…I strongly urge you to read this article, written by Daniel Huff and Clark S. Judge and published in the New York Post on August 23, 2024, titled “Kamala’s brother-in-law fleeced taxpayers for billions to give to left-wing groups and lawyers”.
Here is one key segment (the bold print is mine):
A Government Accountability Office study concluded that “no one knows the number of claims processed by the federal government each year.”
Still, for three decades, the integrity of Justice’s officials sufficed to prevent abuse.
Then, in 2009, Tony West took over the department’s Civil Division, the division that litigates and settles lawsuits.
Once West arrived, his deputy emailed colleagues asking “can you explain to Tony the best way to allocate some money toward an organization of our choosing?”
Settlements became the vehicle for paying off political allies.
For example, in late 2010, after a Supreme Court victory, DOJ lawyers were on the cusp of winning a decade-long fight against discrimination claims by 91 Hispanic and female farmers.
That’s when West intervened and, as The New York Times put it, “engineered a stunning turnabout.”
DOJ agreed to a $1.33 billion settlement which included thousands of farmers who had never claimed bias.
The deal was made over the “vehement objections” of the department’s career lawyers.
The Times’s investigative report described West’s settlement as a “runaway train, driven by racial politics . . . and law firms that stand to gain more than $130 million in fees.”
The projected settlement size ballooned to over $4.4 billion as additional plaintiffs were added, including Native American farmers.
The government’s statistical expert was appalled: “‘If they had gone to trial, the government would have prevailed . . . It was just a joke. . . . I was so disgusted. It was simply buying the support of the Native Americans.’”
This dirty deal also inflated the number of claimants, creating a $60 million windfall for the plaintiff’s lead lawyer, a member of the Obama/Biden transition team.
How bad does that stink? How much taxpayer money was pissed away? And how many more “deals” just like it were made?
Democrat protestations aside, do we need DOGE? The answer is self-evident…as, pretty apparently, is the reason Democrats are against it.
