Ousted congresswoman and former Squad member Cori Bush’s husband has been arrested and charged with wire fraud in connection with allegedly falsified Paycheck Protection Program funds.
According to the Department of Justice, 46-year-old Cortney Merritts has been charged with two counts of wire fraud after accepting $20,000 in improper payments under the COVID-era PPP and Economic Injury Disaster Loan programs, which provided taxpayer-funded subsidies for people and businesses impacted by government-forced shutdowns in 2020 and 2021. The DOJ claims 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,” reports Fox News.
Digging into the charging documents further, the New York Post reports Merritts received $8,500 in EIDL funds for his moving company, Vetted Couriers, in July of 2020, claiming on the application that the company employed six people and had generated $32,000 in gross revenue the previous year. But just a day after receiving the funds, Merritts applied for a PPP loan for the same company, claiming on that application that the company employed 10 people and had generated $53,000 in revenue. That application was flagged as a duplicate and rejected.
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A year later, he filed yet another PPP loan for the same company, this time claiming the business had only just been created in 2020 and had generated $128,000 in gross income that year. That application was approved, and Merritts received $20,832 in PPP loans.
The US Attorney’s Office claims that instead of using the funds to keep his business and employees afloat, Merritts used the cash for “personal benefit and enjoyment.”
Bush, who lost her seat last year, isn’t named in the indictment against her husband. However, prior to her ousting from Congress, she had been the subject a Federal Election Commission and congressional ethics complaint regarding payments her campaign had made to Merritt for “security” services, despite his not having a license.