WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — On Tuesday, a group of US Senators led by Mike Lee called on Secretary of State Tillerson to investigate US funding political factions within other sovereign nations, including through a George Soros-backed organization funded by the US Agency for International Development (USAID).
"This is part of a larger Senate effort to expose, investigate and stop the Obama administration's use of federal money and power to support leftist organizations in the United States and abroad," Ohio Northern University Assistant Professor of History Robert Waters told Sputnik.
The US government and billionaire financier George Soros had spearheaded the efforts ostensibly working to support democracy and free markets in former communist nations, through bodies like the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and the Open Society Foundations (OSF), Waters said.
The Republican senators are not limiting their investigations to the State Department, but they are also examining how the Justice Department became involved in the pressuring and intimidation of governments and companies around the world under Obama, Waters said.
"A couple weeks ago, senators began to investigate how the Justice Department would file suit against counties, cities and private businesses for civil rights violations, then would allow the accused to settle the suit by paying millions of dollars to Leftist social justice organizations," Waters said.
Obama’s two attorney generals Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch personally spearheaded these intimidating legal tactics, Waters recalled.
"It became clear that Holder, Lynch and Justice's Civil Rights Division had concluded that these suits were an easy way to shakedown organizations that would then pay them to go away with these settlements," he said.
Waters predicted that the inquiries would continue and uncover more scandalous revelations about US efforts to suppress religion and manipulate the internal affairs of other nations.
"Even if Tea Party leaders like Utah's Senator Mike Lee do not like President Trump, this is an area where they can and will work together… and I suspect that many Republicans will go along with Trump and the Tea Party senators because these revelations are going to turn ugly," he said.
"Yes, I think the US Senate will investigate and Trump will stop it," he said.
Former CIA officer Philip Giraldi told Sputnik he believed Obama and his senior officials justified their interventions in other nations in the name of defending democracy.
"They probably consider it ‘democracy promotion’… I consider the Obama's officials capable of anything," Giraldi explained.
Through Obama’s two terms in office US diplomats closely monitored and lectured nations throughout Eastern Europe for compliance with Washington’s standards on democracy, human rights, economics and trade.
