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Friday, February 28th, 2020

The FBI Is Investigating Massive Embezzlement of Border Patrol Union Funds

Author:     A.C. Thompson and Jeff Ernsthausen
Source:     Pro Publica
Publication Date:     Feb. 24, 3:15 p.m. EST
 Link: The FBI Is Investigating Massive Embezzlement of Border Patrol Union Funds
Stephan:   In every authoritarian country semi-official corruption becomes the norm. From 1981 to 1993, when I was spending several months a year working on citizen diplomacy, and then with the  businesses I started in the old Soviet Union, it was an accepted fact that grifting and bribery were just part of life for the average Soviet citizen. And it is now happening here, perhaps because Trump and the people he picks to surround him are all mostly crooks and grifters. And from the top down it is spreading through federal agencies particularly those involved with police powers. When you hire thugs willing to do nasty things to their fellows under color of authority that's what you get. Read and weep.

U.S. Border Patrol

The FBI is investigating the disappearance of some $500,000 from the coffers of the powerful union representing the country’s roughly 20,000 Border Patrol agents, said the organization’s national president, Brandon Judd.

Judd said the probe is focused on identifying the individuals responsible for siphoning the money from the bank accounts of the union’s El Paso branch in recent years.

“We know the FBI is looking at it,” said Judd, head of the National Border Patrol Council, which has forged a close alliance with President Donald Trump.

Under the Trump administration, the Border Patrol, a once obscure federal agency, has been thrust into the center of a rancorous debate over immigration policy, facing intense criticism over the squalid conditions in the agency’s overcrowded detention facilities, a string of migrant deaths and revelations that some 9,500 current and former agents were part of a private Facebook group that included vulgar and misogynistic content.

Equally troubling has been evidence of ongoing lawlessness in the agency’s ranks. Over the past five […]

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