Former left-wing congresswoman Cori Bush’s husband was charged on Thursday with defrauding the federal government to illegally collect tens of thousands of dollars in loans under COVID-era small business relief programs.
Cortney Merritts, who secretly married Bush in 2023, falsified details about his purported businesses in order to obtain more than $20,000 in loans from the Small Business Administration in 2020 and 2021 under the Paycheck Protection Program and Economic Injury Disaster Loan Program, the Department of Justice said in a statement.
Bush represented St. Louis before suffering a primary loss last year that she blamed on the Jews. She was a member of the far-left "Squad" that includes Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) and Rashida Tlaib (D., Mich.). She refused to call Hamas a terrorist group and was one of two House members to vote against a resolution to ban Hamas terrorists from entering the United States.
The indictment comes roughly one year after the DOJ launched an investigation into Bush over a separate ordeal: Bush's campaign payments to Merritts.
Bush used her congressional campaign budget to pay for more than $812,000 on questionable private security services. She paid more than $150,000 to her husband.
Even after the DOJ launched an investigation into the matter, Bush continued to tap her campaign funds to pay her husband $5,000-per-month for "security services," the Washington Free Beacon reported last year.
Bush also steered tens of thousands of dollars for "security services" to her close friend, Nathaniel Davis III, who claims to have supernatural abilities that allow him to control the weather and conjure tornadoes, the Free Beacon reported.