OPINION:
Democrats, so committed to protecting violent criminals and fraudsters, have been laying the groundwork for more cover-ups to come.
Let’s check out California, where Gov. Gavin Newsom openly invited illegal migrants to arrive and enjoy welfare benefits like free health care. The strategy, at our expense, is simple. Hook illegals into government payouts, shield them from deportation and they’ll vote for Democrats.
In April 2024, the state audit ripped Mr. Newsom’s handling of billion-dollar programs for the homeless, whose ranks have surged during his reign. (Got that? Illegal migrants and homeless have surged while average Americans leave California.)
The report, “Homelessness in California,” said an “unsheltered” population — sidewalk and tent dwellers — has nearly doubled since 2013, from 73,000 to 123,000. Overall, homelessness went from 119,000 to 181,000.
But the cobbled-together network of state overseers doesn’t track the taxpayer money, according to the report. Over a five-year period, $24 billion is unaccounted for. And the state does not assess whether any of 15 separate programs actually works.
The Democratic-led legislature quickly approved a bipartisan bill as a fix. What did Mr. Newsom, who wants to be our next president, do? He vetoed it, arguing there was another bill to address the problem. He might have calculated that the law was too intrusive and could spur more negative reports about him. The Trump team alleges California overlooks billions in fraud.
“Gov. Newsom had an opportunity to do what is right and hold his agencies accountable for our state’s failed response to homelessness,” said Republican Assemblyman Josh Hoover.
Fourteen months later, in December, the state auditor did a follow-up. Mr. Newsom’s bureaucracy had done virtually nothing to fulfill the one bill the governor touted and signed. Or, in the audit-style language of the report, the state “has demonstrated limited progress toward completing the required planning and coordination necessary to make [the new law’s] oversight reporting possible.”
Mr. Newsom has not even done the planning, much less taken action. And what do you know? In what could be the first of many such moves, the Trump Justice Department just charged a guy for stealing homeless money. Here’s the prosecutor’s Jan. 23 statement: “A Westwood man was arrested today on a federal criminal complaint charging him with fraudulently obtaining $23 million in public money intended to combat homelessness and pocketing at least $10 million of it.”
“California is the poster child of rampant fraud, waste, and abuse of tax dollars,” said First Assistant United States Attorney Bill Essayli. “The state has facilitated the spending of billions of dollars to combat homelessness, with little to show for it and almost no oversight.”
Minnesota is ground zero in taxpayer theft. There, Somalis, East Africans and others are suspected of stealing billions in state and federal payments for non-existent health care, meals and day care. One prominent group is Feeding Our Future — in which scores of suspects, most of them Somali and African descent — stole an estimated $250 million. The U.S. Justice Department has charged 78 defendants and convicted 57 of them.
Aimee Bock, a white woman now in jail, was the ringleader. Her attorney, Kenneth Udoibok, paints the picture of Democratic office holders uninterested in hearing about fraud. Somalis vote overwhelmingly for Democrats and fund their campaigns. Mr. Udoibok said that in 2021, his client tried to share evidence with Gov. Tim Walz and Attorney General Keith Ellison.
“That’s a fact, and his agencies did nothing about that. The attorney general’s office was invited by Feeding Our Future to come to Feeding Our Future and review documents, boxes, close to 100 boxes of the operation of Feeding Our Future. They declined,” Mr. Udoibok said, according to News Nation.
CBS News quoted Mr. Udoibok as saying, “What is a lie is that they were policing this fraudulent activity at any time.”
In wake of Minnesota theft, you would think Democrats would start tightening controls. Not in Virginia, now controlled by Democratic Gov. Abigail Spanberger. The state is the new woke capital of America, where local Democratic rulers like to protect illegal immigrant criminals from deportation.
Revealing her leftist intentions, Virginia freshman Del. Jessica Anderson introduced a remarkable bill. It would essentially give immunity to any non-profit who handed out federal taxpayer money to people who did not deserve it. The bill states: “No state agency responsible for the administration of federal funds shall impose a requirement on a nonprofit charitable organization providing a federal public benefit to determine, verify, or otherwise require proof of eligibility of any applicant for such benefits.”
That’s astounding, even to fellow Democrats. A House of Delegates committee set it aside on Jan. 23.
Mr. Trump’s anti-fraud campaign spawned the Department of Government Efficiency, led for a time by Elon Musk. One of DOGE’s most important disclosures was how the Biden team sent supposed charities called Non-Government Organizations (NGOs) billions of dollars to pursue Democratic Party political objectives.
Parker Thayer, an investigator for Capital Research Center, just published a list of groups that received over $4 billion from the U.S. Agency for International Development. President Joe Biden turned USAID into a taxpayer-financed political op. Mr. Thayer showed spreadsheets of USAID payments to groups whose names are concealed and referred to as “Miscellaneous Foreign Awardees.”
What is the American taxpayer financing? We have no idea.
• Rowan Scarborough is a columnist with The Washington Times.
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