Biden Labor Ally Accused of Stealing Millions From Union
By AAN Staff March 31, 2020
A close political ally of Joe Biden stands accused at the highest levels of misappropriating millions from a leading firefighters union.
Not only was $1 million siphoned from the union’s pension fund, but $6 million remains unaccounted for, according to an internal probe obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
The Washington Free Beacon’s Yuichiro Kakutani reports:
Harold Schaitberger, the president of the International Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF), which represents more than 300,000 firefighters, is facing accusations of corruption and gross financial malpractice from his closest deputies. Edward Kelly, the general secretary-treasurer and the number two of the union, detailed the findings of his team’s audit in a March 20 internal memorandum.
According to the 105-page document, the audit has thus far found that Schaitberger and Thomas Miller—Kelly’s predecessor as the general secretary-treasurer—illegally earned millions of dollars from the union pension fund over the last two decades.
“The record keeping performed prior to my assuming office in September 2016 was so poor, one could argue it was designed that way,” Kelly wrote in the memorandum.
Kelly’s audit also found that the union misreported millions of dollars in union funds while diverting millions of dollars for a purpose unrelated to their original designation. As a result of this rampant financial malpractice, roughly $6 million in union funds remain unaccounted for, according to the memorandum.
Neither the union nor Schaitberger responded to requests for comment.
Schaitberger spearheaded the charge to get the 320,000 member organization to become the first national union to endorse Biden’s presidential campaign in April 2019. Despite its members’ history of tending to vote for Democrats, the 2016 presidential election saw their vote evenly split between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. After Schaitberger’s successful push to endorse, more than 18,000 members formally complained, demanding the IAFF retract its endorsement.
The results of the probe and calls for a more in-depth investigation threaten to divide the union further.
As of this article’s publication, the Biden campaign has not responded to requests for comment.
https://americanactionnews.com/politics/biden-labor-ally-accused-of-stealing-millions-from-union