A senior Capitol staffer who has long been a voice in Russian politics is under congressional investigation for his frequent trips to Ukraine war zones and for providing what he said was $30,000 in sniper equipment to his army, documents show.
Staff member Kyle Parker is the Senate’s senior adviser to the U.S. Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, known as the Helsinki Commission. The commission is chaired by members of Congress and staffed by congressional aides. He is influential on democracy and security issues and has expressed support for Ukraine.
A confidential report by the commission’s director and general counsel, reviewed by The New York Times, said the equipment transfer could make Parker an unregistered foreign agent. It said that Parker had traveled along the Ukrainian front wearing camouflage and Ukrainian military insignia and that he had recruited a Ukrainian official for a US government fellowship over the objections of congressional security and ethics officials.
And he raised the possibility that he was “knowingly or unknowingly being targeted and exploited by a foreign intelligence service,” citing unspecified “counterintelligence issues” that should be referred to the FBI.
A representative for Mr. Parker said he had done nothing wrong. He said Parker was the target of a “retaliation campaign” for making allegations of misconduct against the report’s authors.
The report so concerned the committee’s chairman, Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., that he recommended Mr. Parker be fired to protect national security, records show. He cited “alleged serious wrongdoing involving Ukrainians and other foreign individuals.”
“I urgently recommend that you secure his immediate resignation or dismissal,” Wilson, a pro-Ukraine, wrote in a Nov. 1 letter to the committee’s Democratic co-chairman, Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin of Maryland. Parker’s representative said he had not been asked to resign and that he had no plans to do so.
Parker remains on the commission pending what three U.S. officials described as a broad investigation into staff conduct, including allegations contained in the report and Parker’s accusations against the commission’s executive director, Steven Schrage, and attorney , Michael Geffroy, who wrote the report.
The investigation is being led by an outside law firm, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe the ongoing investigation. It is unclear whether Congress referred its concerns to the FBI, as the report recommended.
The misconduct investigation has roiled the Helsinki Commission at a dangerous time for Ukraine and its relationship with Congress. The country has suffered setbacks in its war with Russia and is desperate for more money and weapons. Republicans threaten to block $60 billion in additional aid.
In his letter, Wilson warned that the scandal at the commission could jeopardize “future aid to Ukraine.”
The Helsinki Commission is a key voice for Ukraine, both on Capitol Hill and in Europe. Parker is one of his longest-serving assistants. He is known in foreign policy circles as the driving force behind a 2012 human rights law, the Magnitsky Act, inspired by the death of Russian anti-corruption crusader Sergei L. Magnitsky.
The report raises the possibility that Mr. Parker’s strident support for Ukraine crossed ethical or legal lines and that he, a U.S. government employee, may have been functioning as an agent of Ukraine. Through his representative, Mr. Parker denied it.
Representatives for Cardin and Wilson referred questions to the House Labor Counsel’s Office, which did not respond to messages.
Parker is one of many Americans who arrived in Ukraine after the 2022 Russian invasion. Some offered money and supplies or fought alongside Ukrainian soldiers. Others were dishonest, incompetent, or troubled by internal disputes.
In conferences, podcasts and social media publicationsMr. Parker said he had traveled to Ukraine. at least seven times since the invasion began in February 2022, including to combat zones, and describes himself as “the most traveled American official in wartime Ukraine.”
Photographs of those trips on social media show him wearing camouflage and the insignia of Ukrainian units. In a picture, wears a patch of the provincial military administration. In another, it takes camouflage and a Ukrainian drone unit patch. In another, he says he is “planning the liberation” of Luhansk with a Ukrainian official.
A video obtained by The Times shows him cutting off a Russian hat and urinating on it.
“Sir. Parker’s unofficial travel and media promotion as a foreign military interlocutor raise further legal and ethical concerns amid alleged Ukrainian military corruption,” the report says.
Mr. Parker’s representative responded in writing to questions on Mr. Parker’s behalf on condition that he not be identified. He said that “American and Ukrainian security experts” had advised Mr. Parker to wear camouflage near the front and that he had never worn the insignia of the military units he accompanied.
He said urinating was “a personal expression of rage and pain” after witnessing evidence of Russian brutality.
Mr. Parker’s representative said these were not official trips. But Mr. Parker has spoken publicly as if that were the case. Some of those who traveled with him said they believed he was in government affairs. The commission published a photograph of him in the besieged city of Kherson.
In an April 2023 lecture at the University of Maine, Parker said that after the evacuation of the U.S. embassy in Kiev ahead of the Russian invasion, he was motivated to go to Ukraine to help advise policymakers. Americans.
“We have almost no eyes on the ground, we have no presence,” he said, according to a recording by The Bangor Daily News, which covered the event and provided audio to The Times. “So, you know, I feel like that makes the journey even more important, to be able to say, ‘Hey, this is what I’ve seen.’”
It is not illegal to visit Ukraine’s front lines, despite warnings from the State Department against doing so.
“I do not answer to the State Department,” he added. “We are an independent agency.”
He told congressional officials that at least some of his trips were to persuade relatives he has in Ukraine to leave, according to two U.S. officials with direct knowledge of the investigation. Mr. Parker’s representative said he had helped the family evacuate.
Mr. Parker said that led to the front lines. American officials rarely go to the front and only with tight security measures.
William B. Taylor Jr., former top U.S. envoy to Ukraine, said such expeditions were particularly risky. “If you’re in the government or have any propaganda value to the Russians,” he said, “the benefits have to be very, very high.”
As chief of staff when war broke out in 2022, Parker said the commission was on a “war footing” and no longer had to follow rules on how to report travel or contact foreign officials, according to the report. Mr. Parker’s representative denied this.
The report said Parker hired a Ukrainian parliamentary aide as a member of the commission, despite “legal, ethical and staff security objections.”
The report did not name the aide. The Times identified him as Andrii Bondarenko, who said in messages that he had held an unpaid position for about a month in late 2022.
“The idea was to understand how Congress works,” he said. Bondarenko said he was currently serving in the Ukrainian army.
Mr. Parker’s lecture in Maine raised alarm in the commission.
The report was based on public accounts of the event, during which Parker described obtaining equipment for Ukrainian snipers.
In the recording, he said that a relative in Ukraine had given him $30,000 raised by veterans and volunteers, which he had used to buy rangefinders from Amazon and ballistic anemometers from a Philadelphia-area manufacturer.
He said he handed them out in Kharkiv on Easter weekend 2022 to “guys who will face snipers on the front.” Scope fingers are specialized binoculars or monoculars. Anemometers help calculate meteorological variables to align shots.
The export of such equipment is not necessarily restricted, although the delivery of sophisticated models may be. Parker said he followed export laws.
“You never go to Ukraine in times of war with an empty suitcase,” he said.
Aishvarya Kavi and Rebecca Davis O’Brien contributed with reports.