{"id":36609,"date":"2025-03-21T02:21:45","date_gmt":"2025-03-21T02:21:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/2025\/03\/21\/husband-of-former-squad-rep-cori-bush-charged-with-wire-fraud-linked-to-covid-relief-funds-doj\/"},"modified":"2025-03-21T02:21:45","modified_gmt":"2025-03-21T02:21:45","slug":"husband-of-former-squad-rep-cori-bush-charged-with-wire-fraud-linked-to-covid-relief-funds-doj","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/2025\/03\/21\/husband-of-former-squad-rep-cori-bush-charged-with-wire-fraud-linked-to-covid-relief-funds-doj\/","title":{"rendered":"Husband of former ‘Squad’ Rep. Cori Bush charged with wire fraud linked to COVID relief funds: DOJ"},"content":{"rendered":"

The husband of former U.S. Rep. Cori Bush, a Missouri Democrat<\/a>, has been charged with defrauding the government after allegedly accepting $20,000 in payments from the pandemic-era Paycheck Protection and Economic Injury Disaster Loan programs, the Justice Department said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Cortney Merritts, 46, of St. Louis, falsified details about his purported businesses to obtain loans from the Small Business Administration in 2020 and 2021, federal prosecutors said Thursday.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He was charged with two counts of wire fraud<\/a>.<\/p>\n

CORI BUSH’S CAMPAIGN PAYS $17,500 MORE TO HER HUSBAND, BRINGING HIS TOTAL TO $120K, NEW FILINGS SHOW<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

“Mr. Merritts intends to plead not guilty to the charges,” Merritts’ lawyer, Justin Gelfand of Margulis Gelfand DiRuzzo & Lambson, said in a statement. “As with any indictment, this is only the government\u2019s version of the story. We look forward to litigating this case in federal court<\/a> in Washington, D.C.”<\/p>\n

Merritts repeatedly applied for business loans for a company he said he operated while also allegedly misrepresenting his revenue and number of people he employed, authorities said.<\/p>\n

CORI BUSH’S CAMPAIGN CONTINUES TO SHELL OUT THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS TO HER HUSBAND FOR PRIVATE SECURITY<\/u><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

One July 2020 application for a loan was rejected because it was nearly identical to one he submitted previously, prosecutors said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Merritts was indicted a year after the Justice Department opened an investigation into Bush, a former member of the “Squad,” over campaign payments to her husband.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Bush was defeated in a primary last year amid controversy over her criticism of Israel’s response to the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on its citizens by Hamas terrorists.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The so-called “Squad” Bush formerly belonged to is an informal group of progressive lawmakers in Congress that includes representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y.; Ilhan Omar, D-Minn.; Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass.; and Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The husband of former U.S. Rep. Cori Bush, a Missouri Democrat, has been charged with defrauding the government after allegedly accepting $20,000 in payments from the pandemic-era Paycheck Protection and Economic Injury Disaster Loan programs, the Justice Department said.\u00a0 Cortney Merritts, 46, of St. Louis, falsified details about his purported businesses to obtain loans from … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36609","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36609","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36609"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36609\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}