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Treasury Department IG’s office is investigating Ron DeSantis’ migrant flights to Massachusetts
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Treasury Department IG’s office is investigating Ron DeSantis’ migrant flights to Massachusetts
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Critics of far-right Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis have been arguing that he crossed an ethical line when he sent planes of migrants to Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts — a political stunt they say was designed to troll Democrats, as Massachusetts is a deep blue state that President Joe Biden carried by 33 percent in 2020. Some of those critics have been calling for an investigation, and now, according to Politico, one is being carried out by the U.S. Treasury Department’s Inspector General’s Office.
Journalists Gary Fineout and Lisa Kashinsky report that the Office is “examining Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ migrant transports” in order to determine “whether the Republican governor improperly used money connected to COVID-19 aid to facilitate the flights.”
“The agency’s Inspector General’s Office confirmed to several members of Massachusetts’s Democratic congressional delegation that it planned ‘to get this work underway as soon as possible’ to probe Florida’s spending as part of ongoing audits into how states have used the billions…. sent to them as part of the American Rescue Plan, according to a letter provided by Democratic Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey’s office,” Fineout and Kashinsky explain. “In an October 7 letter to Markey and five House members, Richard K. Delmar, deputy inspector general for the Treasury Department, told the lawmakers that the agency would ‘review the allowability’ of COVID-19 aid to states ‘related to immigration generally, and will specifically confirm whether interest earned on (the) funds was utilized by Florida related to immigration activities, and if so, what conditions and limitations apply to such use.’”
READ MORE: How Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbott channel segregationists with their anti-immigration stunts
Fineout and Kashinsky note that the letter “marks the first time federal authorities have acknowledged they’re looking into the transports” to Martha’s Vineyard.
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