Comer Oversight Panel to Focus 1st Hearing on Fraud, Waste in COVID Relief Programs

Ranking member Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.) speaks at a hearing with the House Committee on Oversight and Reform in the Rayburn House Office Building in Washington on Nov. 16, 2021. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

Hundreds of billions of dollars worth of suspected waste, fraud, and abuse in federal COVID-19 pandemic relief programs will be the focus of the first hearing convened by House Oversight and Accountability Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) in the 118th Congress.

Reports of hundreds of millions of dollars in benefits being paid to convicted murderers such as Scott Petersen, as well as thousands of other California prison inmates, including 144 on Death Row, are likely to be raised during the hearing.

“We owe it to Americans to identify how hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars spent under the guise of pandemic relief were lost to waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement. For the past two years, the Biden Administration has allowed fraud to run rampant in federal assistance programs and Democrats in Congress conducted little oversight,” Comer said in a statement announcing the hearing, which is scheduled to convene on Feb. 1.

Comer also published his Jan. 13 letter to Department of Labor Inspector General Larry Turner describing reports of waste and fraud in COVID-boosted unemployment insurance (UI) payments programs.

“In July of 2021, your office estimated there was at least $87 billion in fraudulent and improper payments in the UI program. On December 21, 2021, the Secret Service announced it had more than 900 active criminal investigations totaling nearly $100 billion in potentially fraudulent activity in the UI program and Small Business Administration programs,” he wrote.

“On February 8, 2022, the Secret Service briefed Committee Republican staff that even conservative estimates show there was more than $100 billion of fraud in the UI program alone. On September 22, 2022, your office updated its estimates, now finding that 18.71 percent, or more than $163 billion of pandemic UI payments were improper.”

Comer is especially concerned with apparent inaccuracies in the reporting of waste and fraud in UI programs by officials in California, New York, and Pennsylvania, citing multiple media and government reports pointing to state officials publicly underestimating the problem by tens of billions of dollars.

In a Jan. 13 letter to California Employment Development Department Director Nancy Farias, Comer described a series of reports concerning COVID-19 relief funds going to inmates in the California prison system.

“Perhaps more disturbing are reports of unemployment benefits being doled out in the names of convicted murderers such as Scott Peterson and serial killer Cary Stayner. A California task force discovered that between March and August 2020, more than 35,000 payments were sent in the name of state prisoners, totaling over $140 million, with nearly $500,000 disbursed in the names of 133 death row inmates,” Comer told Farias.

“In a letter to Governor Gavin Newsom, the task force wrote, ’the volume of fraud as well as the types of inmates involved is staggering.‘ Additionally, according to the CEO of a major data and analytics company, 70 percent of the fraudulent claims paid by California left the state and ’went to transnational criminal groups that have used that money for nefarious purposes to harm our democracy.' In other words, California is funding criminal organizations by failing to adequately prevent UI fraud.”

Also likely to be discussed during the hearing is the timing of a report on UI problems by the New York state comptroller that Comer and other House Republicans think was held for release until after the Nov. 8 election in an effort to avoid embarrassing New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, who was seeking reelection.

“Described as ‘damning’ and a ‘wake-up call for Governor Hochul and legislators,’ your office did not issue the audit report until November 15, 2022, exactly one week after the 2022 election. The timing raises concerns that your office may have delayed the report to limit damage to Governor Kathy Hochul’s campaign,” Comer and Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-N.Y.) told Thomas P. DiNapoli, the New York state comptroller in a Dec. 21, 2022, letter.

Witnesses invited to appear at the hearing include Pandemic Response Accountability Committee Chairman Michael Horowitz, who’s also the inspector general at the Department of Justice. Others include Comptroller General Gene Dodaro, who manages the Government Accountability Office, and Roy Dotson, assistant special agent in charge for the National Pandemic Fraud Recovery Coordinator, U.S. Secret Service.

The Feb. 1 hearing on waste, fraud, and abuse in COVID-linked UI benefits will be the first of what is expected to be a continuing series of controversial investigations into the domestic and international financial dealings of President Joe Biden, his son Hunter Biden, and the president’s brother, Jim Biden.

The committee will also be investigating the presence of multiple classified documents by Biden that were found in recent months at three separate locations. U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed a special counsel on Jan. 12 on the issue, but Comer said in a statement that the oversight panel will conduct its own separate investigation.

“With or without a special counsel, the House Oversight and Accountability Committee will investigate President Biden’s mishandling of classified documents and the Swamp’s efforts to hide this information from the American people,” Comer said in the statement.

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) is the ranking minority member of the oversight panel. A Raskin spokesman couldn’t be reached by press time for comment on Comer’s announcement.