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Missouri Rep. Cori Bush under federal investigation for alleged misuse of security funds

Bush was caught spending nearly $600,000 on private security in the last two years.

By Andrew Bernard, JNS

Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.), one of Israel’s most strident critics in Congress, is reportedly under a federal criminal investigation for misspending personal security funds.

The U.S. Department of Justice served the House sergeant at arms, William McFarland, with a grand jury subpoena to turn over related materials, McFarland informed the House on Monday. The requested documents apply to a criminal probe into Bush’s alleged misuse of funds, Punchbowl News reported on Tuesday.

A member of the so-called “Squad” of left-wing progressives, Bush issued a statement on Tuesday confirming that she is under investigation and denying that she had improperly used any federal funds for her personal security detail.

“We are fully cooperating in this investigation,” Bush said. “I am not entitled to personal protection by the House and instead have used campaign funds as permissible to retain security services. I have not used any federal tax dollars for personal security services.”

She added that “right-wing organizations have lodged baseless complaints against” her, prompting ongoing investigations by the Federal Election Commission and the House Committee on Ethics, alongside the Justice Department investigation.

The Justice Department has not issued a public statement on the matter.

Questions have circulated about Bush’s expenditures before.

In 2023, Fox News reported that she paid her husband, who previously served as her campaign security guard, more than $100,000 over two years. That’s in addition to more than $500,000 she has spent on private security since 2022.

Since the Jan. 6, 2021 riot at the Capitol, she has spent more on security than any other House member. (Another security guard on her payroll, Nathaniel Davis, claims to be a 109-trillion-year-old “Hebrew” and has endorsed antisemitic conspiracy theories like the Rothschilds running “the Western hemisphere.”)

The expenditures prompted complaints to the Office of Congressional Ethics; they were dismissed unanimously last year.

Bush has long been one of the most ardent congressional critics of Israel. She has called the Jewish state “apartheid” and has been particularly vocal in the wake of the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attacks in southern Israel.

Backed by Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and more than a dozen colleagues, Bush introduced a “Ceasefire Now” resolution on Oct. 16.

Since then, Bush and Tlaib have supported South Africa’s efforts to bring genocide charges against Israel at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, the main judicial arm of the United Nations.

“We welcome international accountability for the ongoing atrocities the Israeli government is perpetrating in Gaza,” the pair stated jointly on Friday, after the ICJ’s provisional ruling.

“The court overwhelmingly recognizes the risk that the Israeli government could be committing genocide in Gaza and believes immediate action is necessary to prevent further harm to the Palestinian people, even as the case continues,” they added.