roman Catholic Church, make up about two-thirds of Iraq’s Christians.)

Rasche, who is a vice chancellor at the Catholic University in Erbil, was formerly president of Nineveh Reconstruction Committee-USA, a now-defunct nonprofit formed to further NRC’s aims by winning U.S. government grants. Rasche said he and Warda were in Washington when their proposal was rejected and promptly told their “friends and partners” of their denial.

Before USAID had itself announced the awards, Fox News published a detailed account criticizing USAID’s activities in Iraq. “We are worse off now than we were two years ago,” Warda said to Fox.

Two days later, former Reagan administration national security adviser Robert McFarlane and New Jersey Republican Rep. Chris Smith co-authored an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal criticizing USAID’s decision to reject the two Christian organizations. They said it showed career USAID officials were ignoring Pence’s preferences. The title of the op-ed: “Iraqi Christians Are Still Waiting, Mr. Pence.”

Smith’s spokesman and McFarlane did not respond to interview requests.

On June 8, 2018, a day after the op-ed was published, Pence’s spokeswoman issued a terse statement, saying he “will not tolerate bureaucratic delays in implementing the Administration’s vision.” Pence also directed Green to travel to Iraq and report back on how to resolve delays.

That same day, Pence’s then-chief of staff, Nick Ayers, called Steiger to demand somebody at the agency be punished for the failure to provide aid to Christian groups quickly enough, according to several people familiar with the conversation. Ayers did not respond to requests for comment.

Green’s reaction was to remove Maria Longi, a career civil servant and a top official in USAID’s Middle East bureau. Though still on USAID’s payroll, she now teaches national security strategy at the National War College.

Longi’s dismissal and Pence’s displeasure with USAID had been reported by BuzzFeed and The Wall Street Journal, though the extent of Pence’s role in her reassignment had not been. Longi declined to answer questions.

The move reverberated among career officials, who traded text messages and emails expressing shock. USAID insiders coined a term for what had happened to her: Longi had been “Penced.”

Concern spread even among Trump appointees that their jobs might be threatened. “What it did instill in the Middle East bureau was fear among the political appointees that they could be thrown out at any time,” a former USAID official said.

Last month, USAID announced $4 million in new grants to six Iraqi organizations as part of an effort in Iraq and other countries to work with small, local groups that have done little prior work with the agency. Two of the winning groups were the Shlama Foundation, a small charity, and the Catholic University in Erbil.

Two USAID political appointees were involved in awarding those grants: Ferguson, the second-highest-ranking official in USAID’s Middle East bureau, and Samah Norquist, the agency’s adviser on religious pluralism in the Middle East and wife of conservative tax activist Grover Norquist.

Ferguson and Samah Norquist were included in the selection process for the newest grants, and one official said Ferguson oversaw the final determinations.

A former USAID official said Norquist was “really involved in the details” of the grants but seemed to have little awareness of standard USAID practice when meeting with grantees.

“She was swimming in the dark, and it was really quite clear that she didn’t know the first thing about grant-making,” such as what information was proper to share and how to ensure an open award process rather than one targeting specific groups, the former official said.

Norquist expressed support for Trump’s 2020 reelection at a State Department forum in July, a statement that experts said likely violated a law forbidding government officials from engaging in political activities on the job. The incident sparked complaints to an independent agency, which determined in October that Norquist’s comments did not violate the law.

A third political appointee at USAID, Max Primorac, the agency’s envoy in Erbil for minority assistance programs, tweeted praise for the Shlama Foundation months before USAID announced the final grant winners. The group replied with thanks, tagging Pence’s Twitter account. Shortly after the award announcement, Primorac met with a Shlama Foundation board member during a visit to Michigan.

Primorac is known among U.S. officials for his close working relationship with Pence’s office. Prior to joining USAID, Primorac served with Rasche at NRC-USA, as secretary and treasurer of the nonprofit. The two submitted an unsolicited $22.5 million bid to rehabilitate Christian towns to USAID in 2017, which was not awarded.

Asked if any Shlama Foundation officials were in touch with Primorac, Norquist or Ferguson prior to its award being announced, board member Ranna Abro declined to answer specifically.

“USAID was familiar with our organization as it is well-known by the local community in the Nineveh Plains,” she said. “We have met USAID several times along with all other organizations serving the same area.”

Rasche said Norquist ran a workshop in Erbil for organizations interested in applying for the new grants, which staff members of the Catholic University in Erbil attended. Rasche also spoke with Ferguson two to three times about the grant dates and funding cycles, he said.

Five current or former U.S. officials said involvement in grant decisions by political appointees — particularly by someone as senior as Ferguson — is highly unusual. USAID grants are typically decided by a review committee and a contracting officer, all of whom are career officials.

“USAID procurement rules with technical review panels are strict, as they should be, to avoid any political interference on the use of U.S. taxpayer dollars,” said Paige Alexander, a former senior USAID official who served during the Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations.

Jhunjhunwala, the USAID spokeswoman, said the award process is rigorous “and follows all federal regulations.” Ferguson, Norquist and Primorac were not on the committees that made the recommendations, she said.

The new grants have “empowered local organizations to solve problems not adequately addressed by other USAID investments and that directly respond to the grassroots needs of conflict-affected communities,” she said.

Like the Catholic University in Erbil, the Shlama Foundation had previously applied and been rejected for the 2018 grants. Shlama had complained about the rejection via Twitter, and Abro confirmed the tweet referred to the same grant for which the Catholic University in Erbil was also rejected.

For the newest awards, a document seen by ProPublica shows that neither the Shlama Foundation nor the university were originally included in a list of leading applicants that circulated within USAID.

The Shlama Foundation will receive $1 million over two years for a project focusing on solar energy, a pittance in the overall U.S. foreign assistance budget. But the money is three times what the nonprofit has taken in from charitable donations since 2014, according to its website. It has never before received government grants, Abro said.

“The Shlama Foundation, USAID and our vendor partners are certainly experienced and capable of implementing this solar program for a greener future,” Abro said.

Aside from its small size and lack of federal grant experience, Shlama was an unconventional choice for another reason. Last year it received $10,000 in donations from the Clarion Project, a nonprofit organization which researchers at Georgetown University’s Bridge Initiative said “advances anti-Muslim content through its web-based and video production platforms.”

A Shlama Foundation board member also appeared in Clarion’s 2017 documentary “Faithkeepers,” about the persecution of Christians in the Middle East. The film focuses on atrocities committed by Islamic State, but also depicts Islam overall as a religion that seeks to subjugate minorities. Zach Sicherman, an associate producer for the film, declined to respond to questions.

Clarion also did not respond to questions. It describes itself as a “non-profit organization that educates the public about the dangers of radical Islam and other extremist ideologies.”

Abro said that Shlama did not solicit the Clarion donation, and that it appeared in the documentary because “we value transparency and are open to participate in interviews from all sides.” The film’s website includes a donation page that benefits Shlama.

Foreign aid experts said USAID typically examines an organization’s major donors to protect the agency from perceptions that it is benefiting biased groups, but they disagreed over whether the link to Clarion should have disqualified Shlama for U.S. funding.

The Catholic University in Erbil’s new grant from USAID is its first direct agency award. The award, $700,000 over one year, will support courses for “widows, victims of abuse, and former captives of ISIS,” according to a USAID press release.

The newest grant “has come very late in the day, and our award is comparatively quite small,” Rasche said. He attributed the award not to Warda’s public statements but rather to the passage of the 2018 bill.

USAID’s inspector general is investigating some of the agency’s activities in Iraq, the watchdog said, though it is unclear what sparked the probe.

USAID is now expanding its emphasis on religious minorities far beyond Iraq. In December, a month after his email about White House pressure, Ferguson told USAID mission directors in the Middle East that agency leadership had identified up to $50 million it planned to use in 2019 for “urgent religious freedom and religious persecution challenges,” according to a second email seen by ProPublica. He asked mission directors to submit programming ideas.

In a follow-up email in June, also seen by ProPublica, Ferguson wrote that in addition to Iraq, religious and ethnic minority programming was planned for Lebanon, Morocco and Tunisia.

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