President Trump’s special envoy for foreign policy, Richard Grenell, has suggested that the Biden administration may have tried to tip the scales against a conservative candidate in Romania’s recent elections.

The rightist presidential candidate, Calin Georgescu, won the first round on November 24, but Romania’s constitutional court then annulled the results. The court made that unprecedented move amid general suspicions of Russian interference, which were, however, never substantiated.

Mr. Grenell’s assertion dovetails with speculation that the EU helped influence the Romanian court to cancel the first round result and also ups the ante in the Trump administration’s dismantling of the USAID, the embattled foreign aid agency now under the aegis of the State Department. 

Mr. Grenell, a former director of national intelligence and former ambassador to Germany in Mr. Trump’s first administration, wrote on X that “USAid programs were weaponized against people and politicians who weren’t woke. The Biden team spent US taxpayer money to support left wing programs and candidates around the world.” He added that “Conservatives around the world were targeted. Romania is the latest example.” 

President Trump recently said that “Biden was an embarrassment to our nation. A complete embarrassment.” He has removed security clearances for Mr. Biden as well as his former secretary of state, Antony Blinken, and former national security advisor Jake Sullivan. 

Mr. Trump claims that billions of taxpayer dollars were “stolen” by USAID, and the saga of its shuttering, at least as an independent federal agency, is ongoing. So, too, is the story of the election in Romania, a member of the North Atlantic Treaty. New dates have been set to rerun the vote with the first round scheduled for May 4.

Mr. Georgescu, who is running as an independent, leads in the latest opinion polls. According to the those polls, when asked who they would vote for in the presidential elections, 37 percent of Romanians responded they would vote for Georgescu, with the next candidate garnering a markedly lower response, at  21 percent. Polls also show the far right Alliance for the Union of Romanians party coming first in the electorate’s preferences.

One of the questions raised by Mr. Grenell’s claim is to what extent the Biden administration may have interfered with the Romanian election. In his post, Mr. Grenell tagged the current Romanian prime minister, Marcel Ciolacu. Mr. Ciolacu heads the Social Democrat Party, which is a member of the Socialist International. 

To answer the question, one needs to look not only at the relevant USAID files but also to Brussels and a former EU commissioner, Thierry Breton. Last  month Mr. Breton raised the prospect of the EU seeking to cancel the results of the upcoming federal election in Germany, in which the rightist AfD party is expected to make a strong showing: “We did it in Romania, and obviously we will do it in Germany,” he said. The statement played a role in demonstrations that erupted at Bucharest last month.

Like Hungary’s Viktor Orbán and Slovakia’s Robert Fico, Calin Georgescu is seen as a populist, right-wing leader with a softer approach to Russia and President Putin than most other members of the EU bloc. His recent call for Romanians to boycott foreign-owned supermarkets underscores his popular appeal in a country where issues such as high cost of  living loom large.

The Sun reached out to Mr. Grenell via phone, but did not receive a response. One of President Trump’s most seasoned and trusted diplomats, Mr. Grenell is in a highly peripatetic work phase. He recently returned from Venezuela and a meeting with President Maduro. 

Mr. Grenell has also criticized media outlets Radio Free Europe and Voice of America as being “filled with left-wing activists,” to which Elon Musk replied on X, “Yes, shut them down.”

In the meantime, the head of Romania’s AUR party, George Simion, told the outlet Hungarian Conservative that “Richard Grenell’s allegations that USAID is being used as an agency to promote the radical left’s agenda are already sending shock waves. And it will have consequences. It happened in Romania, which was specifically mentioned.”