Ronny Jackson, America First Legal Win Right to Examine Biden’s Palestinian Funding

Jackson
Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images
Joel B. Pollak

Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-TX) and the America First Legal foundation won a legal battle Tuesday to examine President Joe Biden’s decision to grant hundreds of millions of dollars in funding to Palestinian groups in possible violation of a 2018 anti-terror law.

As Breitbart News reported earlier this year, Jackson and America First sued the Biden administration for violating the Taylor Force Act, which was signed by President Donald Trump and named for an American murdered by a Palestinian terrorist in 2016.

The Taylor Force Act prevents any U.S. taxpayer funding from going to the Palestinian Authority (PA) as long as it maintains the practice of giving stipends to the families of Palestinian terrorists killed by Israel, or to Palestinians currently in Israeli prisons.

Since the PA refused to stop these payments, the U.S. stopped providing direct aid to the PA. President Trump also pulled funds to a variety of other groups, such as the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which has cultivated Palestinian extremism.

However, Biden promised on the campaign trail to restore these funds, and did so as soon as he took office, sending hundreds of millions of dollars to Palestinian groups. As Breitbart News reported, the State Department also gave funds to a pro-terror group.

The scale of funding to the Palestinians is over $1 billion — over half a billion dollars in programs targeted by the Jackson lawsuit, and $700 million to the UNWRA, as Breitbart News’ Frances Martel reported Wednesday. The Biden administration has defended the funding.

On Tuesday, U.S. District Court Judge Matthew J. Kacsmaryk signed a discovery order compelling the administration to give documents to Jackson and the plaintiffs regarding the risk that Economic Support Funds (ESF) to the Palestinians would benefit Palestinian terrorists by allowing them to spend money on weapons rather than economic needs.

Evidence emerged in August that the Biden administration knew there was a “high risk” that Hamas “could potentially derive indirect, unintentional benefit from U.S. assistance to Gaza,” but sent funds anyway, as the Washington Free Beacon reported.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.

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