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White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said that the Biden administration has “never supported” the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, despite previously waiving sanctions on the pipeline and lobbying congress against sanctioning it.
Psaki said during Wednesday’s press conference that the Biden administration has spoken out against the pipeline previously, responding to a reporter’s question on why the administration is changing positions on the pipeline.
“Well we don’t see it as a shift at all. We’ve never supported the pipeline. It was 90 percent built on the president took office. We’ve always spoken out against the pipeline,” Psaki said.
She added that the Biden administration previously opposed sanctions proposed by members of the U.S. House and Senate.
BIDEN ANNOUNCES SANCTIONS AGAINST NORD STREAM 2 OWNER, REVERSING 2021 DECISION
White House press secretary Jen Psaki speaks during a press briefing at the White House, Wednesday, Feb. 16, 2022, in Washington.
(AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)
“The question was, what was the most effective step in order to have the result that we have now over the last 24 hours? And there were calls by some in Congress to do preemptive sanctions or earlier sanctions or take earlier steps, I should say, on Nord Stream 2. We disagreed with that strategy,” Psaki said. “You saw the German chancellor make the announcement yesterday and the announcement today was complementary to that.”
When asked if the Biden administration was waiting for “Germans to take the first step here,” Psaki responded that it felt a “diplomatic approach would be the most effective approach.”
WASHINGTON, DC – FEBRUARY 18: U.S. President Joe Biden speaks to update the situation of the Ukraine-Russia border crisis during an event in the Roosevelt Room of the White House on February 18, 2022, in Washington, DC. President Joe Biden gave an update after he held a phone call with Transatlantic leaders to continue diplomatic and deterrence efforts to deescalate the crisis that has been caused by a heavy deployment of Russian troops along the border between the two counties.
((Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)
The Biden administration lobbied Congress to oppose sanctions on Nord Stream 2 in January. According to Politico, top officials with the Biden administration were sent to Capitol Hill in an effort to push Democrats away from a bill that would have put sanctions on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline.
President Biden waived sanctions against the pipeline in May 2021, lifting sanctions on Nord Stream AG and its top executive, who is a Putin associate.
The pipeline would have run from Russia to Germany’s Baltic Coast, allowing the Russian state-owned company Gazprom to send gas to Europe’s pipeline system while bypassing the current pipelines running through Ukraine and Poland.
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A Ukrainian soldiers passes by houses in the village of Novoluhanske, Luhansk region, Ukraine, Saturday, Feb. 19, 2022. Separatist leaders in eastern Ukraine have ordered a full military mobilization amid growing fears in the West that Russia is planning to invade the neighboring country. The announcement on Saturday came amid a spike in violence along the line of contact between Ukrainian forces and the pro-Russia rebels in recent days.
(AP Photo/Oleksandr Ratushniak)
On Wednesday, President Biden announced he is imposing sanctions on Nord Stream AG and their corporate officers in response to Russia’s actions in Ukraine.
The announcement came after German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on Wednesday that the country will “reassess” the pipelines’ certification.
Fox News’ Thomas Barrabi, Ronn Blitzer, Paul Conner, and Brooke Singman contributed to this report
