During Friday’s State Department press briefing, Spokesperson Tammy Bruce answered questions about the claims that the Trump Administration cut funding to a program that is tracking abducted Ukrainian children.
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00:00I'm open for questions. Now, there are all the hands. Dare I say, Matt Lee, who doesn't even, he's kind of got a pen, he's kind of raised his hand, but yes, go ahead, sir.
00:11Thank you. I don't know how you got back at 4 o'clock. I got back at 3.30.
00:18Well, there you go. We will not discuss transportation and domiciles, but go ahead, sir.
00:24I guess the traffic was worse for you than it was for me. Anyway, I have two. They'll be both very brief.
00:31One, I think you can answer quite quickly because the Secretary addressed it on the plane last night on the way from Suriname to Florida,
00:38and that is about the Yale project on the Ukrainian children taken to Russia.
00:48What exactly has been restored, even if just temporarily? Can you give us a dollar amount?
00:55And then I've just got one more.
00:58Yes, and I'll repeat what the president said.
01:01There should be a transcript up with these gaggles that happened in the back of the plane with our bullpen.
01:06And he was asked about there was a very misleading tweet, I think, from a reporter saying that funding had been reversed and restored.
01:15The Secretary noted, no, it hasn't been, but I can tell you exactly what has occurred and something, in fact, has.
01:22So, first of all, a couple of things here.
01:25And we've already talked about, of course, the data. That was the main concern.
01:29We know that the data was protected and available.
01:33But for those who are thinking that there was a reversal of the decision to terminate support for the conflict observatory,
01:41funding is being provided for a short period while the conflict observatory implementers ensure the proper transfer of the critical data on the Ukrainian children to the appropriate authorities.
01:54It is part of the standard closeout procedures for terminated programs.
01:59So this is not a reversal of funding. It's not a restoration.
02:03It is part of the closeout dynamic that we've realized in the process of closing it out about what needs to happen to finish that process.
02:11Also, as we learned about more specific requirements of the closeout, we provided then updated guidance to the implementer.
02:20And so this is what has occurred.
02:25As part of the Foreign Assistance Review directed by the Secretary consistent with the Executive Order 14169,
02:31the award supporting the Ukraine Conflict Observatory was paused effective January 25th.
02:37Following a review, the U.S. Department of State terminated the award on February 26th.
02:43And so when we think about the nature of a very good example of what was fake news based essentially on something partially accurate,
02:52but this is the fact of the matter, that there is no reversal of funding.
02:56It has not been renewed.
02:58This is a closeout procedure that required funding to move to make sure the data that was retained that exists is moved to the proper authorities.
03:08So how much is it?
03:10No, I can't speak to the amount of money.
03:13It's going to be an amount of money that facilitates the goal of that closeout.