New stories of fraud perpetrated under COVID-era relief programs such as the Payment Protection Program (PPP) and the Economic Injury Disaster Loans (EIDL) program do not necessarily surprise me at this point, but I will admit this story wasn't on my bingo card.
Of all the businesses that secured funds when they shouldn't have, whether they were too big or too rich to qualify -- whether they even had employees or not -- none of those are bad as this. At least they were actual businesses.
The Trump regime resisted a legal effort to obtain a list of every business that received funding, but they lost and NBC News cross referenced the list of businesses and found that at least 14 organizations designated as hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center received funding. That includes open white supremacists and anti-gay bigots.
Those organizations include the New Century Foundation, known for publishing the white supremacist website and now-discontinued magazine American Renaissance. That group is run by prominent white supremacist Jared Taylor, who for decades has argued that immigration policy should aim to “keep the country white.” The New Century Foundation received $51,600 in relief funds. [...]
In total, the 14 accused hate groups that received relief funds analyzed by NBC News were awarded a total of $4.3 million in PPP loans. Overall more than 5.2 million PPP loans worth more than $525 billion were approved, according to the SBA.
The groups that received funds also include American Family Association, a group that opposes what its leaders describe as the "homosexual agenda." It received $1,390,800 in PPP funds. The Federation for American Immigration Reform, known as FAIR, an anti-immigration group founded by leaders that hold ties to white supremacists, also was awarded $683,680 from the relief program.
Among the anti-LGBT groups that received relief funds is Church Militant, an organization that runs a media operation that advocates for so-called gay conversion therapies and links homosexuality to pedophilia, reaching large followings across Facebook, YouTube and on its own website. The group received a $301,100 PPP loan, according to SBA data.
Groups that promote conversion therapy for people like me got hundreds of thousands of dollars in bailout money. The rest of us got one stimulus check eight months ago. Some people got nothing.
There's plenty of other reasons why the Trump regime would want to hide this information, such as the staggering amount of fraud uncovered so far, but I'm sure this is one of them. They didn't want anyone to know they were handing millions out to literal white supremacists.
These aren't even businesses in any sense. These were subsidies for the actual worst people in the world.
If the Biden-era Treasury Department is going to audit COVID-era relief programs, these groups have to be near the top of the list. There's no conceivable way they should be eligible for loan forgiveness.
I say that knowing the Trump regime intentionally designed these programs so they could be easily abused, of course, so I won't hold my breath.