{"id":2345,"date":"2018-02-28T17:33:00","date_gmt":"2018-02-28T17:33:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/democrats.org\/blog\/2018\/02\/28\/trumps-housing-department-filled-with-corruption\/"},"modified":"2018-02-28T17:33:00","modified_gmt":"2018-02-28T17:33:00","slug":"trumps-housing-department-filled-with-corruption","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/democrats.org\/news\/trumps-housing-department-filled-with-corruption\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump\u2019s Housing Department Filled With Corruption"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Over the past 24 hours, we have learned a lot about the wasteful spending and corruption inside Donald Trump and Ben Carson&rsquo;s Department of Housing and Urban Development.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>The White House directed HUD to circumvent the public records process for political reasons.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-left:.5in;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/politics\/i-do-like-3-meetings-a-day-on-that-hud-official-complained-about-effort-to-redecorate-carsons-office\/2018\/02\/27\/b9ce3146-1be6-11e8-b2d9-08e748f892c0_story.html?utm_term=.95d1b78abf0f\">Washington Post<\/a>: &ldquo;Foster said she had been excluded from handling Freedom of Information Act requests filed by the Democratic National Committee &mdash; even though she oversaw department FOIA responses &mdash; because one of President Trump&rsquo;s appointees believed she was a Democrat. [&hellip;] Foster wrote that in mid-February, a HUD lawyer informed her that the Office of General Counsel had been asked to &lsquo;discretely handle two FOIA requests,&rsquo; outside of the standard process. She wrote that she was told the decision was made by Maren Kasper, the White House adviser to HUD.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-left:.5in;\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Trump&rsquo;s HUD spent $165,000 on new<\/strong> <strong>lounge furniture and $31,000 on a dining room set for Ben Carson, as the White House circulated plans to slash programs for the homeless, elderly and poor.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-left:.5in;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/2018\/feb\/27\/ben-carson-spokesman-falsely-denied-expensive-table-bought\">The Guardian<\/a>: &ldquo;The US Department of Housing and Urban Development (Hud) has agreed to spend $165,000 on &lsquo;lounge furniture&rsquo; for its Washington headquarters, in addition to a $31,000 dining set purchased for housing secretary Ben Carson&rsquo;s office.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-left:.5in;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/mobile.nytimes.com\/2018\/02\/27\/us\/ben-carson-hud-furniture.html?referer=\">New York Times<\/a>: &ldquo;Department of Housing and Urban Development officials spent $31,000 on a new dining room set for Secretary Ben Carson&rsquo;s office in late 2017 &mdash; just as the White House circulated its plans to slash HUD&rsquo;s programs for the homeless, elderly and poor, according to federal procurement records.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>A senior HUD official was demoted after refusing to break the law by funding Ben Carson&rsquo;s expensive office revamp.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-left:.5in;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/2018\/feb\/27\/hud-ben-carson-office-redecoration-trump-appointee\">The Guardian<\/a>: &ldquo;A senior career official in the US Department of Housing and Urban Development has alleged that she was demoted and replaced with a Donald Trump appointee after refusing to break the law by funding an expensive redecoration of Ben Carson&rsquo;s office.&rdquo;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Over the past 24 hours, we have learned a lot about the wasteful spending and corruption inside Donald Trump and Ben Carson&rsquo;s Department of Housing and Urban Development. &nbsp; The White House directed HUD to circumvent the public records process for political reasons. &nbsp; Washington Post: &ldquo;Foster said she had been excluded from handling Freedom <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2345","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-press-release"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.0 - 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