Republican Governor BUSTED Improperly Using COVID Funds To Pay Salaries

An audit conducted in Iowa has accused Republican Governor Kim Reynolds of improperly using COVID funds to pay staff salaries and then trying to conceal the payments by running through a different agency. The COVID funds that were given to states came with only a few restrictions, but one of them was that any money used for non-pandemic items had to be approved by the federal government, which is why Reynolds likely funneled them through a different department. Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins explains what happened.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

Republican Iowa governor Kim Reynolds has been caught using COVID funds improperly to pay her staff salaries and trying to conceal these payments by funneling the money through different government agencies so that she wouldn't get in trouble for misusing COVID funds. This is the result of a state audit report that found this information. She spent, I think over $450,000 in federal COVID funds given to the state of Iowa, to pay for her staff salaries. And she had been warned a couple of times over the past few months that, hey, you can't do this. This is very bad. The government has to approve the use of COVID funds for non COVID measures. And, uh, it looks like you're kind of sending it through, you know, Department of Homeland Security instead of, instead of the normal way you pay your staff and your staff salary isn't showing up on the state records here. So what the hell is going on? And the governor's office just dismissed it.

Didn't care, said we don't have any paperwork whatsoever, but now they've changed their tune. Now that they've been busted for this, they said, hey, we've reached out to the federal government. We're going to get them all the correct paperwork, you know, and get this retroactively, I guess, approved. So everything's on the level. But you know what was really shocking to me about this story? This is from the Associated Press. As I mentioned, Kim Reynolds is the Republican governor of the state of Iowa. The word Republican does not appear anywhere in this story. No party affiliation for this governor who got busted misusing COVID funds and concealing it, no mention of what party she is a member of. Here's the story. Here's all of it, here's all this whole story here. Not one mention that she was a Republican. And I don't know about you, but that absolutely me off because I had to go and search it, just to make sure. Okay. Is Kim Reynolds a Republican? Yes, of course she is. Why did the Associated Press choose to omit that piece of information from this story?

I mean, hell they go into detail about the scandal, talking about the spreadsheets and who was getting paid and how many staffers and the response from the governor's office. But they didn't mention the political party and to me honestly, kind of seems like one of the biggest pieces of news there, right? The public deserves to know which party is out there misusing COVID funds. Now, if this was from Fox news, sure. I could understand why they wouldn't want to put the party affiliation on there. But Associated Press, I expected better from you. This is absolutely ridiculous for you to not at least mention one time in your piece here that this governor happened to be a Republican. Just goes to show you folks that even some of the most well-respected establishment news organizations out there, they omit key information all the time and they expect people to not notice. Well, I noticed, and it me off because that is exceptionally relevant to this story to highlight the fact that it was a Republican who once again, got busted for corruption.