The room is getting a little warmer for former House Rep. from Missouri, Democrat Cori Bush, as her husband just got slapped with fraud charges. The Dept. of Justice indicted Cortney Merritts for allegedly lying on applications for Covid relief money. The feds claim that Merritts gave false information in order to get his hands on $21,000 from various programs meant to help businesses stay afloat during the shutdowns, as well money to compensate him for alleged economic injury.
The money Merritts received came from the Paycheck Protection Program and the Economic Injury Disaster Loan Program. The PPP was set up to give businesses what it called “forgivable” loans to keep meeting payroll during a time when (illegal) state and federal shut-down orders put businesses small and large out of commission during the pandemic. In reality, these weren’t loans, but direct grants that did not have to be repaid. Of the $793 billion given out, $760 billion was forgiven.
Whenever there’s money to be had from the government, there are going to be scams. The inspector general for the Small Business Administration, which disbursed the money, claimed in a 2022 report that up to 70,000 “loans” were probably fraudulent.
Collin Rugg brought the news to X/Twitter, along with some archival footage of Bush banging on about how she was going to “transform policing”:
The indictment of Bush’s husband Cortney Merritts is new, and not many details are available yet. And while it does not appear that the indictment of Merritts is connected to an ongoing investigation into whether Bush improperly spent campaign funds on personal security, it’s worth noting that her husband, Merritts, was in charge of her security operation. It seems likely that Bush herself may be headed for trouble, though there has not been any recent updates on the campaign finance investigation.
Cori Bush made a name for herself as a congresswoman whose modus operandi could be summed up as “give me and other black people taxpayer money.” In 2023 she introduced a bill to give black Americans a ridiculous $14 trillion (yes, trillion with a ‘t’) in “reparations” for slavery. She was a member of the colloquially named “Squad,” a group of histrionic Democrat and progressive black and “woman of color” legislators who claim racism, misogyny, and colonialism are oppressing them all day every day.
Bush lost the primary for her seat in 2024. Badly.
Bush’s most memorable moment was when she camped out on the steps of the Capitol in 2021 surrounded by family-sized boxes of potato chips and cookies. She was sleeping rough to protest the end of the (ruled unconstitutional) eviction freeze illegally foisted on American landlords by the Centers for Disease Control under President Joe Biden.
Let’s see what other X/Twitter users had to say about the bad news for Bush’s husband/security guard:
Hmm. Not a lot of sympathy so far. Let’s keep going.
Three full page scrolls and no sympathy yet. Maybe you’ll find some!
