Far-left anti-police Democrat Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO) has secretly married her head of security, igniting allegations of corruption.
Bush, who served as a Black Lives Matter leader before entering Congress, has long been accused of hypocrisy after being one of the leading voices in the “defund the police” movement while spending thousands on her own personal security.
The congresswoman’s double standards started raising eyebrows when it emerged that she has spent a whopping $30,000 in security in just the first quarter of 2021 alone.
This came just months after she’d led efforts to slash police budgets across the country in 2020, a campaign that she is still pushing.
However, the plot has recently thickened as more details have begun to emerge.
To date, Bush, who was sworn into Congress in January 2021, has now spent a grand total of at least $627,088 of her campaign funds on her personal security.
According to St. Louis news outlet KSDK-TV, Bush married Army veteran Cortney Merritts in a private ceremony last weekend.
Merritts just happens to be Bush’s personal bodyguard.
“Marriage records filed with the St. Louis Recorder of Deeds show Bush signed her marriage license in a pact with Cortney Merritts on Feb. 11, a few days before their wedding,” the NBC affiliate reported.
And yet, the station didn’t report on the nuptials until Sunday, at least a week after they happened.
The wedding appears to have happened secretly.
The fact that campaign finance records show Bush paid her new husband $62,359 directly in campaign funds in 2022 alone, mostly for “security services,” hints at the reason for the secrecy.
While it’s unclear when he was first retained and the first direct payments to Merritts were federally reported in 2022, KSDK reported that “Merritts’ social media posts show he traveled with Bush on her trips to her first inauguration in January 2021, to New York City’s Ed Sullivan Theater for her appearance on ‘The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,’ and to Central America on a trip with a Congressional delegation.”
Bush has previously accused those who have scrutinized her security expenses of wanting her dead.
“They would rather I die?” she told CBS News in 2021 after being questioned about her security spending.
“You would rather me die?
“Is that what you want to see?
“You want to see me die?
“You know, because that could be the alternative.
“So either I spent $70,000 on private security over the last few months, and I’m here standing now and able to speak,” she continued.
“I have private security because my body is worth being on this planet right now.
“I have private security because they, the white supremacist racist narrative that they drive into this country.
“The fact that they don’t care that this black woman that has put her life on the line, they can’t match my energy first of all.
“This black woman who puts her life on the line.
“They don’t care that I could be taken out of here.
“They actually probably are OK with that, but this is the thing: I won’t let them get that off. You can’t get that off.
“I’m going to make sure I have security because I know I have had attempts on my life and I have too much work to do.
“There are too many people that need help right now for me to allow that.”
She went on to claim that she’d had police officers threaten her.
However, it appears to be a convenient way for her to claim that her payments for private security were different from her calls to defund the police who provide security for everyday citizens.
