Senate aide under investigation for unofficial actions in Ukraine
A senior Capitol Hill staffer who has had a longtime voice in Russia policy is under investigation by Congress for his frequent trips to Ukraine’s war zones and providing what he says is $30,000 worth of sniper equipment to the military, according to a report. documents.
The staff member, Kyle Parker, is the senior Senate adviser to the U.S. Committee on Security and Cooperation in Europe, known as the Helsinki Commission. The committee is led by members of Congress and staffed by congressional aides. The country has influence on issues of democracy and security and has been outspoken in its support for Ukraine.
A confidential report from the commission’s director and general counsel, seen by The New York Times, said the transfer of equipment could make Mr. Parker an unregistered foreign agent. It said Mr. Parker had traveled through the Ukrainian front lines wearing camouflage and Ukrainian military insignia and had hired a Ukrainian official for a U.S. government grant over the objections of congressional ethics and security officials.
And it raised the possibility that he was “consciously or unknowingly targeted and exploited by a foreign intelligence agency,” citing unspecified “counterintelligence issues” that should be referred to the FBI.
A representative for Mr Parker said he had done nothing wrong. He said Mr Parker was the target of a “campaign of retaliation” for making allegations of misconduct against the report’s authors.
The report so alarmed the committee chairman, Representative Joe Wilson, Republican of South Carolina, that he recommended Mr. Parker be fired to protect national security, the records show. He cited “serious alleged improper acts involving Ukrainian and other foreign individuals.”
“I urge you to secure his immediate resignation or removal,” Mr. Wilson, a supporter of Ukraine, wrote in a Nov. 1 letter to the committee’s Democratic co-chair, Senator Benjamin L. Cardin of Maryland. Mr Parker’s representative said he had not been asked to resign and had no plans to do so.
Mr. Parker remains on the committee pending what three U.S. officials described as a broad investigation into staff conduct, including the allegations in the report and Mr. Parker’s accusations against the commission’s executive director, Steven Schrage, and its counsel, Michael Geffroy, who wrote the report.
The investigation is being led by an outside law firm, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe the ongoing probe. It is unclear whether Congress has referred the concerns to the FBI, as the report recommends.
The misconduct investigation has disrupted the Helsinki Commission at a dangerous time for Ukraine and its relationship with Congress. The country has suffered setbacks in its war with Russia and is desperate for more money and weapons. Republicans are threatening to block $60 billion in additional aid.
In his letter, Mr Wilson warned that a scandal at the commission could jeopardize “future aid to Ukraine”.
The Helsinki Commission is an important pro-Ukrainian voice both on Capitol Hill and in Europe. Mr. Parker is one of the longest-serving assistants. He is known in foreign policy circles as a driving force behind a 2012 human rights law, the Magnitsky Act, inspired by the death of Russian anti-corruption crusader Sergei L. Magnitsky.
The report raises the prospect that Mr. Parker’s strong support for Ukraine crossed ethical or legal boundaries and that he, a U.S. government employee, may have acted as an agent of Ukraine. Through his representative, Mr Parker denied this.
Representatives for Mr. Cardin and Mr. Wilson referred questions to the Office of the House Employment Counsel, which did not respond to messages.
Mr. Parker is one of many Americans who poured into Ukraine after Russia’s 2022 invasion, some offering money and supplies or fighting alongside Ukrainian soldiers. Others goods dishonest, incompetent or preoccupied with internal arguments.
In lectures, podcasts And social media to informMr Parker said he had traveled to Ukraine at least seven times since the invasion began in February 2022, including in combat zones, to describe himself as “the most traveled American official in wartime Ukraine.”
Social media photos from those trips show him wearing camouflage and the insignia of Ukrainian units. In a picture, he carries an emblem of a provincial military administration. In another he wears camouflage and a patch from a Ukrainian drone unit. In another, he says he is plotting the liberation of Luhansk with a Ukrainian official.
A video obtained by The Times shows him cutting up a Russian hat and urinating on it.
“Mr. Parker’s unofficial travel and media promotion of himself as a foreign military interlocutor raise further legal and ethical concerns amid reported Ukrainian military corruption,” the report said.
Mr. Parker’s representative provided written responses to questions on Mr. Parker’s behalf, on condition he not be identified. He said that “American and Ukrainian security experts” had advised Mr. Parker to wear camouflage at the front and that he had never worn the insignia of the military units he accompanied.
He said the urination was “a personal expression of anger and sadness” after witnessing evidence of Russian brutality.
Mr Parker’s representative said these were not official trips. But Mr. Parker has spoken publicly as if that were the case. Some of those who traveled with him said they believed he was on government affairs. The committee published a photo of him in the besieged city of Kherson.
In an April 2023 lecture at the University of Maine, Mr. Parker said that after the evacuation of the U.S. embassy in Kiev before the Russian invasion, he was motivated to go to Ukraine to help advise U.S. policymakers.
“We have almost no eyes on the ground, no presence,” he said, according to a recording from The Bangor Daily News, which the event covered and provided audio to The Times. “So, you know, I feel like that makes the travel even more important, to be able to say, ‘Hey, this is what I saw.’”
Nevertheless, it is not illegal to visit the front lines of Ukraine Warnings from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs against doing this.
“I am not accountable to the State Department,” he added. “We are an independent agency.”
He told congressional officials that at least some of his travel was intended to convince family he has in Ukraine to leave, according to two U.S. officials with direct knowledge of the investigation. Mr Parker’s representative said he had helped the family evacuate.
Mr. Parker said that driven to the front lines. American officials rarely go to the front, and only under heavy security.
William B. Taylor Jr., a former top U.S. envoy to Ukraine, said such expeditions were particularly risky. “If you are in government or have any propaganda value to the Russians,” he said, “the benefits have to be very, very high.”
As staff director when war broke out in 2022, Mr. Parker said the committee was on a “war footing” and no longer had to follow rules on reporting travel or contacting foreign officials, the report said. Mr Parker’s representative denied this.
According to the report, Mr. Parker hired an aide to the Ukrainian parliament as a committee member despite “personnel security, ethics and legal concerns.”
The report did not mention the assistant. The Times identified him as Andrii Bondarenko, who said in messages that he had held an unpaid position for about a month in late 2022.
“The idea was to understand how Congress works,” he said. Mr. Bondarenko said he currently served in the Ukrainian army.
Mr. Parker’s lecture in Maine caused alarm in the committee.
The report was based on public accounts of the event, in which Mr. Parker described how he had acquired equipment for Ukrainian snipers.
In the recording, he said a relative in Ukraine had given him $30,000 raised by veterans and volunteers, which he used to buy rangefinders from Amazon and ballistic anemometers from a Philadelphia manufacturer.
He said he delivered them to Kharkov on Easter weekend 2022 to “guys who are going to take on the snipers in the front.” Scope fingers are specialized binoculars or monoculars. Anemometers help calculate weather variables to align shots.
Exporting such equipment is not necessarily restricted, although supplying high-end models could be. Mr Parker said he was following export laws.
“You never enter Ukraine in wartime with an empty suitcase,” he said.
Aishvarya Kavi And Rebecca Davis O’Brien reporting contributed.