Harris Would Keep California-Style Corruption in White House

Will Swaim writes for the New York Post about one potential problem linked to a Kamala Harris presidential administration.

President Biden’s nonchalance about Chinese spying, hacking and election interference is a cause for national worry — and his indifference to the Chinese threat extends even to his own White House.

Acting Secretary of Labor Julie Su’s catastrophic 2021 face-plant while serving as California’s labor secretary made China stronger, while making the world a more dangerous place for Americans and American ideals.

Yet Kamala Harris and her backers, including United Auto Workers president Shawn Fain, say they’d like Su to stay in her post after Jan. 20, despite the Senate’s refusal to confirm her nomination for 548 days and counting.

That makes her America’s longest-serving unconfirmed cabinet officer.Su’s confirmation troubles stem from her time as California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s secretary of labor.

In that job, she ignored warnings about vulnerabilities in the state’s unemployment benefits system, claiming that tougher ID verification standards would disproportionately hurt black and brown Californians. 

But her squeamishness left the system vulnerable: When COVID hit, Su lost some $32 billion to fraudsters who hacked the benefits program. 

That staggering sum — about a third of all American unemployment insurance fraud losses during the pandemic — included a $20 billion federal loan intended to backstop California’s pandemic-stressed unemployment trust fund. 

Multiple sources now say most of the lost money, about $26 billion, was captured by international crime gangs operating on behalf of foreign adversaries — and that taxpayer cash stolen by China’s Advanced Persistent Threat 41 and others is already being deployed against Americans and American interests. 

“The staggering fraud committed against California’s EDD during the pandemic is alarming, but the real danger lies in what those stolen billions are now funding,” said Paul Eckloff, a retired US Secret Service special agent who now works to thwart fraud at LexisNexis Risk Solutions.