(Headline USA) “Squad” Rep. Cori Bush, D-Mo., used campaign funds to pay her husband another $17,000 in recent months, even as the Justice Department launched an investigation into her campaign’s spending on private security.
Bush, who confirmed this week that she was under investigation for the alleged misuse of campaign and federal funds related to her private security payments, has been paying her husband, Cortney Merritts, from her campaign since 2021.
She initially logged the payments as security-related, despite the fact that Merritts was not registered to provide professional security services in her congressional district.
After the issue stared receiving additional scrutiny and ethics complaints, in April 2023, she changed the description to “wage expenses.”
Bush and Merritts were married in February 2023 but have been together since before she entered office in 2021.
Bush’s employment of her husband has drawn at least two Federal Election Commission complaints and now a Justice Department probe.
However, new filings from the Missouri Democrat revealed she has continued to pay Merritts over the past several months, in at least seven installments of $2,500 each. The payments bring the total sum Merritts has collected from Bush’s campaign to $120,000.
When asked directly about his role with Bush’s campaign, Merritts appeared to confirm that he does not actually work for her at all.
“I don’t have a role in the campaign,” Merritts told Fox News in October.
“You don’t have a role at all?” the reporter countered. “They were reporting you had wages on the campaign for security, and then it was a general wage. I was just wondering what you’ve been doing on the campaign?”
Merritts replied: “Yeah, I mean you can Google what it is … Am I still employed with it? Yes, so obviously, I’m going to work with it.”
He then deflected the attack back onto the journalist, accusing him of victimizing a private citizen with ambush tactics.
“What’s this whole ‘gotcha’ s***?” Merritts asked. “I’m not a politician, man, so ask me a question, man-to-man, and I’ll answer.”
Bush also denied the allegations that she had been improperly paying Merritts, dismissing the federal probe into her finances this week as a “right-wing” attack.
