Conservatives Warn against Senate’s Ukraine Funding Bill: An Anti-Trump ‘Time Bomb’

Congressional conservatives are warning against the Ukraine funding bill just approved by the Senate, calling it “an impeachment time bomb for the next Trump presidency.” Ahead of Monday night’s Senate vote on the supplemental national security bill funneling around $60 billion into the ongoing Ukraine conflict, Senator J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) issued a memo to Republican colleagues cautioning, “Buried in the bill’s text is an impeachment time bomb for the next Trump presidency if he tries to stop funding the war in Ukraine. We must vote against this disastrous bill.”

In 2019, as Vance recounts in his memo, House Democrats impeached then-President Donald Trump for pausing almost $800 million in funding for Ukraine, which Democrats alleged was part of a ploy to investigate “the corrupt nexus between the Biden family and Ukraine.”

According to Vance’s analysis, the current bill’s stipulation that the Ukraine conflict must be bankrolled until the end of September 2025 is a legislative set-up for Democrats to target Trump again if he’s reelected. “If President Trump were to withdraw from or pause financial support for the war in Ukraine in order to bring the conflict to a peaceful conclusion … it would amount to the same fake violation of budget law from the first impeachment, under markedly similar facts and circumstances. Partisan Democrats would seize on the opportunity to impeach him once again.”

Vance’s memo concluded, “The supplemental represents an attempt by the foreign policy blob/deep state to stop President Trump from pursuing his desired policy, and if he does so anyways, to provide grounds to impeach him and undermine his administration.”

Previously, Vance joined tech entrepreneur Elon Musk, Senators Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), and former Republican presidential primary contender Vivek Ramaswamy to discuss the legislation in a “Spaces” conversation on social media. “There is actually a very good argument that the exact same legal justification for the impeachment of 2019 would hold with this legislation,” Vance said. “By the admission of administration officials, it would explicitly tie the hands of the next President of the United States and force that president to continue funneling weapons and resources for Ukraine instead of negotiating a settlement.”

Lee and Johnson both noted the absence of accountability attached to the funding. Lee quipped, “The fact that we would do this without putting an inspector general in place specifically for this and adopting all sorts of other transparency, auditability provisions turns a blind eye to corruption.” He continued, “These are people who have really set world records for corruption. It’s an art form over there, apparently. That’s nothing denigrating against the Ukrainian people but their government does have a long history, and tradition, and practice of corruption.” Lee added, “There is not, to my knowledge, anything in this bill that adequately deals with the issue of corruption.”

Johnson, ever the realist, noted that the conflict in Ukraine needs to be ended, not prolonged. He said, “The only way this war ends is in a settlement, and every day the war goes on more Ukrainians, more Russian conscripts, die, more civilians die, the more Ukraine gets destroyed.” Vance agreed, saying that the legislation “does not actually articulate or force the articulation of a strategy for how to end the conflict to begin with. So you basically have a blank check — or a near blank check — for a strategy that’s completely gone off the rails.” The Ohio senator added, “They can’t admit that this isn’t going well because if they admitted that, it would cause too much psychological harm, and they’d have to cut bait.”

Conservative senators spent hours aggressively filibustering the bill late into Monday night. Vance, for example, read a Dr. Seuss book to his son. Senators Lee, Rand Paul (R-Ky.), Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), and others also spoke out against the legislation. The bill was approved by the U.S. Senate in a 70 to 29 vote, with numerous Republicans betraying their party’s principles to side with Democrats. Hawley summarized the legislation’s passage by saying, “In the early morning, when nobody was watching, the Senate voted to plow another $60 billion of your money into Ukraine. Not a penny for Missouri. Not a penny for radiation victims. But the Big War machine gets its billions. What a betrayal.” He added that the funding bill is a way of giving “the middle finger to Middle America: endless money for Ukraine — but nothing for Americans poisoned by their own government.”

The behemoth spending bill will now proceed to the House of Representatives, where Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has vowed Republicans will oppose its passage. In a statement, he said, “The mandate of national security supplemental legislation was to secure America's own border before sending additional foreign aid around the world. It is what the American people demand and deserve.” Noting that “the House will have to continue to work its own will on these important matters,” Johnson added, “America deserves better than the Senate’s status quo.”