A tale of two scandals

When he was a Republican in Congress, Adam Kinzinger voted to impeach Trump, served on the Jan. 6 committee alongside Liz Cheney – wound up out of Congress.

Before that, an Air Force pilot, he flew missions in Iraq and Afghanistan; one night, back home, walking down a street in Milwaukee, a woman ran toward him covered with blood—he wrestled the man who’d stabbed her in the neck to the ground.

Clear spoken, not beating around the bush, he now writes newsletters – just told this story about a scandal:

“In Appleton, Minnesota, a town of fewer than 1,400 people, there’s a prison that has been sitting empty since 2010. It belongs to CoreCivic, one of the largest private prison companies in the country.

“In August, the Department of Homeland Security bought it to turn into an ICE detention center. The price, according to the company’s own filings: a whopping 495.6 million dollars.”

He pointed out a year ago CoreCivic had offered to sell the same prison to the Minnesota Department of Corrections for $75 million, added: “Minnesota passed. But fifteen months later, federal taxpayers paid more than six times that price for the same building.”

He asked: “So what changed?” Answered: “CoreCivic gave half a million dollars to the Trump-Vance inaugural committee. That bought them more than just a sweetheart deal in Minnesota. CoreCivic also sold the government a prison in Kansas and two in California. Those four deals add up to more than 2.2 billion dollars. What’s more, the company still gets paid to run them. In Appleton alone, it expects about 75 million dollars annually. That’s the original asking price, every single year.”

Kinzinger added one last piece to the story: “Keep in mind, Minnesota is a state Republicans have been hammering on fraud after the Feeding Our Future scandal. If you haven’t heard of it, long story short, a nonprofit in Minneapolis billed the government for meals it was supposed to give to kids during the pandemic. But the meals were never served. And it cost taxpayers about 250 million dollars.”

He pointed out 70 people have been charged in the ‘Food Scandal’ but no one’s been charged in the ‘Prison Scandal.’ Wondering if that was because of the donation to Trump’s inaugural, added it’s time to ‘find out who signed off on this deal, and why.’

It’s a safe bet Democrats in Congress have read that story and, when their new members arrive in Washington, will go to work to find out.

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