If you thought your tax money was just used to fly illegal aliens into our nation’s interior and house them in pricey hotels, think again. Some of it is also now being used, apparently, to attempt to buy migrants acquittals in our justice system.
This is the obvious conclusion after at least one Minnesota juror was offered $120,000 to acquit Somali migrants on trial for stealing Covid relief funds intended for needy children.
Since the story broke, verdicts have been rendered, and the media have run titles such as “Bag of cash doesn’t stop jurors from convicting 5 of 7 defendants in $40 million food fraud scheme.” This does seem a bit cavalier, though. For is it possible that the efforts did stop jurors from convicting the other two?
The Daily Beast reported on the bribery effort on Monday:
A juror was dismissed from a Minnesota fraud trial on Monday after reporting that a stranger had dropped off a bag of $120,000 in cash at her home and promised her more if she would vote to acquit the seven defendants, who are charged with stealing more than $40 million from the federal government during the pandemic.
“This is completely beyond the pale,” a prosecutor said in court on Monday, according to the Sahan Journal. “This is outrageous behavior. This is stuff that happens in mob movies.”
The juror, a 23-year-old woman, was not home at the time of the apparent bribery attempt on Sunday night. Instead, her father-in-law met the stranger, who told him that the bag was “for Juror 52,” according to the prosecutor, U.S. Assistant Attorney Joe Thompson.
The stranger added, “‘Tell her there will be another bag for her if she votes to acquit,’” Thompson told the court.
The juror called the police when she arrived home and learned what had happened. The bag of cash was turned over to the FBI.
(A second juror was removed as well, on Tuesday, “after a family member asked them if the jury was being sequestered because of the alleged bribe,” according to NBC News.)
Interestingly, the Beast wasn’t brave enough to mention that the entire case involves Somali migrants who’ve apparently repaid their host country’s generosity by stealing scores of millions of its citizens’ tax dollars.
“Minnesota Nice” to Minnesota Vice?
As for the details of the bribery attempt, they are striking. The “stranger” was a woman, and she handed the father-in-law “a gift bag with a curly ribbon and images of flowers and butterflies and said it was a ‘present’ for the juror,” relates The Associated Press.
“‘The woman told the relative to tell Juror #52 to say not guilty tomorrow and there would be more of that present tomorrow,’ the agent wrote,” the site continues.
“The woman who left the bag knew the juror’s first name, the agent said,” AP later added. “Names of the jurors have not been made public, but the list of people with access to it included prosecutors, defense lawyers — and the seven defendants.”
“Federal charges of bribery of a juror and influencing a juror carry a maximum potential penalty of 15 years in prison,” AP also informs.
After the bribery attempt and the replacement of the two jurors, the jury was sequestered and “U.S. District Judge Nancy Brasel ordered the defendants to put their cell phones in airplane mode until the prosecution could get a search warrant to have them confiscated and searched,” reports Source NM.
And, on Friday, the verdicts on the seven defendants were handed down. They “faced a mix of multiple counts including conspiracy, wire fraud, money laundering and federal programs bribery,” writes AP.
The split verdict went against Mohamed Jama Ismail, Abdiaziz Shafii Farah, Abdimajid Mohamed Nur, Hayat Mohamed Nur, and Mukhtar Mohamed Shariff, who were found guilty on most of the counts they faced.
The two other defendants, Said Shafii Farah and Abdiwahab Maalim Aftin, were acquitted on all charges.
This first trial is just the tip of the iceberg, too. In fact, it’s merely part of “a massive Covid relief funding scheme that prosecutors say is the largest of its kind,” relates NBC. “The seven defendants are among 70 people charged by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Minnesota in an alleged $250 million fraud scheme involving the nonprofit Feeding Our Future. Eighteen have pleaded guilty, officials said.”
Note that only about $50 million of the quarter billion has been recovered, according to authorities. (So apparently it’s true: Migrants really do just come here for a better life [of crime?].)
Moreover, the $250 million fraud, staggering though it is, is yet the tip of an even larger iceberg. Note here that an “Associated Press analysis found that fraudsters potentially stole more than $280 billion in COVID-19 relief funding; another $123 billion was wasted or misspent,” AP reported last year. “Combined, the loss represents a jarring 10% of the $4.2 trillion the U.S. government has so far disbursed in COVID-relief aid.”
“That number is certain to grow as investigators dig deeper into thousands of potential schemes,” AP continued (gee, ya’ don’t say!).
And while almost 3,200 defendants have been charged, only about $1.4 billion in purloined pandemic aid has been recovered; this is a paltry 0.5 percent of the stolen $280 billion.
Perhaps the real lesson here is that this is what inevitably happens when government gets too big and tries to micromanage and fund too many aspects of our lives. It also reflects how as a rule, humans are wasteful with other people’s money. If our politicians had to play Santa Claus with their own cash, and not just ours, perhaps it would give their Claus pause.
