Former Rep. Cori Bush’s Husband Indicted for Fraud

Former Rep. Cori Bush’s husband, Cortney Merritts, was indicted this week for pandemic-related fraud. The indictment claims that he sought multiple loans for a moving business and then spent the money on himself.

According to the indictment, Merritts received an $8,500 Small Business Administration loan in July 2020 under the Economic Injury Disaster Loan Program for the Vetted Couriers moving business. In the application, he claimed he had six employees and revenue of $32,000 the year prior.

Merritts allegedly filed for another $10,000 SBA loan in July 2020 under the same program. In that application, he listed the business name as “Cortney Merritts,” which employed 10 people the year prior with revenues of $53,000…

The SBA rejected the application because it was nearly identical to the Vetted Couriers application, according to federal prosecutors.

Merritts the following year, in April 2021, submitted a Paycheck Protection Program loan for the business “Cortney Merritts.” In that application, he claimed $128,000 in income for the year and was given a PPP loan for $20,832.

The PPP loan was forgiven a year later. Merritts claimed he spent the money on salaries for his employees but prosecutors claim he spent it on himself.

Former Rep. Bush was a member of the Squad of progressive House members that includes AOC. She was first elected in 2020 having previously been a BLM activist and a supporter of defunding the police.

Last August, Bush lost her primary race to Wesley Bell, a slightly less extreme progressive who was heavily backed by AIPAC. Bush had voted against money for the Iron Dome missile system in Israel and had suggested that she wasn’t convinced Hamas was a terror group, comparing them to BLM.

Standing outside an early voting location at a public library in Ferguson, on the same streets where she led protests for racial justice in 2014, Ms. Bush declined to call Hamas a terrorist group.

“We were called terrorists during Ferguson,” she said of herself and other Black activists who took to the streets after the killing of Michael Brown, an unarmed Black teenager, by a white police officer. “Have they hurt people? Absolutely. Has the Israeli military hurt people? Absolutely.”…

“Would they qualify to me as a terrorist organization? Yes. But do I know that? Absolutely not,” Ms. Bush said. “I have no communication with them. All I know is that we were considered terrorists, we were considered Black identity extremists and all we were doing was trying to get peace. I’m not trying to compare us, but that taught me to be careful about labeling if I don’t know.”

Later, a spokeswoman for Ms. Bush sought to walk back her comments. “The congresswoman knows Hamas is a terrorist organization,” the spokeswoman, Marina Chafa, said. The issue, she added, was that the term had been “weaponized by the far right consistently to justify violence and in this instance, the collective punishment of Palestinian civilians in Gaza.”

She couldn’t walk that back. AIPAC wound up spending over $8 million to defeat her. After she lost she vowed revenge on the group.

“All they did was radicalize me, so now they need to be afraid,” she told a crowd of supporters. “They about to see this other Cori, this other side.”

This wasn’t the only issue in her campaign however. Last January she admitted that she was under a DOJ investigation over her use of campaign funds to pay her husband, Cortney Merritts, for personal security. 

The Justice Department is conducting an investigation into whether Representative Cori Bush mishandled campaign funds, including when she hired her romantic partner — who is now her husband — to provide her with security services.

The Office of Congressional Ethics investigated the security arrangement by Ms. Bush, a Democrat from Missouri, last year. The office voted to recommend dismissal of the allegations after concluding that her husband, Cortney Merritts, had performed “bona fide” security work and did not appear to have been overpaid, and that Ms. Bush faced a level of threats that justified the work…

People familiar with the investigation, who spoke about it on the condition of anonymity, said federal prosecutors were asking questions similar to those asked by the congressional investigators about Ms. Bush’s security expenditures and the involvement of Mr. Merritts. The Justice Department inquiry has included subpoenas to members of Ms. Bush’s campaign team.

Bush continued to pay Merritts for security for months after the investigation was revealed, but no charges were ever brought against her. It is legal for members of congress to hire family members so long as they pay them a market rate and so long as the family members are doing actual work.

Merritts’ attorney says he plans to plead not guilty in the wire fraud case he’s now facing which means this case is headed to trial.