{"id":68588,"date":"2026-03-10T08:56:18","date_gmt":"2026-03-10T13:56:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/10\/ex-missouri-house-speaker-sentenced-21-months-for-misusing-covid-relief-funds\/"},"modified":"2026-03-10T08:56:18","modified_gmt":"2026-03-10T13:56:18","slug":"ex-missouri-house-speaker-sentenced-21-months-for-misusing-covid-relief-funds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/10\/ex-missouri-house-speaker-sentenced-21-months-for-misusing-covid-relief-funds\/","title":{"rendered":"Ex-Missouri house speaker sentenced 21 months for misusing Covid relief funds"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>John Diehl admitted using federal pandemic loans for country club dues, cars and other personal expenses<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/news\/2026\/feb\/17\/sign-up-for-the-breaking-news-us-email-to-get-newsletter-alerts-direct-to-your-inbox?utm_medium=ACQUISITIONS_STANDFIRST&amp;utm_campaign=BN22326&amp;utm_content=signup&amp;utm_term=standfirst&amp;utm_source=GUARDIAN_WEB\"><strong>Sign up for the Breaking News US email to get newsletter alerts in your inbox<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>A former <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/missouri\">Missouri<\/a> state house speaker was sentenced Monday to 21 months in prison after pleading guilty to wire fraud for misusing federal Covid-19 relief funds for his personal benefit, including the payments of his country club dues and three cars.<\/p>\n<p>John Diehl, the former Republican house speaker, received about $380,000 in federal loans for his law firm between 2020 and 2022 through a program intended to help cover operating expenses for businesses affected by the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/coronavirus-outbreak\">coronavirus<\/a> pandemic.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/2026\/mar\/10\/covid-fraud-missouri-house-speaker-john-diehl\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>John Diehl admitted using federal pandemic loans for country club dues, cars and other personal expenses Sign up for the Breaking News US email to get newsletter alerts in your inbox A former Missouri state house speaker was sentenced Monday to 21 months in prison after pleading guilty to wire fraud for misusing federal Covid-19 &#8230; <a title=\"Ex-Missouri house speaker sentenced 21 months for misusing Covid relief funds\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/10\/ex-missouri-house-speaker-sentenced-21-months-for-misusing-covid-relief-funds\/\" aria-label=\"Read more about Ex-Missouri house speaker sentenced 21 months for misusing Covid relief funds\">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-68588","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\/68588","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=68588"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68588\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}