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Speaker 1: On this episode of News World, the embattled head of

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Speaker 1: the state's Employment Security Department is stepping down. Under Susie

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Speaker 1: Levine's watch, fraudster has stole more than six hundred million

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Speaker 1: dollars in unemployment claims. Half of that money has been recovered,

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Speaker 1: but there are lingering questions about whether EESD could have

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Speaker 1: done more to stop it. Kick Fives Chris Ingles reports

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Speaker 1: Levine isn't leaving public service. In fact, she's moving up

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Speaker 1: to the federal level. Some critics are surprised by President

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Speaker 1: Biden's choice to run the federal unemployment program, since during

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Speaker 1: Susie Levine's tenure at the head of Washington State's Unemployment

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Speaker 1: Security Department, it's been rocked by scandal, including a huge

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Speaker 1: scam by Nigerian criminals costing the state over six hundred

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Speaker 1: million dollars in fraudulent claims. Levine and her husband Eric

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Speaker 1: gave four hundred thousand dollars to the Biden campaign and

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Speaker 1: other Democratic causes over the past two years, and now

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Speaker 1: she's reportedly been tapped to run the federal office that

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Speaker 1: helps process unemployment claims. HI this is new due to

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Speaker 1: the virus recording from home, so you may notice a

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Speaker 1: difference in audio quality. My guest at Seattle radio, host

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Speaker 1: John Carlston, a good friend of ours and somebody who

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Speaker 1: I've worked with and followed for many years. He's here

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Speaker 1: to talk about Susie Levine, Biden's pick for Assistant Secretary

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Speaker 1: at the Employment and Training Administration and her involvement in

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Speaker 1: Washington State unemployment scan. I might point out by the

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Speaker 1: way that the assistant secretary has about nine billion dollars.

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Speaker 1: It's the largest part of the Labor Department and has

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Speaker 1: I think about two thirds of their total budget. The

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Speaker 1: reward she's been given for presiding over a disaster is

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Speaker 1: truly a tribute to the Democratic Party's commitment to corruption

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Speaker 1: and incompetence. As of November nineteenth, twenty twenty, the Washington

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Speaker 1: State Employment Security Department, which she was the head of,

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Speaker 1: estimates that it had paid out over a hundred and

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Speaker 1: twenty two thousand frauds ALAN claims totaling over six hundred

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Speaker 1: million dollars. The Secret Service suspects the Nigerian cyber crime

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Speaker 1: organization Scattered Canary was involved in some of these claims.

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Speaker 1: Nigerian cyber crime organization Scattered Canary began in two thousand

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Speaker 1: and eight, and it's really grown to be so one

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Speaker 1: of the major email companies in Africa. It's had ten

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Speaker 1: years of conducting unemployment fraud, social security fraud, disaster relief fraud,

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Speaker 1: and student a fraud. Now you might ask yourself to remember,

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Speaker 1: we're just focusing on Biden's nominee to be in charge

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Speaker 1: of nine billion dollars a year because of the superb

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Speaker 1: jobs she'd done in Washington State. You might say youself,

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Speaker 1: how to one hundred and twenty two thousand fraudulent claims

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Speaker 1: get paid out? And what happened, in part was due

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Speaker 1: to the federal push to rush payments. The ten to

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Speaker 1: fourteen day waiting period was eliminated, and some payments were

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Speaker 1: sent before employers could verify or contest. And so there

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Speaker 1: are things that should have been noticed. The Secret Service

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Speaker 1: at its May bulletin said Washington had sent automated payments

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Speaker 1: to persons outside the state quote all in different individuals

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Speaker 1: names with no connection to the account holder. They were

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Speaker 1: sending automated payments to people outside the state of Washington,

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Speaker 1: to individuals who had no connection to the account holder.

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Speaker 1: In fact, the out of state bank accounts should have

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Speaker 1: been quote a huge red flag for the Washington State

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Speaker 1: government to scrutinize payments, said the senior fraud officer at

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Speaker 1: an East Coast bank that received at least five electronic

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Speaker 1: deposits from the unemployment benefit of Washington State. In twenty seven,

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Speaker 1: an updated unemployment tax and benefit system was budgeted at

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Speaker 1: forty four million dollars. From the call of the company

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Speaker 1: Fast Enterprises to prevent fraud from happening, apparently didn't stop it.

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Speaker 1: So I want to turn now, John and ask you,

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Speaker 1: since you're actually in Seattle, what do you make of

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Speaker 1: all this nude I've been in and around the crossroads

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Speaker 1: of media and politics for about thirty five years. I've

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Speaker 1: never seen anything like we're seeing right now, where the

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Speaker 1: person who absolutely, without debate, without question, ran the worst

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Speaker 1: unemployment compensation system in the country just got promoted to

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Speaker 1: help other states run their unemployment compensation systems. I mean,

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Speaker 1: here's how bad it is. You gave us the numbers.

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Speaker 1: But what really compounds it is that you're thinking, well,

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Speaker 1: why weren't there any safeguards in place? Susie Levine inherited

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Speaker 1: a system with safeguards. There were safeguards to prevent this

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Speaker 1: kind of online fraud. They lowered the safeguards because they

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Speaker 1: wanted to process more claims. They got a huge amount

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Speaker 1: of claims for unemployment compensation, just like every other state,

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Speaker 1: and so they lowered the safeguards, which was noticed quickly

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Speaker 1: by cyber criminals. There were I believe six states targeted

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Speaker 1: by Scattered Canary, that's the operation run by the Nigerian

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Speaker 1: crim ring that you were referring to. We got hit

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Speaker 1: by far harder than any of those other states, and

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Speaker 1: it's because the safeguards were left down. It is far

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Speaker 1: and away the biggest theft in Washington State history. And

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Speaker 1: you would think that someone responsible for this would have

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Speaker 1: tendered their resignation. That didn't happen. You would think that

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Speaker 1: someone with a record like this would be fired. There

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Speaker 1: were certainly calls for that to happen. That did not

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Speaker 1: happen either. You would think that someone who was caught

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Speaker 1: napping while this unprecedented amount of fraud was taking place

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Speaker 1: would fully cooperate with the state auditor, who by the way,

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Speaker 1: is an elected Democrat. That didn't happen either, and instead,

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Speaker 1: Susie Levine was able to get a job in the

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Speaker 1: Biden administration. How did that happen. Well, it happened because

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Speaker 1: she is one of the most successful, prolific fundraisers for

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Speaker 1: the Democratic National Committee. She raised i believe, over eight

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Speaker 1: billion during the Obama campaign. She was rewarded with an

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Speaker 1: ambassador posting to Switzerland, and then she comes to Washington State.

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Speaker 1: She had a high tech background, very active in Democratic politics,

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Speaker 1: and she's helping Jay Insley and the local Democratic Party too.

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Speaker 1: For that, she was rewarded, you know, not with a

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Speaker 1: nice ceremonial post or something like commerce. She was putting

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Speaker 1: charge of running the state's unemployment system, and again everything

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Speaker 1: fell apart under her stewardship. Digested the numbers. Basically there

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Speaker 1: was seventy four dollars in fraud for every dollars she

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Speaker 1: raised for the Democrats. I think you're the first person

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Speaker 1: to make that connection. I'm just trying to look at

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Speaker 1: the cost to the taxpayer of Democratic Party generosity. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and as you pointed out, over six hundred million dollars

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Speaker 1: in unemployment claims were paid out to criminals. And the

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Speaker 1: other things she came under fire for was her office

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Speaker 1: as slow response. People were noticing this and people were

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Speaker 1: bringing it to her attention. Bankers and the like, and

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Speaker 1: her office was just kind of blowing all that off

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Speaker 1: and saying, oh, well, there might be a few problems,

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Speaker 1: but we've got to get all these claims paid out.

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Speaker 1: It didn't need to happen. It didn't happen in other states,

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Speaker 1: even states that were hit by this crime ring were

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Speaker 1: hit by a small fraction of what we got hit

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Speaker 1: with here. And then, to compound it all, as I mentioned,

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Speaker 1: when the state auditor was looking into this, she was

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Speaker 1: getting stiff armed. There was no cooperation. All sorts of

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Speaker 1: rules and restrictions and conditions were placed on the auditor

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Speaker 1: that the auditor said were unprecedented and which would have

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Speaker 1: been a violation of rules guiding the auditing protocols and

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Speaker 1: process for her to agree to. So she tries to

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Speaker 1: get the governor to intercede on her behalf, and the

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Speaker 1: governor started dragging his feet to such an extent that

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Speaker 1: the auditor, again an elected Democrat, Nude issued a public

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Speaker 1: letter last fall saying that she was not able to

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Speaker 1: do her job and that she was not able to

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Speaker 1: get some of these audits done, which she said would

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Speaker 1: be due to the uncooperative attitude of the state auditor.

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Speaker 1: Only when she went public. Did the Insley administration finally

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Speaker 1: get Susie Levine to comply? So it's been ineptitude followed

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Speaker 1: by intransigence, followed by non cooperation, followed by a promotion.

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Speaker 1: They were getting about two thousand fraudulent claims a day

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Speaker 1: at one point, and they apparently knew it. The more

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Speaker 1: I've dug into this, the weirder it is. It makes

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Speaker 1: no sense that it went on for as long as

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Speaker 1: it did. Newt that warnings were given and were ignored.

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Speaker 1: You would think that they would say, why are we

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Speaker 1: sending so many checks overseas because one thing by this

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Speaker 1: Nigerian crime ring. I don't know how clever these guys were,

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Speaker 1: but I mean checks were going out across the ocean

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Speaker 1: unemployment relief. When the state auditor, Pat McCarthy was complaining

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Speaker 1: that the Vine's office was making it empowered still to

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Speaker 1: do her job, what was Levine's staff actually doing. They

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Speaker 1: were trying to say, here's what you can ask us about.

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Speaker 1: They were saying, if you do meet with our staff

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Speaker 1: members for an interview, we want senior staff in the room.

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Speaker 1: You know, conditions were being placed on the auditor that

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Speaker 1: she said would have been violations of the rules by

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Speaker 1: which her office is guided official standards, and when she

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Speaker 1: would request information, the information would not be forthcoming. When

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Speaker 1: am I going to get this information? Well, when we

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Speaker 1: get it to you. So in terms of delays, in

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Speaker 1: terms of conditions on who you can meet with and

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Speaker 1: when you can meet with them, and how long you

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Speaker 1: can meet with them, and subject matter you can ask

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Speaker 1: them about. The auditor finally just tossed her hands in

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Speaker 1: the air and said enough. And then of course she

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Speaker 1: did take her case to Jay Insley's hierarchy and said, hey,

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Speaker 1: you know this should not be happening here, and she

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Speaker 1: did not get cooperation there. You would think this would

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Speaker 1: be as simple as the statewide elected Democratic auditor picking

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Speaker 1: up the phone calling the Democratic governor and saying, hey,

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Speaker 1: I'm trying to conduct this audit. I'm not getting any help.

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Speaker 1: Can you tell your employment security director to cooperate? I mean,

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Speaker 1: she's in the Insley cabinet. Do you think Ensley was

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Speaker 1: so politically indebted to Levine? Had she also raised money

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Speaker 1: for him? Yes? Oh, yes. She's very good to the

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Speaker 1: Democratic Party state and federal. She was very generous to

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Speaker 1: the Obama campaign. She was very good to Jay Insley,

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Speaker 1: and she donated four hundred thousand dollars to the Joe

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Speaker 1: Biden campaign during the last election cycle. So is she

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Speaker 1: independently wealthy? Yes? Okay, well maybe she could be asked

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Speaker 1: to pay back the six million dollars that was. I

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Speaker 1: don't think she's that liquid. I don't think she has

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Speaker 1: quite that kind of a portfolio. But no, she made

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Speaker 1: some money in tech. Reading between the lines, I think

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Speaker 1: that she was probably interested in a political career of

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Speaker 1: her own and was looking to have some real administrative

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Speaker 1: shops where she could say, you know, she had run

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Speaker 1: a big government office and managed a very complex program,

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Speaker 1: and therefore she was ready for statewide office or congressional

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Speaker 1: office herself. That's my take on Susie Levin. So is

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Speaker 1: this getting much coverage in Washington State? It had been

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Speaker 1: over the last few weeks, and if there's a battle

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Speaker 1: over whether she's confirmed or not, that will probably mean

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Speaker 1: more attention. Here's what's interesting. The Vancouver Columbian, which is

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Speaker 1: not a conservative newspaper at all, called for her to

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Speaker 1: be fired. Several liberal leaning columnists have said the same thing,

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Speaker 1: How on earth did she get a promotion? Why on

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Speaker 1: earth was she still in this job six months after

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Speaker 1: this fraud was first brought to public attention. That's the

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Speaker 1: other thing, by the way, is they dragged their feet

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Speaker 1: on acknowledging the extent of the fraud until public documents

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Speaker 1: brought that out. You know, for a state the size

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Speaker 1: of Washington, six hundred million dollars is a lot of money.

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Speaker 1: It's far and away the biggest theft in state history.

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Speaker 1: The only good news here is that about forty percent

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Speaker 1: of the money maybe a little more close to half

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Speaker 1: the money was clawed back, mostly by federal authorities. They

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Speaker 1: intervened with the banks and blocked the checks. I mean,

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Speaker 1: how do you claud back money from a Nigerian crime card?

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Speaker 1: Del bank accounts were frozen. I guess I also think

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Speaker 1: they were able to go after some of these people involved.

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Speaker 1: But again, that's still a third of a billion dollars

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Speaker 1: for a mid sized state like Washington. Huge. It's remarkable,

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Speaker 1: but fitzpatterns we've seen. These big bureaucracies simply are incompetent,

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Speaker 1: and they're up against free enterprise crooks who have a

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Speaker 1: very eye incentive to be clever. We have had one

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Speaker 1: party rule in Washington State for quite some time, Washington

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Speaker 1: has not elected a Republican governor in longer than any

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Speaker 1: other state in the Union. So the Democrats have controlled

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Speaker 1: the governor's office since nineteen eighty four. They have controlled

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Speaker 1: the legislature most of that time, and right now have

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Speaker 1: very comfortable majorities. One party rule leads to very sloppy government,

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Speaker 1: leads to too much cronyism, it leads to too much backscratching,

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Speaker 1: and you have the same old people who are changing

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Speaker 1: chairs in the cabinet room occupying these offices, and you

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Speaker 1: end up with really poor government. And Washington State, for

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Speaker 1: all the great innovations that happen here in the private sector,

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Speaker 1: now is a very mediocre managed state. Government does not

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Speaker 1: function very well here in Washington. You have all the

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Speaker 1: problems of Seattle, because last time you and I talked,

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Speaker 1: we're just talking about the chaos and the insanity of

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Speaker 1: the Seattle City Council. Well, that's another example where the gap,

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Speaker 1: the chasm between the public sector and the private sector

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Speaker 1: is so vast and wide. Where you see all this

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Speaker 1: innovation and all of this efficiency in the private sector

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Speaker 1: that is completely missing in the public sector. And what

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Speaker 1: they do is they just put together and build bureaucracies,

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Speaker 1: which over time grow barnacles after layer of barnacles, and

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Speaker 1: you end up with very impervious, out of touch ob

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Speaker 1: TWU's government. And we've had that in Seattle for a

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Speaker 1: long time, and now we're seeing it at the state

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Speaker 1: and again, this is what happens with one party government.

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Speaker 1: Now in California, it's gotten bad enough. You really are

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Speaker 1: seeing an outmigration of people leaving the state for the

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Speaker 1: first time. Do you see much of that there yet?

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Speaker 1: Or the sheer beauty of future sound keep people displayed everything. Well,

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Speaker 1: the beauty of sound brings people here and it makes

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Speaker 1: it harder for people to leave, but you know what,

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Speaker 1: they're leaving. California leads the nation in out migration. Can

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Speaker 1: you believe it? California. You think back during the Reagan era,

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Speaker 1: it was the state to go to the Golden State.

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Speaker 1: And now more people leave California than any other state

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Speaker 1: in the country. Washington in twenty nineteen was the fifth

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Speaker 1: state in the country that people were moving two, so

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Speaker 1: we were in the top five. In one year's time,

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Speaker 1: we went from number five on that list to number

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Speaker 1: thirty six. What happened why that one year the chop

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Speaker 1: zone happened, the riots happened. Washington was one of the

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Speaker 1: most severely locked down states. Even when there was no

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Speaker 1: science to justify it. The lockdowns persisted, and we're more

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Speaker 1: severe than almost any place else. Most of our schools

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Speaker 1: are still locked down, and even though most of the

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Speaker 1: private schools are open. The quality of life taxes went up,

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Speaker 1: the crime rate exploded. Murder in the city of Seattle

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Speaker 1: went up sixty one percent, not over five years, one year,

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Speaker 1: in one year, and murder in Seattle. Is that expressing

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Speaker 1: itself in a genuine sense of fear or is it

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Speaker 1: just something people shrug off. It's something that people shrugged

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Speaker 1: off for a while, but they can't ignore it anymore.

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Speaker 1: And the wake up call for a lot of progressives

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Speaker 1: is when all this rioting was going on throughout the

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Speaker 1: summer in Seattle and Portland, it was either being rationalized

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Speaker 1: or ignored. You will recall when you and I last talked,

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Speaker 1: not a single member of the city council denounced the

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Speaker 1: rioters or denounced the attacks on police officers. However, when

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Speaker 1: the rioting continued on inauguration night, when Joe Biden was inaugurated,

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Speaker 1: then people realized, hey, this really isn't going to stop anytime.

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Speaker 1: So and you know, now there's a call for that

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Speaker 1: to happen. I don't know if it will or not.

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Speaker 1: I would say that between one third and one half

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Speaker 1: of the Seattle City Council is pro Antifa, and I

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Speaker 1: mean they're in sympathy with the radical left. I'm talking Caracas,

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Speaker 1: I'm talking Havana, I'm talking hard line left. Why is

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Speaker 1: a city which produced Boeing and Amazon and Microsoft, has

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Speaker 1: extraordinary health hospitals, etc. How can a population like that

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Speaker 1: hand up with a third of them supporting Antifa? Because

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Speaker 1: the hard left is more organized, it's more intense, the

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Speaker 1: hard left is more impassioned, and they pay closer attention

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Speaker 1: to politics. And the people who are moderate will the

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Speaker 1: Conservatives mostly moved out of Seattle. I believe that the

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Speaker 1: Democrats have taken over ninety of the vote in the

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Speaker 1: city of Seattle for the last three or four election cycles. So,

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Speaker 1: I mean, that's how imbalanced it is. But even moderate

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Speaker 1: to moderately liberal people would try and operate by consensus,

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Speaker 1: or try and negotiate, or you know, they took almost

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Speaker 1: like a business like approach to politics instead of a

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Speaker 1: political approach to politics. The hard left knew exactly what

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Speaker 1: they wanted, who to get to, what meetings, what candidates

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Speaker 1: to get behind. They had a clear agenda, and that

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Speaker 1: always wins. So given all of that, we're not likely

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Speaker 1: to reform Susie Levine, Washington State. Do you think that

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Speaker 1: the Senate should put her through a pretty intense grueling?

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Speaker 1: Oh my goodness, yes, I mean the things that you

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Speaker 1: and I are talking about are things that should appall

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Speaker 1: anyone who is concerned about good government and is concerned

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Speaker 1: about integrity. This should not be a Democrat versus Republican issue.

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Speaker 1: This is not blue versus read, left versus right. This

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Speaker 1: is right versus wrong and whether someone can basically buy

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Speaker 1: her way into a job she should never have received,

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Speaker 1: and then be able to buy her way to a

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Speaker 1: promotion after she screws up the job. Do you think

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Speaker 1: either of the Democratic senators from Washington State will raise

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Speaker 1: any questions? They will do what a lot of the

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Speaker 1: Democrats around the country have done when there was all

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Speaker 1: this left wing righting going on throughout the summer. They

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Speaker 1: will look the other way. I will be shocked if

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Speaker 1: they made any kind of resounding speech in favor of

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Speaker 1: Susie Levine. I think they'll just quietly look the other way. Interesting, well,

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Speaker 1: she is the kind of nominee who, if the national

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Speaker 1: publicity gets clear enough, she'll disintegrate. Put it this way,

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Speaker 1: can you imagine if during the Trump administration, someone who

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Speaker 1: gave a lot of money to the Republican National Committee

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Speaker 1: and to Donald Trump with this kind of performance was

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Speaker 1: up for a prominent spot in the Trump administration. This

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Speaker 1: would be front page, a bugle fold, Washington Post, New

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Speaker 1: York Times, leading all the newscasts. I have any of

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Speaker 1: the Seattle or Washington state papers taken an open editorial

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Speaker 1: stance against her. They haven't come out against her getting

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Speaker 1: the job, but they've been critical. Ever, no one's defended her.

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Speaker 1: I don't know as her confirmation grows closer whether the

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Speaker 1: media will speak up more or not. But again, there

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Speaker 1: is no downside in as someone who is demonstrably unqualified

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Speaker 1: for the post she is in, let alone the post

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Speaker 1: that you promoted to, And frankly, it helps us get

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Speaker 1: the country to start realizing how huge the cyber crime is,

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Speaker 1: which then leads you into the California case, where it's

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Speaker 1: arguably almost twenty times bigger. The stuff has gone on

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Speaker 1: every day. Now, we've just kind of relaxed him to

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Speaker 1: being a corrupt country, and I think it's extraordinarily dangerous

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Speaker 1: to sustaining the rule of law. As always, you were

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Speaker 1: enormously helpful. I'm very, very grateful that you would take

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Speaker 1: the time to share with us, and I hope we

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Speaker 1: can come back to you again. Something will bubble up

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Speaker 1: in King County or in Washington State, and I'm confident

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Speaker 1: that we'll have a good reason to keep chatting. You

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Speaker 1: can count on that. Nude absolutely, thank you, joy being here.

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Speaker 1: Thank you to my guest John Carlson. You can read

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Speaker 1: more or about Susie Levine and the Washington State Nigerian

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Speaker 1: fraud on our show page at newsworld dot com. News

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Speaker 1: World is produced by Gingwich three sixty and iHeartMedia. Our

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Speaker 1: executive producer is Debbie Myers, our producer is Guardsi Slump,

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Speaker 1: and our researcher is Rachel Peterson. The artwork for the

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Speaker 1: show was created by Steve en Special thanks to the

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Speaker 1: team at Gingwich three sixty. If you've been enjoying news World,

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Speaker 1: us with five stars and give us a review. So

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Speaker 1: others can learn what it's all about. Right now, listeners

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Speaker 1: of Newtsworld can sign up for my three free weekly

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Speaker 1: new Gingwish. This is Newsworld