WATCH: CNN Relies on Debunked USAID Report To Claim Hamas Doesn’t Systematically Steal Aid

CNN anchor Pamela Brown cited a debunked U.S. Agency for International Development report to falsely claim that there is no evidence Hamas systematically steals aid in Gaza.

“There was an internal analysis conducted by USAID that showed, according to this U.S. government report, that there was no widespread theft by Hamas. They looked into 150 incidents of waste, fraud and abuse. And that’s what the finding was. It was by USAID,” Brown said Friday on The Situation Room.

But that USAID analysis was conducted by career staffers and not the agency’s inspector general, an independent entity that provides oversight of U.S. foreign aid programs. The career staffers relied on official information from U.N. agencies and “completed” the report just days before the Trump administration shuttered USAID.

By contrast, the USAID inspector general has obtained evidence that 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,” senior U.S. officials and congressional staffers briefed on the issue told the Washington Free Beacon on Aug. 7. Those findings are based on information from a variety of sources that include “aid workers and other whistleblowers on the ground who may not feel comfortable reporting through their employers’ reporting chain due to fear of retaliation,” according to a source familiar with the office’s operations.

Brown’s statements came during an interview with Chapin Fay, a spokesman for the U.S.-backed aid distribution organization Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). Fay had argued that the GHF aid sites are safer and can better evade theft and violence than those run by the U.N.

Brown also repeated the claim from the Gaza Ministry of Health, which is widely known to be an extension of Hamas, that a fatal stampede at an aid site was caused by tear gas fired by aid workers. She stressed that “the Gaza Ministry of Health, for its part, says that it is not an extension of Hamas.”

Fay cast doubt on the health ministry’s claims, citing its ties to Hamas, and said GHF doesn’t use tear gas or lethal forms of crowd control. He stressed that the terror group is “an ongoing threat” to aid distribution.

“You can see for yourself all over social media for the past couple of weeks of Hamas and armed masked men parading the U.N. convoys around Gaza,” Fay said.

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