Rep. Cori Bush defended hiring her husband for security, as the Justice Department investigates alleged misuse of government funds.
She spent over $500,000 on private security while advocating to defund the police.
In an interview, she explained that due to issues with security staff, her husband volunteered and eventually took over.
“I want to start with the fact that the independent Congressional Ethics Office cleared this matter,” Joy Reid said. “How did it then proceed to an investigation by the DOJ?”
“Your husband — his name is Cortney Merritts. He’s a military veteran,” she said. “Why was he the choice that you made in terms of your personal security?”
“We couldn’t pay the big cost for security like some of my colleagues are able to do, and so we went with what we could afford. It worked out for a while, but then we started having call-offs, you know, people just not showing up to work, people sleeping on the job, and so it was very hard for me to have security when it was unreliable,” Bush said.
She emphasized his qualifications and trustworthiness.
The campaign initially labeled payments to him as “security” before changing it to “wage expenses.”
Bush has denied misusing funds and emphasized compliance with laws and House rules.
“So, what was happening was Cortney would fill in, he would volunteer, and sometimes he would even, you know, even when he was there and they were working, he would say, ‘Hey, you should be standing over here and you should be doing that,’” she said.
“He was volunteering a lot of his time, and then we had someone who was kind of leading the group, leading the team, who could no longer do it. One day just called and said, ‘I won’t be back for three months.’ It left me in a position, there was no way I could manage a security team plus the work that I was doing, and so he was able to pick up that slack and not only was he able to pick it up, he could handle all of it.”
“He had already worked for other companies working security, even as supervisor, so this was in his lane,” Bush said.
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