NYPD Commissioner Keechant Sewell stepping down - WNBC

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10 Percent of $4.2 Trillion in US COVID Relief Was Lost to Fraud and Waste: Report

As much as 10 percent of the $4.2 trillion the U.S. government has disbursed in COVID-19 relief aid may have been lost to fraud and waste.

A new analysis of COVID relief spending by the Associated Press estimates fraudsters collected more than $283 billion while another $120 billion was wasted or misspent. The news outlet expects estimates of pandemic waste and fraud to grow as investigators continue to review additional potential fraud schemes.

The U.S. government approved about $3.2 trillion in pandemic relief spending under President Donald Trump, and another $1.9 trillion under President Joe Biden. Of the approximately $5 trillion allocated for pandemic relief, about $1 trillion has yet to be paid out.

Estimates for pandemic relief fraud and waste already vary widely. The U.S. Department of Labor Inspector General has indicated $191 billion in pandemic-era unemployment insurance (UI) payments may have been improper, though others estimate the total UI fraud and waste could be as high as $400 billion. Researchers have estimated as much as $80 billion of Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans had indications of possible fraud.

Those involved with tracking down the fraud say there was simply too little oversight and too few restrictions on who could apply for relief funds, making it all too easy for fraud to take place.

While some individuals made off with millions in pandemic relief funds, the pilfering was often wide but not so deep.

“Here was this sort of endless pot of money that anyone could access,” said Dan Fruchter, the head of the fraud and white-collar crime unit with the office of the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Washington. “Folks kind of fooled themselves into thinking that it was a socially acceptable thing to do, even though it wasn’t legal.”

The overall massive scale of the pandemic relief that went out also obscured multi-billion-dollar mistakes. While the Internal Revenue Service had a 99 percent success rate in handling an $837 billion stimulus check program, its 1 percent error rate amounts to about $8 billion going to “ineligible individuals.”

In the seven decades before the pandemic, the Small Business Administration (SBA) had distributed $67 billion in disaster loans. During the pandemic, the SBA ended up handling more than a trillion dollars across the COVID-19 Economic Injury Disaster Loan and PPP loans. As the SBA took on a much larger financial responsibility, it was tasked with rapidly processing loans.

https://www.ntd.com/10-percent-of-4-2-trillion-in-us-covid-relief-was-lost-to-fraud-and-waste-report_924871.html

NY Times Targets Actress Cheryl Hines, Wife of Robert F. Kennedy: ‘Normalizing … Dangerous Ideas’

The New York Times published a profile of Hollywood star Cheryl Hines last weekend in which it claimed that she risked “normalizing” the allegedly “dangerous ideas” of her husband, Democrat Robert F. Kennedy Jr..

Kennedy is challenging incumbent President Joe Biden for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination. And while any insurgent campaign is a long shot, the Times article suggests he poses an actual political threat.

The article states:

Ms. Hines, 57, has been in many spotlights during her three decades as a professional actress, most famously for her role as Larry David’s wife on “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” but this new one is different. After a lifetime of not being particularly political, she finds herself not only married to a man from a storied American political family, but also attached to his long-shot campaign for the highest office in the country. (Mr. Kennedy is the son of former United States Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy.)

And it seems clear he will need Ms. Hines, who is in the unique position of being more recognizable to some voters than her candidate husband, to help soften his image for those put off by his crusade against vaccines and history of promoting conspiracy theories, such as the false narrative that Bill Gates champions vaccines for financial gain.

…

Now, he is running for president, and you — “a genuine ray of light,” says the producer Suzanne Todd, and whom actor Alec Baldwin has said “everybody loves” — are along for the ride. After years of being able to distance yourself from your husband’s most problematic views, you now risk being seen as at least tacitly embracing them by standing by and smiling if he says things on the campaign trail that are demonstrably untrue.

Somehow the Times, which drove the false “Russia collusion” conspiracy theory for several years of coverage, did not consider the risk to other candidates’ spouses of untrue statements by the candidates.

A new USA TODAY/Suffolk University poll suggest that eight in ten Democratic Party primary voters want Biden to have to debate his challengers, who include Kennedy and spiritual guru Marianne Williamson.

https://www.breitbart.com/entertainment/2023/06/12/ny-times-targets-cheryl-hines-wife-of-robert-f-kennedy-normalizing-dangerous-ideas/