Steven Edwards of Fox News is exclusively reporting that a bipartisan investigation has been authorized by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of possible use of taxpayer funding to defeat Benjamin Netanyahu in Tuesday’s Israeli elections.

A powerful U.S. Senate investigatory committee has launched a bipartisan probe into an American nonprofit’s funding of efforts to oust Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after the Obama administration’s State Department gave the nonprofit taxpayer-funded grants, a source with knowledge of the panel's activities told FoxNews.com.

The fact that both Democratic and Republican sides of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations have signed off on the probe could be seen as a rebuke to President Obama, who has had a well-documented adversarial relationship with the Israeli leader. 

The development comes as Netanyahu told Israel’s Channel Two television station this week that there were “governments” that wanted to help with the “Just Not Bibi” campaigning -- Bibi being the Israeli leader’s nickname. (snip)

According to the source, the probe is looking into “funding” by OneVoice Movement – a Washington-based group that has received $350,000 in recent State Department grants, and until last November was headed by a veteran diplomat from the Clinton administrations.

A subsidiary of OneVoice is the Israel-based Victory 15 campaign, itself guided by top operatives of Obama’s White House runs, which seeks to “replace the government” of Israel.

“It’s confirmed that there is a bipartisan Permanent Subcommittee inquiry into OneVoice’s funding of V15,” the source said, speaking on condition of anonymity about the American group, which bills itself as working for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

More than a month and half ago, Senator Ted Cruz demanded information from Secretary of State Kerry on funding of the nonprofit group OneVoice. It is obvious to me that President Obama is pulling out all the stops in his effort to defeat Netanyahu. But I suspect the lawyering of the effort is good enough that technically, no government funds went directly to the election effort. Even though money is fungible, on such fictions all sorts of government money is channeled to political groups working in areas they shouldn’t be. Consider the channeling of hundreds of millions of dollars a year to Planned Parenthood, the largest abortion mill in the country, despite the law requiring no federal funds be used for abortion.  

We’ll see where this leads, Whatever happens, it will not be in time to stop the electoral effort at defeating Netanyahu.