Julie Su brought Calif. corruption to the White House — and Harris will keep her there
By Will Swaim Published Sep. 9, 2024, 5:30 p.m. ET1/2
President Biden’s nonchalance about Chinese spying, hacking and election interference is a cause for national worry — and his indifference to the Chinese threat extends even to his own White House.
Acting Secretary of Labor Julie Su’s catastrophic 2021 face-plant while serving as California’s labor secretary made China stronger, while making the world a more dangerous place for Americans and American ideals.
Yet Kamala Harris and her backers, including United Auto Workers president Shawn Fain, say they’d like Su to stay in her post after Jan. 20, despite the Senate’s refusal to confirm her nomination for 548 days and counting. That makes her America’s longest-serving unconfirmed cabinet officer.
Su’s confirmation troubles stem from her time as California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s secretary of labor.In that job, she ignored warnings about vulnerabilities in the state’s unemployment benefits system, claiming that tougher ID verification standards would disproportionately hurt black and brown Californians.
But her squeamishness left the system vulnerable:When COVID hit, Su lost some $32 billion to fraudsters who hacked the benefits program.That staggering sum — about a third of all American unemployment insurance fraud losses during the pandemic — included a $20 billion federal loan intended to backstop California’s pandemic-stressed unemployment trust fund.
Multiple sources now say most of the lost money, about $26 billion, was captured by international crime gangs operating on behalf of foreign adversaries — and that taxpayer cash stolen by China’s Advanced Persistent Threat 41 and others is already being deployed against Americans and American interests.
“The staggering fraud committed against California’s EDD during the pandemic is alarming, but the real danger lies in what those stolen billions are now funding,” said Paul Eckloff, a retired US Secret Service special agent who now works to thwart fraud at LexisNexis Risk Solutions.
“Nation-states and transnational criminal groups are using this money to fuel illicit narcotics, human trafficking and activities that actively undermine our financial institutions and national security,” Eckloff told me.
“Even more alarming, these groups haven’t stopped — they’re continuing to target state programs across the country, promoting terror, crime, and undermining the rule of law,” he said.
If Su remains in a Harris administration, there’s likely worse news ahead: Those who benefited most from California’s unemployment insurance fraud scandal have learned “an important lesson” from Su’s rise, said an intelligence expert.
• “They’ve learned that American governments are an easy mark because you won’t get caught,” the source said.
• “What we have unfortunately seen is that more and more of these transnational crime groups [are] targeting US governments,” the expert explained, capitalizing on “antiquated tools and technology in government.”
• In Washington, Su has made things worse, using her federal authority to help California officials scrub from state documents any reference to the scandal.
• “It was a classic, bureaucratic ‘cover-your-ass’ move,” said a California state employee close to Newsom. Like others we spoke with, the source requested anonymity for fear of retribution.
• Su has stonewalled journalists’ demands for public documents and refused to respond meaningfully to two congressional investigations of California’s COVID scandal.
https://nypost.com/2024/09/09/opinion/harris-will-keep-julie-sus-cali-corruption-in-her-cabinet/