A progressive journalist on Monday slammed the Biden administration over the president’s nomination of a controversial Trump appointee with deep GOP ties.
Biden on Monday announced his intention to appoint Elliot Abrams to the United States Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy.
Abrams is described in a CNN report as a GOP insider who in 1991 pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor counts for withholding information about the Iran-Contra scandal. He was later pardoned by former President George H.W. Bush.
Abrams has served in three Republican administrations, most recently as special envoy to Iran and Venezuela during the Trump administration.
“What?” a shocked MSNBC anchor Mehdi Hasan tweeted Monday.
“A totally indefensible decision from Biden. Abrams is a neocon hawk who served under Reagan, Bush, & Trump, pushed for wars every time, pled guilty as part of Iran-Contra, & human rights groups say he helped cover up war crimes in Central America.”
Abrams is no stranger to controversy.
In 1982 while serving in the Reagan administration he was assailed for Senate testimony in which he downplayed reports of a massacre involving U.S. trained and equipped forces that left 1,000 people dead.
Jack Forrest writes for CNN’s website that Abrams “insisted the numbers of reported victims were “implausible” and “lavished praise” on the military battalion behind the mass killings – stances he doubled down on when they were put on display during a 2019 House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing by Rep. Ilhan Omar, a Minnesota Democrat, who used his history in Latin American to call into question his credibility.”
