by Michael Connelly
The federal assault on
America’s heroes not only seems to have no end, but is apparently accelerating.
It all amounts to downright theft. Veterans are not only having their
Constitutional rights to keep and bear arms, to have due process, and to be
free of illegal searches and seizures, but also having their dignity, their
money, and even their lives stolen.
The source of much of this abuse is in the fiduciary
program that was set up many years ago to assist elderly veterans suffering
from dementia or other disabilities that made it difficult or impossible for
them to handle their own financial affairs. The VA would appoint someone to
handle their financial affairs for them. At the beginning, the person appointed
was usually a financial member, but when the VA started paying the fiduciary
five percent of the veteran’s benefits as a fee for services rendered the
program became an opportunity for professional fiduciaries, either individuals
or organizations, to make some serious money. This became a recipe for abuse
and theft.
The latest abomination occurred right here in Texas where
a former San Antonio nurse named, Cornelia Hurling, was sentenced to 14 months
in Federal prison, after she confessed to stealing over $140,000 from numerous
veterans as she was serving as their fiduciary. This would seem like a good
thing, but it is literally just the tip of a very large iceberg.
The Fiduciary program in the VA is administered by 6
Fiduciary hubs each of which covers multiple states. In 2014 the independent
Office of the Inspector General of the VA found that almost one million dollars
had been stolen from veterans by fiduciaries in the Indianapolis hub that
covers 13 states. Other VA OIG investigations have uncovered millions more missing
from veteran accounts in the other hubs. The investigations also found that the
required audits of the fiduciaries were not being done by the VA, and this
allowed the thefts to continue for years.
In addition, OIG investigations uncovered the fact that
people with gambling additions, and convicted felons were being appointed as
fiduciaries for vulnerable veterans. Also, I have been reporting for several
years that veterans are being declared incompetent without any professional
evaluations being doing by psychiatrists or psychologists, but by untrained
bureaucrats, and that veterans are being declared incompetent because they let
their spouses pay the family bills, or they have their bills automatically paid
by the banks out of the veteran’s checking account. Then this phony declaration
of incompetence is used to deny veterans and their family members from
purchasing or owning firearms. All of this has been confirmed by independent
investigations.
To show you how bad it has gotten, last year the United
States Justice Foundation was contacted by a 93 year old World War II veteran
who had throat cancer, but had been unable to get treatment from the VA so he
was paying for his treatment with his VA benefits. Then he received a visit
from a VA employee who informed him that he had been declared incompetent to
handle his own financial affairs. He argued that he paid his own bills, and did
not need fiduciary.
The VA employee insisted and a few months later the
veteran stopped getting his checks. Calls to the VA got no results, and it took
almost six months for the veteran to learn that his checks were being deposited
in a bank account in another state; an account in the name of the wife of the
full time VA employee who was not supposed to be a fiduciary in the first
place. Not only was this a theft from a veteran, but one who was fighting a
serious illness.
As has been the case with VA employees who falsified
records of hospital and clinic admissions to cover up the fact that veterans
were being denied the treatment they needed, and were entitled to, and in some
cases dying because of this, there have been few people fired by the VA. In
addition, even when there are outright criminal acts there have been few
prosecutions.
The facts are clear; while there are many dedicated
employees working in VA facilities around the country some of the leadership in
the VA, protected by a corrupt President and his cohorts is not only allowing
theft and corruption to run rampant, but using the VA as a political tool to
push the administration’s agenda of disarming the American people, beginning
with the veterans.
While there
have been problems with the VA for decades our investigations over the last
three years have led me to the conclusion that since Obama took office these
activities of the VA have not been due to incompetence. Instead, it has been
deliberately used to demoralize our military and our veterans by using them as
political pawns, to further the agenda of a socialist President.
In my view,
what is happening to our veterans, from the theft of their money and denial of
their Constitutional rights, and what amounts to the deliberate murder of
thousands of them constitutes a continuing and unrelenting act of domestic
terrorism perpetrated at the highest level of our own government. It must be
stopped and God willing the American people will elect a new President that
will clean house in the VA and prosecute all of those who have done this to our
veterans, including those in high office.
Michael Connelly
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