Republican witness makes fantastic claims about pandemic fraud during congressional hearing. But was it REALLY a trillion dollars?

Photo above - Russian Hacker Maksim Yakubets is arrested next to his Lamborghini Hurricane. Also arrested as part of the same scheme, but not shown: Maksim "Bentley" Galochkin, Mikhail "Mango" Tsarev, Maksim "Maxhax" Khalliullin, Maksim Rudenskiy, and Max Mikhailov. Does anyone else suspect the FBI still hasn't nailed down their true identities?

The House of Representatives (Government Efficiency subcommittee) is holding hearings. The link below about Haywood Talcove, but it doesn’t specifically out him as a republican. Probably safe to say that as a Cybersecurity CEO and graduate of both Wharton and Yale, he looks and walks like a duck.

Talcove shocked the committee – and this writer – by asserting that Covid 19 relief fraud is actually $1 Trillion. The generally accepted figure for the stolen funds is around $400 billion. Both democrats and republicans have agreed to this amount, because they jointly passed the covide relief legislation too. I suspect the true scale of the disaster is unknowable. Let’s bracket it at a minimum of $400 billion, and cap it at $1 Trillion.

Haywood Talcove's testimony claims that $700 billion of this pandemic money went overseas to fraudsters. Because US government bureaucracy and its systems are virtually powerless to detect and prevent this sort of chicanery.

This part I CAN believe. The US government – from the Obama era to the present – has proved itself incapable of stopping hacks against our electric grid, water supply, pentagon, white house, defense contractors, hospitals, and schools. A local library was recently breached, and the attackers demanded $1 million ransom. Evidently fines on overdue books are thought to be lucrative by foreign hackers.

At this point someone with poor reasoning skills will point out that “not all of these attacks are state sponsored.” Duh . . . everyone concedes the obvious. That million-dollar library ransom wasn’t the 732nd People's Revolutionary Army hacking brigade from China. It was a couple of guys in a basement somewhere who are good with code. THESE are the kinds of guys who could set up a dummy corporation, invent fake payrolls and accounting records, and make off with millions in pandemic money. Are we all on the same page now?

So pandemic fraud isn't just about rappers with 10 gold chains rocking new Lamborghinis. That sort of fraud is easy to spot. It's hugely offensive, and casts a pall over the (good 10%) of America's rappers who aren’t constantly trash talkin about ho’s and threatening to bust a cap on some rapper from a competing label. The domestic appetite for Italian sports cars, vail ski condos, and private aircraft could never explain the $400 billion fraud estimate. The scale is too large. So Haywood Talcove is probably onto something.

Even if pandemic fraud isn't $1 Trillion, the House subcommittee is making a point. Talcove is their star/first witness. He makes perfect sense. Our nation’s cybersecurity is $hitty, and government systems are antiquated and bug riddled. This is their rationale for opening the door for DOGE (department of government efficiency) to have access to monetary systems and tell us exactly how bad it is. And possibly expose more of the people who took conned us out of billions.

Democrats are desperate to prevent DOGE from any government access, through a blizzard of lawsuits. They continue to assert everything is fine. No problem. Change the channel back to Netflix.

But can democrats produce a witness of their own for the House Government Efficiency Subcommittee? Someone who can provide EVIDENCE that hacking is not a problem? That our electric grid, water supply, military, white house, hospitals (and libraries) aren’t under attack daily?

I don’t think they can provide any such evidence. But I’m willing to keep an open mind and see who their rebuttal witness is.

I’m just sayin’ . . .

Witness at First DOGE Hearing Confronts Lawmakers with Scale of Covid Fraud: ‘They Stole $1 Trillion’