Good stuff by Rep. James Walkinshaw (D-VA11), ripping into the utterly corrupt, incompetent, extreme, etc. Kristi Noem, who had already fled the hearing…because of course she did.
- “Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I regret that Secretary Noem tapped out after two hours, but nonetheless, I want to focus on an issue that I think is really important. The misuse of taxpayer funds and the steering of DHS funds to politically connected firms tied to the Secretary’s office while hiding that activity from the American people. Secretary Noem has been criticized by members of her own party and by the Trump administration for being slow and ineffective when Americans actually need her help. Republican Senator Thom Tillis said she was, quote, ‘slow off the mark in getting disaster aid out the door’. A senior administration official recently told Politico that there was quote some fishy stuff going on with money at DHS and the veto authority she handed to Corey Lewandowski over contracts and grants has delayed life-saving resources after disasters. So when it comes to helping disaster victims, she’s been slow and ineffective. But when it came to spending money on her own image and then funneling that money to her friends and her political allies, she moved with remarkable speed. According to reporting by ProPublica, DHS obligated $220 million for an advertising campaign featuring her in staged phony border imagery and featuring pictures of President Trump’s private properties. That money, that taxpayer money was routed through a newly created and secretive Delaware shell company. It was then secretly funneled from that shell company to a firm with direct political and personal ties to her office and her political operation. That firm is called the Strategy Group. This situation has all of the elements of political corruption. First, she invoked emergency authority to bypass competitive bidding. Second, she concealed the true destination of the money by routing it through a shell company, a red flag in any corruption investigation. Third, the firm that actually did the work that filmed her attempting to herd cattle has documented political and personal ties to the secretary and her senior leadership.”
- “Fourth, her directive requiring personal approval of all contracts over $100,000 concentrated power in the hands of the very people tied to the firm that secretly received the work, her and Mr. Lewandowski. At the exact time this contract was executed, DHS was diverting investigators and resources away from child exploitation, away from child trafficking, away from illegal gun smuggling. Yet somehow she found nearly a4 billion dollars to promote herself and the money flowed to her political allies. A federal contracting law expert quoted in ProPublica summarized it plainly. It’s corrupt is the word. That’s what I would have liked to ask the secretary about today. I would have asked if she personally approved the money that flowed to her political and personal allies. I would have asked if whether when she was governor of South Dakota in 2023 and the same firm got $8.5 million of taxpayer money whether she steered the money to them because an official in her administration said she did. That’s what I would have asked her but she had to leave early. Mr. Lasheen, are you familiar with the Proud Boys? I’m familiar with the name. Yeah, Proud Boys. Okay. Does the FBI still designate the Proud Boys as an extremist organization? They did in 2018 in President Trump’s first term. [We are in the process right now of changing our uh categories for domestic terrorists.] So, they’re no longer designated as an extremist organization. The FBI designated them an extremist organization in 2018. Has that changed? [I’m not aware that they did that.] It’s all over the media, sir. Widely reported. Can you get back to me on that?”
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