The White House has come out in defense of its pick for Labor Secretary, Julie Su, who is the current Deputy Labor Secretary, chosen by President Joe Biden to replace Marty Walsh, despite the fact she oversaw billions of dollars in coronavirus pandemic relief fraud while serving as a senior official in California. So the Biden administration is picking a crook to fulfill a spot in the administration? Just another day that ends in “y.”
“Su led the California Labor Department, which oversees the Employment Development Department, as one-tenth of the $114 billion in pandemic relief claims handled by the agency involved fraudulent activity. An additional 17% of the benefits were made to accounts that were frozen for an investigation, meaning that the total amount of fraud could have surpassed $31 billion, according to a January 2021 report from the San Francisco Chronicle,” the Daily Wire reported.
“One reporter raised the concerns with White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre during a Wednesday briefing; the official justified the phenomenon by noting that Su was forced to handle one in five unemployment relief claims nationwide,” the report continued.
“It was a historic crush of unemployment claims at the onset of the pandemic. That’s what we were seeing,” she went on to tell the reporter. “The design of the initial pandemic unemployment systems and years of national investments in UI modernization led to challenges, including fraud attacks, as you were just stating, across the nation in red and blue states alike. That was happening across the country during the very early stages of the pandemic.”
KJP then said that Su “took important steps to process a number of claims” and explained that the administration fully intends to fight pandemic relief fraud. “This is an issue that’s important to her, strengthening those safety nets, and also an issue that’s important to the President that he’s actually taken action on,” she added.
The report then noted that fraudsters might have potentially stolen as much as $60 billion from the different federal unemployment programs that were put in place through lockdown-era stimulus bills, according to a report that was released from the Government Accountability Office.
Su went on to tell journalists several years ago that “there is no sugarcoating the reality” of the fraud which happened in California, according to a report published by the Los Angeles Times.
“California has not had sufficient security measures in place to prevent this level of fraud, and criminals took advantage of the situation,” she later said.
However, Su took an opportunity to do what the vast majority of leftists these days often do when things they have attempted end up backfiring: she blamed Trump.
Su pointed the finger at the Trump administration for allegedly neglecting to provide sufficient guidance concerning the distribution of resources. Hey, when in doubt, just blame Trump, right? It’s what they left has been doing ever since Biden took office. If one of his policies negatively impacts the American people, they twist things up until they can find a way to make former President Donald Trump the scapegoat.
“It should be no surprise that EDD was overwhelmed, just like the rest of the nation’s unemployment agencies,” she said. “And we now know that as millions of Californians applied for help, international and national criminal rings were at work behind the scenes working relentlessly to steal unemployment benefits using sophisticated methods of identity theft.”
The report concluded, “Walsh, who previously served as mayor of Boston, plans to depart the Labor Department to lead the National Hockey League Players’ Association. His tenure was characterized by rail unions threatening to enact a nationwide strike ahead of the midterms, which led to the Biden administration negotiating an agreement granting workers pay raises and more health benefits.”
"*" indicates required fields
