“So Abrams is just as willing now as he was 30 years ago to mislead Congress. But what’s most ominous is that — given that he sees El Salvador as a “fabulous achievement” — he presumably would see a similar outcome for Venezuela as a fabulous achievement as well.
“No one who even marginally believes in democracy, human rights, and the self-determination of peoples can count Abrams as an ally, as his actual record amply demonstrates,” said Velasco. “Anyone who does so is either willfully ignorant or worse, complicit in the very crimes they say they are trying to combat in Venezuela.”
Elliott Abrams Lied to Rep. Ilhan Omar and Congress
Rep. Ilhan Omar Went After Elliott Abrams for Lying to Congress. Then He Did It Again.
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Elliott Abrams, President Donald Trump’s special envoy for Venezuela, appeared before the House Committee on Foreign Relations on Wednesday.
About two hours into the hearing, committee member Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., noted that Abrams pleaded guilty in 1991 to withholding information about the Iran-Contra affair from Congress. “I fail to understand,” Omar said, “why members of this committee or the American people should find any testimony that you give today to be truthful.”
Omar’s skepticism was well-founded: Just moments later, Abrams told her several egregious lies.
Abrams’s most notable lies occurred during this exchange about his actions as assistant secretary of state in the 1980s during the Reagan administration:
OMAR: On February 8, 1982, you testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee about U.S. policy in El Salvador. In that hearing, you dismissed as communist propaganda reports about the massacre at El Mozote in which more than 800 civilians, including children as young as 2 years old, were brutally murdered by U.S.-trained troops. During that massacre, some of those troops bragged about raping a 12-year-old girl, girls, before they killed them. You later said that the U.S. policy in El Salvador was a “fabulous achievement.” Yes or no, do you still think so?
ABRAMS: From the day that President Duarte was elected in a free election, to this day, El Salvador has been a democracy. That’s a fabulous achievement.