(Headline USA) Leftist members of the “Squad” collectively spent more than $325,000 on private security despite promoting the “defund the police movement,” according to financial disclosures obtained by Fox News.
Rep. Cori Bush, D-Mass., spent about $200,000 total in 2021 on private security firms like Peace Security and Whole Armor Executive Protection. In the last financial quarter of 2021 alone, she spent $65,000 on security services.
Last August, Bush insisted that “defunding the police has to happen” and that money used to fund law enforcement should instead be transferred to “social safety nets because we’re trying to save lives.”
Bush has previously been confronted about her hypocritical position on this. When asked why she spends tens of thousands on private security but doesn’t want to pay police officers to protect other citizens, Bush said, “You would rather me die? Is that what you want to see? You want to see me die?”
Rep. @CoriBush on CBSN responding to critics who point out she spent roughly $70,000 on private security while calling to defund the police: https://t.co/GHcR9qFVxG pic.twitter.com/GhCLha7BNR
— Kathryn Watson (@kathrynw5) August 5, 2021
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., spent just short of $75,000 on private security in 2021, paying private firms nearly $10,000 in the fourth financial quarter alone.
She, too, has been emphatic in her support for defunding the police.
“Defunding police means defunding police. It does not mean budget tricks or funny math,” she said last year.
“It does not mean moving school police officers from the NYPD budget to the Department of Education’s budget so the exact same police remain in schools.”
Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., spent more than $30,000 on private security in 2021.
In 2020, she slammed the Minneapolis Police Department as “rotten to the root” and endorsed the ‘defund the police’ movement as a way to “reimagine the current police system to build an entity that does not violate us.”
