Meet the guy who oversaw the recovery of more than a billion dollars of stolen pandemic relief

Best listening experience is on Chrome, Firefox or Safari. Subscribe to Federal Drive’s daily audio interviews on Apple Podcasts or PodcastOne. The government showed how fast it could spend money when  Congress printed trillions for pandemic relief. Well, now it’s the morning after. Our next guest led a nationwide criminal investigation that so far has clawed back more than a billion dollars anyway, awarded to frauds under the Paycheck Protection Program and prevented maybe twice that much from going out in the first place. He’s an assistant special agent in charge with the…

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Where Things Stand: Biden Deploys The Military To Fight COVID As SCOTUS Helps Pandemic Linger

<p>The White House&#8217;s latest COVID-19 mitigation efforts are a contrast to the Supreme Court&#8217;s ruling today.</p> <p>President Biden <a href=”https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2022/01/13/remarks-by-president-biden-at-virtual-meeting-on-military-deployments-supporting-hospitals-for-the-covid-19-response/”>announced Thursday</a> that his administration would double its previous promise to hand out free at-home COVID-19 tests, with plans to send out one billion to Americans&#8217; homes. Along with that, the Biden administration will distribute N95 masks to the public as the country faces an unprecedented spike in COVID infections.</p> <p>Biden is also deploying more military personnel to hospitals. Speaking from the White House the President said that next week he…

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America’s Pandemic Star Loses Some Luster

Is Vermont the envy of America no more? The state long hailed for its pandemic response is experiencing one of the most intense COVID-19 surges in the country. Cases are twice as high as they’ve been at any other point. Hospitalizations are up sharply as well, confounding hopes that Vermont’s best-in-the-nation vaccination rate would protect its people from the Delta wave. The resurgence of the coronavirus—cases are rising again nationally after a sustained decline—has demoralized much of the country, but nowhere is that frustration more keenly felt than in the…

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