The headline of Richard Blakley’s Feb. 14 column made a claim about “The Democrat Party’s allergy to honest audits.” He went on to ask: “Why is the Democratic Party so afraid of audits of how tax money is spent? Are they afraid voters will find out how Biden and Harris, with some of the most unpopular poll numbers in history, still had the largest Democratic reelection financial war chest in history? You don’t think there was money laundering, do you?”
But the examples of “honest audits” Blakley served up are all dishonest. First up:
I suppose the Democratic Party would not want voters to find out things like the fact Chelsea Clinton got $84 million of taxpayer money. This discovery even caused Elon Musk to say, “Wow!” Apparently, “USAID gave Chelsea Clinton tens of millions of dollars and partnered with their sex trafficking organization, The Clinton Foundation,” according to author and journalist Liz Crokin. The money was part of $4.4 billion Secretary of State Hillary Clinton oversaw for “recovery” efforts in Haiti in 2010. Don’t worry. While the money was intended to help homeless people in Haiti, Chelsea used $3 million for her wedding and $10 million for her New York home.
As we documented, that amount was only $7.5 million, not $84 million, and the money went to the Clinton Health Access Initiative, not to Chelsea personally. Blakley then wrote:
Moving on, FEMA just slithered out the door $59 million for illegal migrants to put their feet up at “luxury hotels.” Musk stated, “Sending this money violated the law and is in gross insubordination to the President’s executive order. That money is meant for American disaster relief and instead is being spent on high-end hotels for illegals! A clawback demand will be made today to recoup those funds.”
Again, false — the money did not go to “luxury hotels.” Blakley then came up with an original (to WND) claim:
Then we have the discovery of $182 million for a Dr. Anthony Fauci museum that has now been scrapped. I wonder if above the door they were planning to inscribe one of Fauci’s infamous quotes, like his statement about gain-of-function research where he said, “Benefits of such experiments and the resulting knowledge outweigh the risks … that a pandemic would occur.”
As even the article he cites in support of this, Blakley is wrong again. The $182 million was for all HHS contracts that were canceled — only $168,000 of which involved the Fauci exhibit.
Even the one example Blakley gets somewhat right omits important context:
Then we have al-Qaida terrorist Anwar al-Awlaki, who received his entire college tuition at Colorado State University bankrolled through taxpayer money funneled through USAID. This is the guy who was in touch with the Army psychiatrist Nidal Hasan before Hasan opened fire and killed 13 people in 2009 at Fort Hood, Texas. Don’t worry. The Obama administration blew him up with a drone strike in Yemen in 2011. Talk about a waste of an education.”
Actually, al-Awlaki went to college in 1990, when he was not considered a radical. It was not until years later that he became radicalized after leaving the U.S. for the United Kingdom.
Blakley loses any moral authority he is asserting by using such dishonest example to unironically claim that the Trump administration is conducting “honest audits.”