The Daily 202 caught up by phone with Coons, who hails from President Biden’s home state, is close to the White House and serves on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the Senate Appropriations Committee, where he chairs the subcommittee that oversees the State Department and foreign operations.
Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
D202: Ukraine just removed some senior officials in what Kyiv is describing as an anti-corruption effort. How concerned are you that — as it did in Iraq and Afghanistan — American aid might end up in the wrong hands?
Coons: I have conveyed repeatedly and directly to Ukrainian leaders concerns that we must continue to strengthen the transparency and accountability measures for all American aid going to Ukraine. I am not as concerned in this conflict about weapons provided by the U.S. or NATO allies ending up in the wrong hands, meaning being diverted to terrorists or onto the black market, in no small part because the Ukrainians are using everything we send them.
[On an official trip to Poland, Coons said, he saw the tracing and accountability systems run by the U.S. military in Poland and the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv.]
It’s important that we be mindful that there is a very large, very active battlefront in eastern and southeastern Ukraine. It is always difficult to precisely trace every dollar and every piece of weaponry distributed, but I’m generally feeling pretty good about where we are in accountability in Ukraine.
D202: What does Germany’s foot-dragging on sending tanks (before ultimately giving the green light) tell us about the coalition supporting Ukraine?
Coons: Germany has made the most dramatic and significant change in their foreign policy and defense policy in a generation. While at times I think it is frustrating to some of us in Congress or among NATO allies that it takes them a few weeks to get to a decision that we would have preferred have been made quicker, I think we have to be grateful for the fact that we’ve been in very close consultation and moved in lockstep in the same direction and that the Germans are facilitating both training of Ukrainian troops and a significant amount of financial support, humanitarian support and direct military aid.
D202: Russian nuclear threats grab headlines, but how concerned should we be about Russia trying to destabilize coalition members from within?
Coons: Russia has been engaged, under Vladimir Putin, in a sustained, broad-spectrum, covert and overt campaign to destabilize democracies, NATO and the West.
Hypersonic missile tests and nuclear saber-rattling get the headlines. But the reality is that the Russians continue to attack, to assassinate, to undermine, to marginalize folks they view as vulnerable, whether they are journalists, elected officials, military leaders, civil society leaders.
It’s remarkable the breadth of Putin’s aggression and frankly how slow we have been to take it seriously. But President Biden has used all the tools at his disposal to mount a cohesive, forceful, united response with our allies to Russia’s aggression in Ukraine.
D202: Have you talked to the White House about the documents situation? We know ODNI is doing a damage assessment for former president Trump’s documents. Should they be doing this across the board, with President Biden’s documents, former vice president Mike Pence’s documents, etc.?
Coons: All of us who have some access to classified documents have an obligation to be careful of our custody of them. And I would think everyone, every member of Congress, every former president, vice president, every military leader is going through the documents in their possession. It can be very tedious. Most of us have huge backlogs of documents.
I’m glad that former vice president Pence did the right thing, cooperated, came forward voluntarily, disclosed. The whole point of having a fair, independent, special counsel investigation of former president Trump and President Biden is, in a disciplined and appropriate way, to get to the bottom of, how many documents, of what kind of seriousness, with what sort of custody and then reach a conclusion.
I don’t know those details at all. I have not asked for them. I think they’ll be made public in due course.
I do think there is a significant distinction between former vice president Pence and President Biden and how they have handled the discovery of inadvertently stored classified documents and how former president Trump handled it. A lot of metaphors suggest themselves, but when the police tried to pull them over for speeding, president Trump sped off and is throwing spikes behind him and [former] vice president Pence and President Biden pulled over and said “officer, what’s this about?”
Rep. Adam Schiff announces run for U.S. Senate in California
“Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) has announced he is running for U.S. Senate in 2024, joining a growing field of Democrats who are seeking to replace Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who has not explicitly said she would run for reelection,” Amy B Wang reports.
U.S. imposes new sanctions on Russia’s Wagner private military group
“The United States on Thursday imposed additional sanctions against Russian private military company the Wagner Group, which U.S. officials say has been helping Russia’s military in its war in Ukraine,” Reuters’s Daphne Psaledakis reports.
- “The U.S. Treasury Department said it designated Wagner Group as a ‘significant transnational criminal organization’ as part of action targeting dozens of people and entities in an effort to degrade Russia’s ability to wage the war.”
U.S. economy grew 2.1 percent in 2022, but recession fears linger
“The economy posted another consecutive quarter of steady expansion between October and December, with economic activity increasing at a 2.9 percent annual rate. Consumer spending contributed to the strong fourth-quarter showing, especially given the slumps in large parts of the economy, including housing and manufacturing,” Abha Bhattarai reports.
Lunchtime reads from The Post
HIV at center of latest culture war after Tennessee rejects federal funds
“The controversy, which critics say was triggered by questions about the inclusion of transgender and abortion rights groups, is the latest example of Republican pushback against federal leadership and oversight that has resulted in clashes in areas that once had bipartisan support,” Ariana Eunjung Cha and Fenit Nirappil report.
Gun owners favor requiring parents to lock up weapons. It’s lawmakers who don’t.
“It isn’t the gun owners who have stood in the way of their own accountability. In fact, the vast majority would embrace it. Two-thirds who responded to a 2019 poll said they supported a mandate for all of them to secure their firearms — and yet, four years later, amid the worst stretch of school shootings in history, fewer than half the states in the country have passed any such law,” John Woodrow Cox and Steven Rich report.
“The reason is simple, according to gun-safety researchers and lawmakers who have tried for years to pass safe-storage legislation: Conservative politicians fear the political power of gun lobbyists who oppose those regulations more than they fear constituents who support them.”
A Russian graveyard reveals Wagner’s prisoner army
“For months, Wagner has been locked in a bloody battle of attrition to take the towns of Bakhmut and Soledar in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region. Western and Ukrainian officials have said it is using convicts as cannon fodder to overwhelm Ukraine’s defences. Toughening sanctions on Wagner this month, White House national security spokesman John Kirby branded the group ‘a criminal organisation that is committing widespread atrocities and human rights abuses.’ In a short open reply to the U.S. government, [the group’s founder Yevgeny Prigozhin] asked Kirby to ‘please clarify what crime was committed’ by Wagner,” Reuters’s Felix Light, Filipp Lebedev and Reade Levinson report.
Do bivalent boosters work against XBB.1.5? Vaccine questions, answered.
“A new study released Wednesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention offers reassurance that the updated booster shots, which rolled out in the fall, are still protecting people in the real world,” Fenit Nirappil and Lena H. Sun report.
How Biden reluctantly agreed to send tanks to Ukraine
“In interviews, European and American officials acknowledged that three months ago, it would have been inconceivable that Mr. Biden, Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany and leaders of other European nations would have contributed such heavy arms. But over time, they argued, the battlefield has changed and they believed the threat that President Vladimir V. Putin would reach for a tactical nuclear weapon to eviscerate Ukrainian forces has diminished,” the New York Times’s David E. Sanger, Eric Schmitt and Helene Cooper report.
Biden vowed to punish Saudis over oil cut. That’s no longer the plan.
“Months after the White House vowed to punish Saudi Arabia for cutting oil output in defiance of American wishes, the Biden administration has ended its talk of retaliation against the Persian Gulf kingdom, emphasizing the two countries’ long-standing security ties and Riyadh’s steps to back Washington’s priorities in Yemen and Ukraine,” Missy Ryan reports.
Biden’s next 2 years: A brutal war and a rough campaign
“President Joe Biden’s decision to send tanks to Ukraine marked a new chapter in the United States’ commitment to Kyiv, one reflecting a growing belief that the war could stretch years and require extraordinary measures to hold an alliance together to repel Russia,” Politico’s Jonathan Lemire, Eli Stokols and Alexander Ward report.
“The 31 Abrams tanks that Biden pledged Wednesday underscore where the conflict stands as it approaches its one-year mark. It also gives hints as to where the administration sees it going.”
Differences between the tanks being sent to Ukraine, visualized
“As the war in Ukraine nears its one-year mark, Kyiv is pushing Western allies to provide modern battle tanks for its fight with Russian forces. And there’s one particular model the Ukrainians want — the German-made Leopard 2,” Adam Taylor, William Neff and Daniel Wolfe report.
“When it comes to main battle tanks, the Leopard 2 has one main rival: The U.S.-made M1 Abrams.”
“The Biden administration has decided to provide M1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine, overriding previous concerns that the heavy battle tanks, the world’s most powerful, are too logistically burdensome for Kyiv’s forces, according to U.S. officials,” Karen DeYoung, Dan Lamothe and Loveday Morris report.
No Democratic bench? Josh Shapiro and Wes Moore are ready to step up
“As Democrats bemoan their political bench there’s a frequent glass-is-half-empty refrain about the most-often mentioned prospects waiting behind the 80-year-old in the White House: Kamala Harris can’t win a general election, Pete Buttigieg can’t win a primary and there’s no way Michelle Obama will run, will she?” Politico’s Jonathan Martin writes. “I find it mystifying.”
- “Senators Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) and Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.), an actual astronaut and the actual pastor of Martin Luther King’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, paired their sterling bios with a demonstration of their electoral chops, winning in a pair of formerly red states that just now happen to pivotal presidential battlegrounds.”
- “In another show of strength, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer won re-election in Michigan, ever the Electoral College prize, by over 10 points.”
- “And then there are the new three Democratic governors from the northeast, Shapiro, Moore and Maura Healey of Massachusetts, who all thrashed MAGA’fied Republicans, were all born after 1970 and all have law enforcement or military credentials.”
Sen. Rick Scott is running for re-election pushing his controversial ‘Rescue’ plan
“Scott also promised to push a controversial conservative plan that brought bipartisan condemnation last year. Scott released his plan, nicknamed ‘Rescue America,’ when he led the National Republican Senatorial Committee and packed it with red-meat conservative proposals on welfare, immigration, gender, crime and education,” NBC News’s Marc Caputo reports.
“But his proposal, which originally sought to have more poor people pay a little more in federal income tax, was instantly panned by Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, as well as Democrats who began criticizing Scott as a tax-raiser.”
Biden will leave for Springfield, Va., at 1:40 p.m. where he will speak about the economy at 2:45 p.m.
At 5:30 p.m., the Bidens will host a Lunar New Year celebration.
One misplaced document to rule them all
but they were, all of them, deceived, for another classified document was found
— JRR Jokien 🗡️🏹🪓 (@joshcarlosjosh) January 25, 2023
Thanks for reading. See you tomorrow.
