Even as Trump is advocating cutting State’s budget, some prominent senators just dumped a bit of gasoline on that fire:

A group of leading senators is calling on newly installed Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to immediately launch an investigation into efforts by the Obama administration to sway foreign elections by sending taxpayer funds to “extreme and sometimes violent political activists” that promote leftist causes, according to a copy of the letter.

The lawmakers disclosed multiple conversations with foreign diplomats who outlined active political meddling by the Obama administration’s State Department, including the use of taxpayer funds to support leftist causes in Macedonia, Albania, Latin America, and Africa.

A portion of this State Department funding appears to have gone to organizations supported by the controversial liberal billionaire George Soros, according to the letter, which was authored by Republican Sens. Mike Lee (Utah), Jim Inhofe (Okla.), Thom Tillis (N.C.), Ted Cruz (Texas), David Perdue (Ga.), and Bill Cassidy (La.).

Here’s the letter.

In particular they are asking some very good questions as to why the US Ambassador in Macedonia is using USAID funds to support a Soros front group that has instigated political violence. (Macedonia | Albania stories in detail.) While the letter is only concerned with USAID funding Soros’s money-making ventures, Soros is involved in many areas of conflict. He has kept the conflict in Ukraine going and has tried to bring down Hungary’s government. His organizations have been banned in Russia… something that doesn’t look like a bad idea.

Under the Clinton and Kerry reigns at State, Soros’s Open Society became the de facto face of American foreign policy in many places. It did not serve us well. Hopefully, this letter to Tillerson will serve as the impetus to either purge State employees involved in this criminal venture or defund the parts of State involved so it can’t happen again.