Dutch Parliamentarians Accuse U.S. Ambassador of Election Interference

AMSTERDAM, Holland. January 10th, 2018. PICTURED: U.S. Ambassador Peter Hoekstra presented his credentials to King Willem-Alexander

Peter Hoekstra, the U.S. Ambassador to the Netherlands has been accused of interfering in national elections by a quorum of Dutch Lawmakers.

At odds with international law under the 1961 Vienna Conference on Diplomatic Relations, Hoekstra has been accused of hosting a fundraiser at the American embassy in The Hague for a particular far-right Dutch party called Forum for Democracy.

A deftly translated piece from a Dutch newspaper De Groene Amsterdammer describes the event which the State Department, in a statement defending Hoekstra, called a “town hall discussion”.

“As night falls, a party trickles into the American embassy at John Adams Park in Wassenaar. They are here for a meeting that revolves around Forum for Democracy, the party of leader Thierry Baudet who hopes to significantly expand his two seats in the House of Representatives in the coming elections. The thirty to forty names on the guest list form a striking group: party leaders supplemented by wealthy entrepreneurs”.

According to De Groene, who claim they managed to get a hold of the invitations, explained they not only claimed the holder can join the party at the “invitation of the Forum for Democracy and Pete Hoekstra” but that any questions can be directed to a woman named Joyce Vastenhouw, whose name signs the letter with phone number and the title “Head of Fundraising”.

An unnamed attending entrepreneur, according to Dave DeCamp writing for Antiwar.com, told De Groene that the event was “certainly not a town hall meeting” but more of an “informal kick-off for the election campaign.”

Analysts from De Groene noted that the key difference between a town hall and other events would be “openness” as a town hall is meant to address citizen’s questions. A private evening with drinks and invitations is certainly anything but open.

Forum for Democracy is a populist conservative liberal party that wants abolition of the Eurozone and an abandonment of the EU by the Dutch.