June 13, 2023 (LINCOLN, NEB.) The Department of Revenue, Property Assessment Division, reminds real property owners who have suffered significant damage to their property on or after January 1 and before July 1, 2023, the Report of Destroyed Real Property, Form 425 is available.

For real property that has suffered significant damage as a result of a calamity occurring on or after January 1 and before July 1 of the current assessment year, the property owner may file the Report of Destroyed Real Property with the county assessor and the county clerk on or before July 15. Since July 15, 2023 falls on a Saturday in 2023, the Report of Destroyed Real Property, Form 425 must be filed on or before Monday, July 17, 2023.

Calamity means a disastrous event, including but not limited to, a fire, an earthquake, a flood, a tornado, or other natural event which significantly affects the assessed value of the property.

1. Damage to an improvement exceeding 20% of the improvement’s assessed value in the current tax year as determined by the county assessor;

2. Damage to the land exceeding 20% of a parcel’s assessed land value in the current tax year as determined by the county assessor; or

3. Damage exceeding 20% of the property’s assessed value in the current tax year as determined by the county assessor if:

a. Such property is located in an area that has been declared a disaster area by the Governor&nbsp;

b. A housing inspector or health inspector has determined the property is

The county board of equalization will consider the report to determine any adjustments to the assessed value for the current year.

The county board of equalization must act upon this report on or after June 1 and on or before July 25, or on or before August 10 if the board has adopted a resolution to extend the deadline for hear protests under Neb. Rev. Stat § 77-1502, and must send a notice of the reassessment value for destroyed real property to the owner.

June 13, 2023 (LINCOLN, NEB.) The Department of Revenue, Property Assessment Division, reminds real property owners who have suffered significant damage to their property on or after January 1 and before July 1, 2023, the Report of Destroyed Real Property, Form 425 is available.For real property that has suffered significant damage as a result of a calamity occurring on or after January 1 and before July 1 of the current assessment year, the property owner may file the Report of Destroyed Real Property with the county assessor and the county clerk on or before July 15. Since July 15, 2023 falls on a Saturday in 2023, the Report of Destroyed Real Property, Form 425 must be filed on or before Monday, July 17, 2023.Calamity means a disastrous event, including but not limited to, a fire, an earthquake, a flood, a tornado, or other natural event which significantly affects the assessed value of the property.Significant property damage means –1. Damage to an improvement exceeding 20% of the improvement’s assessed value in the current tax year as determined by the county assessor;2. Damage to the land exceeding 20% of a parcel’s assessed land value in the current tax year as determined by the county assessor; or3. Damage exceeding 20% of the property’s assessed value in the current tax year as determined by the county assessor if:a. Such property is located in an area that has been declared a disaster area by the Governor&nbsp;b. A housing inspector or health inspector has determined the property isuninhabitable or unlivable.The county board of equalization will consider the report to determine any adjustments to the assessed value for the current year.The county board of equalization must act upon this report on or after June 1 and on or before July 25, or on or before August 10 if the board has adopted a resolution to extend the deadline for hear protests under Neb. Rev. Stat § 77-1502, and must send a notice of the reassessment value for destroyed real property to the owner.

Report of Destroyed Property Due On or Before July 15th

JUNE 13, 2023 (OMAHA, NEB.)&nbsp;&nbsp;— Troopers with the Nebraska State Patrol (NSP) Carrier Enforcement Division conducted surprise commercial vehicle inspections today in Washington County. Today’s inspections were performed on a roving basis around Washington County.

During the special enforcement effort, the Metropolitan Aggressive and Prevention Selective (MAPS) Team conducted 18 vehicle inspections. Troopers discovered 52 violations of Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations and state law. Troopers placed 8 vehicles out of service (not allowed to return to the road). Vehicles are placed out of service for a variety of reasons relating to bad brakes or tires, or other problems that pose immediate safety risks. Two drivers were placed out of service.

The surprise inspections focus on commercial vehicles that might not travel outside the city or pass-through weigh stations as part of their regular routes.

The MAPS Team is funded largely by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. Troopers check for compliance with federal safety regulations and enforce laws pertaining to weight, size, registration, dyed fuels, and permits associated with commercial vehicles. The MAPS Team was implemented in 1998 and consists of troopers from the Nebraska State Patrol Carrier Enforcement Division.

JUNE 13, 2023 (OMAHA, NEB.)&nbsp;&nbsp;— Troopers with the Nebraska State Patrol (NSP) Carrier Enforcement Division conducted surprise commercial vehicle inspections today in Washington County. Today’s inspections were performed on a roving basis around Washington County.During the special enforcement effort, the Metropolitan Aggressive and Prevention Selective (MAPS) Team conducted 18 vehicle inspections. Troopers discovered 52 violations of Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations and state law. Troopers placed 8 vehicles out of service (not allowed to return to the road). Vehicles are placed out of service for a variety of reasons relating to bad brakes or tires, or other problems that pose immediate safety risks. Two drivers were placed out of service.The surprise inspections focus on commercial vehicles that might not travel outside the city or pass-through weigh stations as part of their regular routes.The MAPS Team is funded largely by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. Troopers check for compliance with federal safety regulations and enforce laws pertaining to weight, size, registration, dyed fuels, and permits associated with commercial vehicles. The MAPS Team was implemented in 1998 and consists of troopers from the Nebraska State Patrol Carrier Enforcement Division.

Surprise Truck Inspections Held in Washington County

The Buffalo County Sheriff’s Office has requested the assistance of SCALES to investigate the death of an adult male inmate at the Buffalo County Jail.&nbsp; At approximately 0720 AM on the morning of Tuesday June 13, 2023 an inmate was located unresponsive in his cell.&nbsp; Responding officers called for medical assistance and began life saving efforts.&nbsp; The inmate was transported by paramedics to CHI Good Samaritan Hospital, where he was subsequently pronounced dead.&nbsp; The inmate was identified as Craig A. Martin, age 55 of Kearney, NE.&nbsp; Next of kin have been notified.&nbsp; Mr. Martin was being held in custody on two counts of Failure to Appear.&nbsp; Preliminary SCALES agencies involved in the investigation are the Hall County Sheriff’s Office and the Kearney Police Department. &nbsp;SCALES is the South Central Area Law Enforcement Services and comprised of 14 law enforcement agencies in south-central Nebraska.&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;

Due to the death occurring in law enforcement custody, Nebraska state statute requires a grand jury to be convened.&nbsp; The Buffalo County Attorney has requested an autopsy.&nbsp; Investigation continues.

The Buffalo County Sheriff’s Office has requested the assistance of SCALES to investigate the death of an adult male inmate at the Buffalo County Jail.&nbsp; At approximately 0720 AM on the morning of Tuesday June 13, 2023 an inmate was located unresponsive in his cell.&nbsp; Responding officers called for medical assistance and began life saving efforts.&nbsp; The inmate was transported by paramedics to CHI Good Samaritan Hospital, where he was subsequently pronounced dead.&nbsp; The inmate was identified as Craig A. Martin, age 55 of Kearney, NE.&nbsp; Next of kin have been notified.&nbsp; Mr. Martin was being held in custody on two counts of Failure to Appear.&nbsp; Preliminary SCALES agencies involved in the investigation are the Hall County Sheriff’s Office and the Kearney Police Department. &nbsp;SCALES is the South Central Area Law Enforcement Services and comprised of 14 law enforcement agencies in south-central Nebraska.&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;Due to the death occurring in law enforcement custody, Nebraska state statute requires a grand jury to be convened.&nbsp; The Buffalo County Attorney has requested an autopsy.&nbsp; Investigation continues.

SCALES To Investigate Death of A Buffalo County Inmate

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden hosted a massive concert on the South Lawn of the White House to commemorate Juneteenth, the country’s newest federal holiday which the president said will “breathe a new life in the very essence of America.”

“To me, making Juneteenth a federal holiday wasn’t just a symbolic gesture. It was a statement of fact for this country to acknowledge the origin of the original sin of slavery, to understand the war was never fought over it, it wasn’t just about a union, but it was most fundamentally about the country and freedom.”

Vice President Kamala Harris said Juneteenth is an occasion to “honor Black excellence, culture and community.”

“America is a promise — a promise of freedom, liberty and justice,” Harris said. “The story of Juneteenth as we celebrate it is a story of our ongoing fight to realize that promise. Not for some, but all.”

The concert also commemorated Black Music Month, and featured artists such as Tony Award winner Audra McDonald and singer and talk show host Jennifer Hudson.

In 2021, Biden signed bipartisan legislation establishing Juneteenth as a federal holiday. The&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/what-is-juneteenth-f77ddd12436ad02d8124e7d48abe9db4">holiday marks the date</a>&nbsp;when the last enslaved people in the United States learned they were free — which occurred June 19, 1865, when Union soldiers told enslaved Black people in Galveston, Texas, news of their freedom.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden hosted a massive concert on the South Lawn of the White House to commemorate Juneteenth, the country’s newest federal holiday which the president said will “breathe a new life in the very essence of America.”(click below to watch the event)<div><iframe src="https://www.facebook.com/plugins/video.php?height=314&href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2FWhiteHouse%2Fvideos%2F274009471703001%2F&show_text=false&width=560&t=153" width="560" height="314" style="border:none;overflow:hidden" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="true" allow="autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowFullScreen="true"></iframe></div>“To me, making Juneteenth a federal holiday wasn’t just a symbolic gesture. It was a statement of fact for this country to acknowledge the origin of the original sin of slavery, to understand the war was never fought over it, it wasn’t just about a union, but it was most fundamentally about the country and freedom.”Vice President Kamala Harris said Juneteenth is an occasion to “honor Black excellence, culture and community.”“America is a promise — a promise of freedom, liberty and justice,” Harris said. “The story of Juneteenth as we celebrate it is a story of our ongoing fight to realize that promise. Not for some, but all.”The concert also commemorated Black Music Month, and featured artists such as Tony Award winner Audra McDonald and singer and talk show host Jennifer Hudson.In 2021, Biden signed bipartisan legislation establishing Juneteenth as a federal holiday. The&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/what-is-juneteenth-f77ddd12436ad02d8124e7d48abe9db4">holiday marks the date</a>&nbsp;when the last enslaved people in the United States learned they were free — which occurred June 19, 1865, when Union soldiers told enslaved Black people in Galveston, Texas, news of their freedom.

🎥Biden celebrates Juneteenth with massive concert at the White House

By Paul Hammel <a href="https://nebraskaexaminer.com/2022/02/08/state-approved-use-of-pesticide-coated-seed-corn-for-ethanol-plant-a-decade-ago/">Nebraska Examiner</a>

LINCOLN — A small, southwest Nebraska county wants to answer the call in hopes of saving two mobile home encampments threatened with removal at Swanson and Red Willow Reservoirs.

Hitchcock County Board Chairman Paul Nichols of Culbertson said Tuesday that his county stands ready to take over management of the two lakes from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. The goal would be to forestall the Bureau’s order&nbsp;<a href="https://nebraskaexaminer.com/2023/06/08/upset-mobile-home-owners-seek-reprieve-from-federal-agencys-order-to-move-out/">to remove the 181 trailers along the two reservoirs</a>&nbsp;by November 2024.

Nichols said the hundreds of weekend residents who use the lakeside trailers provide a vital economic boost for the small towns in his county, located west of McCook. To remove the mobile homes, which have sat along the lake for 50 years, would be a blow, he said.

&nbsp;“The biggest thing is, I don’t want our communities to dry up and blow away,” Nichols said.&nbsp;

The commissioner’s comments come just as three members of Nebraska’s congressional delegation issued a press release Tuesday pledging to help save the lakeside trailer parks, if a local entity can be found to take over management of the reservoirs.

The Nebraska Game and Parks Commission didn’t renew its management agreement in 2020, turning the lakes back to the Bureau. The federal agency wants to clear out the mobile home parks to make way for new campgrounds, cabins and concession buildings.

The reservoirs could be transferred to a local entity via a land transfer bill in Congress. New managers could mean new plans.

But in a joint statement, U.S. Sens. Deb Fischer and Pete Ricketts, along with U.S. Rep. Adrian Smith, said that cannot happen unless a “local entity,” such as a county or natural resources district, can demonstrate “that they are willing to accept the land, are capable of managing it for the public, and will take on the associated responsibilities and liabilities.”

“We stand ready to sponsor legislation to authorize a land transfer but cannot do so without a willing and capable public entity,”&nbsp;the trio said in a joint statement.

<a href="https://nebraskaexaminer.com/2023/06/08/upset-mobile-home-owners-seek-reprieve-from-federal-agencys-order-to-move-out/">The Examiner first reported last week</a>&nbsp;on the plight, and frustration, of the mobile home owners and a local concessionaire who rents lots for the trailers on land it leases from the Bureau.

The trailers — 110 at Swanson Reservoir and 71 at Red Willow — have been there since the 1960s. On summer weekends, the encampments represent two of the largest communities in the area.

Bill Roddy, who has owned a mobile home at Swanson Reservoir for 17 years, said that he was cautiously optimistic that a resolution can be found but that previous offers by Hitchcock County hit a “dead end.”

“In this case, this is our congressional delegation saying they’re willing to support us. That’s a positive,” Roddy said.

‘Private exclusive use’ violated policy

Bureau officials said the leasing of the trailer lots, which are renewed yearly at $1,200 a year at Swanson, amounted to “private exclusive use” of public land, in violation of its policies.

Aaron Thompson of the Bureau’s Nebraska-Kansas regional office in McCook has said that the plan to move out the mobile homes was first adopted in 2005 and that the local concessionaires, who rent out the lots, were aware of that.

A similar policy of removing mobile homes was adopted a few years ago at another Bureau property, Medicine Creek Reservoir near Cambridge.

But local residents said promised upgrades at Medicine Creek haven’t materialized, and they question whether the ambitious improvements at Swanson and Red Willow — which include “glamping” tents, mini-cabins, splash pads and a dog wash — will ever happen.

A looming question is whether local entities in the area are capable of taking over management of the two fishing/boating lakes, which are both in excess of 4,000 acres in size.

Nichols said his county, which employs about 30 workers and doesn’t currently manage any lakes or recreation areas, would need some instruction.

“You tell us we have to do, and we’ll work on doing it. But we need guidance, because this is an area where we have no expertise,” he said.

The Middle Republican Natural Resources District, headquartered in Curtis, is another possibility. It currently manages one small lake at Wellfleet, though that lake doesn’t feature a modern campground or boat launch.

When reached Tuesday, the NRD’s assistant manager, Sylvia Johnson, said her agency doesn’t have the staff now for such work and said taking on the responsibility would require quite a bit of discussion and planning.

“It would take a lot of people sitting around the table deciding what it would look like,” Johnson said.

Nichols, the county board chair, said his three-member board has been discussing options since last year and agreed that the county would seek an agreement to take over management of the reservoirs if no one else stepped up.

“Everybody wants us to do something,” he said.

The county, Nichols said, would manage it much like in the past — leasing land to a concessionaire who would manage the mobile home parks. The lease income would be invested back into the lake, he said.

A formal response to the interest from the Nebraska congressional representatives will be sent Monday, Nichols said.

<figure>
 <img src="https://media.eaglewebservices.com/public/2023/6/1686750958422.png" alt="Swanson Reservoir Swanson Reservoir is a 5,000-acre lake popular with fishermen and boaters near Trenton, in southwest Nebraska (Courtesy of Dawna Vapp)" />
 <figcaption>Swanson Reservoir Swanson Reservoir is a 5,000-acre lake popular with fishermen and boaters near Trenton, in southwest Nebraska (Courtesy of Dawna Vapp)</figcaption>
 </figure>By Paul Hammel <a href="https://nebraskaexaminer.com/2022/02/08/state-approved-use-of-pesticide-coated-seed-corn-for-ethanol-plant-a-decade-ago/">Nebraska Examiner</a>LINCOLN — A small, southwest Nebraska county wants to answer the call in hopes of saving two mobile home encampments threatened with removal at Swanson and Red Willow Reservoirs.Hitchcock County Board Chairman Paul Nichols of Culbertson said Tuesday that his county stands ready to take over management of the two lakes from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. The goal would be to forestall the Bureau’s order&nbsp;<a href="https://nebraskaexaminer.com/2023/06/08/upset-mobile-home-owners-seek-reprieve-from-federal-agencys-order-to-move-out/">to remove the 181 trailers along the two reservoirs</a>&nbsp;by November 2024.Nichols said the hundreds of weekend residents who use the lakeside trailers provide a vital economic boost for the small towns in his county, located west of McCook. To remove the mobile homes, which have sat along the lake for 50 years, would be a blow, he said.&nbsp;“The biggest thing is, I don’t want our communities to dry up and blow away,” Nichols said.&nbsp;The commissioner’s comments come just as three members of Nebraska’s congressional delegation issued a press release Tuesday pledging to help save the lakeside trailer parks, if a local entity can be found to take over management of the reservoirs.The Nebraska Game and Parks Commission didn’t renew its management agreement in 2020, turning the lakes back to the Bureau. The federal agency wants to clear out the mobile home parks to make way for new campgrounds, cabins and concession buildings.The reservoirs could be transferred to a local entity via a land transfer bill in Congress. New managers could mean new plans.But in a joint statement, U.S. Sens. Deb Fischer and Pete Ricketts, along with U.S. Rep. Adrian Smith, said that cannot happen unless a “local entity,” such as a county or natural resources district, can demonstrate “that they are willing to accept the land, are capable of managing it for the public, and will take on the associated responsibilities and liabilities.”<h2>‘We stand ready’</h2>“We stand ready to sponsor legislation to authorize a land transfer but cannot do so without a willing and capable public entity,”&nbsp;the trio said in a joint statement.<a href="https://nebraskaexaminer.com/2023/06/08/upset-mobile-home-owners-seek-reprieve-from-federal-agencys-order-to-move-out/">The Examiner first reported last week</a>&nbsp;on the plight, and frustration, of the mobile home owners and a local concessionaire who rents lots for the trailers on land it leases from the Bureau.The trailers — 110 at Swanson Reservoir and 71 at Red Willow — have been there since the 1960s. On summer weekends, the encampments represent two of the largest communities in the area.Bill Roddy, who has owned a mobile home at Swanson Reservoir for 17 years, said that he was cautiously optimistic that a resolution can be found but that previous offers by Hitchcock County hit a “dead end.”“In this case, this is our congressional delegation saying they’re willing to support us. That’s a positive,” Roddy said.<h2>‘Private exclusive use’ violated policy</h2>Bureau officials said the leasing of the trailer lots, which are renewed yearly at $1,200 a year at Swanson, amounted to “private exclusive use” of public land, in violation of its policies.Aaron Thompson of the Bureau’s Nebraska-Kansas regional office in McCook has said that the plan to move out the mobile homes was first adopted in 2005 and that the local concessionaires, who rent out the lots, were aware of that.A similar policy of removing mobile homes was adopted a few years ago at another Bureau property, Medicine Creek Reservoir near Cambridge.But local residents said promised upgrades at Medicine Creek haven’t materialized, and they question whether the ambitious improvements at Swanson and Red Willow — which include “glamping” tents, mini-cabins, splash pads and a dog wash — will ever happen.A looming question is whether local entities in the area are capable of taking over management of the two fishing/boating lakes, which are both in excess of 4,000 acres in size.Nichols said his county, which employs about 30 workers and doesn’t currently manage any lakes or recreation areas, would need some instruction.<h2>‘We need guidance’</h2>“You tell us we have to do, and we’ll work on doing it. But we need guidance, because this is an area where we have no expertise,” he said.The Middle Republican Natural Resources District, headquartered in Curtis, is another possibility. It currently manages one small lake at Wellfleet, though that lake doesn’t feature a modern campground or boat launch.When reached Tuesday, the NRD’s assistant manager, Sylvia Johnson, said her agency doesn’t have the staff now for such work and said taking on the responsibility would require quite a bit of discussion and planning.“It would take a lot of people sitting around the table deciding what it would look like,” Johnson said.Nichols, the county board chair, said his three-member board has been discussing options since last year and agreed that the county would seek an agreement to take over management of the reservoirs if no one else stepped up.“Everybody wants us to do something,” he said.The county, Nichols said, would manage it much like in the past — leasing land to a concessionaire who would manage the mobile home parks. The lease income would be invested back into the lake, he said.A formal response to the interest from the Nebraska congressional representatives will be sent Monday, Nichols said.

Rural county seeks to save trailers on reservoirs in SW Nebraska

MIAMI (AP) — Donald Trump is characterizing the federal charges against him as “election interference and yet another attempt to rig and steal a presidential election.”

<a href="https://www.c-span.org/video/?528671-1/president-trump-remarks-court-appearance&amp;live">Click here to watch </a>a replay of Trump's remarks

He aired his grievances to hundreds of supporters at his Bedminster golf club in New Jersey, hours after becoming the first former president to face charges in federal court. He entered a plea of not guilty.

Previewing a possible legal defense, Trump said he had a right to go through boxes and separate personal records from government documents.

He also said he had not had a chance to review all the materials transferred from the White House before FBI agents searched his Mar-a-Lago residence last year.

Trump called the case against him “one of the most outrageous and vicious legal theories ever put forward in an American court of law” and compared his own actions to those of other former senior officials, though the facts in&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/trump-indictment-clinton-classified-documents-republican-claims-7681bc9807ecd8bc37fd3f39b9756cc7">those cases are different</a>.

He called special counsel Jack Smith a “thug” who does “political hit jobs” and said, “This day will go down in infamy.”

<figure>
 <img src="https://media.eaglewebservices.com/public/2023/6/1686704253594.png" alt="Trump during his speech to supporters Tuesday night said,“This day will go down in infamy.”&nbsp; Image courtesy CSPAN" />
 <figcaption>Trump during his speech to supporters Tuesday night said,“This day will go down in infamy.”&nbsp; Image courtesy CSPAN</figcaption>
 </figure>MIAMI (AP) — Donald Trump is characterizing the federal charges against him as “election interference and yet another attempt to rig and steal a presidential election.”<a href="https://www.c-span.org/video/?528671-1/president-trump-remarks-court-appearance&amp;live">Click here to watch </a>a replay of Trump's remarksHe aired his grievances to hundreds of supporters at his Bedminster golf club in New Jersey, hours after becoming the first former president to face charges in federal court. He entered a plea of not guilty.Previewing a possible legal defense, Trump said he had a right to go through boxes and separate personal records from government documents.He also said he had not had a chance to review all the materials transferred from the White House before FBI agents searched his Mar-a-Lago residence last year.Trump called the case against him “one of the most outrageous and vicious legal theories ever put forward in an American court of law” and compared his own actions to those of other former senior officials, though the facts in&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/trump-indictment-clinton-classified-documents-republican-claims-7681bc9807ecd8bc37fd3f39b9756cc7">those cases are different</a>.He called special counsel Jack Smith a “thug” who does “political hit jobs” and said, “This day will go down in infamy.”

🎥Trump: Indictment is "election interference," special prosecutor a "thug"

Lincoln— The Nebraska Public Service Commission (PSC) issued an Order (GDC-454/GD-3032) temporarily suspending the grain dealer license of Norag LLC, Stillwell, Kansas.

The temporary license suspension follows the filing of a second PSC grain department complaint against Norag LLC, alleging the grain dealer is in violation of Title 291 Neb. Admin. Code, Chapter 8,&nbsp;§&nbsp;003.03 for failing to meet and maintain a minimum of allowable net worth of $10,000 and Title 291 Neb. Admin. Code, Chapter 8,&nbsp;§&nbsp;003.01 for failing to maintain suitable working capital.

“Every effort has been made to bring this grain dealer into compliance,” said Commission Chair Dan Watermeier. “The company has failed to take the necessary action needed, leaving us no choice, but to suspend its license.”

The grain department filed its first complaint against the Kansas grain dealer on May 12, after the company failed to file its year-end financial statement for the 2022 fiscal year with the Commission as required by law. The Commission received the required documents May 19, and a stipulated agreement was worked out with the company dismissing the first complaint. A subsequent review by the Commission of the financial statement filed by Norag LLC, determined the company did not meet the statutory requirements needed to hold a grain dealer license in Nebraska.

Commissioner Watermeier said,&nbsp;<a>“The Commission feels it is in the public interest to suspend this grain dealers’ license. We would encourage Nebraska producers/sellers who are currently doing business with this company to review any contracts they may hold with them."</a>

The Order temporarily suspending the grain dealer license of Norag LLC, of Stillwell, Kansas takes effect immediately. A hearing on the suspension will be set at a later date.

Lincoln— The Nebraska Public Service Commission (PSC) issued an Order (GDC-454/GD-3032) temporarily suspending the grain dealer license of Norag LLC, Stillwell, Kansas.The temporary license suspension follows the filing of a second PSC grain department complaint against Norag LLC, alleging the grain dealer is in violation of Title 291 Neb. Admin. Code, Chapter 8,&nbsp;§&nbsp;003.03 for failing to meet and maintain a minimum of allowable net worth of $10,000 and Title 291 Neb. Admin. Code, Chapter 8,&nbsp;§&nbsp;003.01 for failing to maintain suitable working capital.“Every effort has been made to bring this grain dealer into compliance,” said Commission Chair Dan Watermeier. “The company has failed to take the necessary action needed, leaving us no choice, but to suspend its license.”The grain department filed its first complaint against the Kansas grain dealer on May 12, after the company failed to file its year-end financial statement for the 2022 fiscal year with the Commission as required by law. The Commission received the required documents May 19, and a stipulated agreement was worked out with the company dismissing the first complaint. A subsequent review by the Commission of the financial statement filed by Norag LLC, determined the company did not meet the statutory requirements needed to hold a grain dealer license in Nebraska.Commissioner Watermeier said,&nbsp;<a>“The Commission feels it is in the public interest to suspend this grain dealers’ license. We would encourage Nebraska producers/sellers who are currently doing business with this company to review any contracts they may hold with them."</a>The Order temporarily suspending the grain dealer license of Norag LLC, of Stillwell, Kansas takes effect immediately. A hearing on the suspension will be set at a later date.

 PSC temporarily suspends Kansas company grain dealer license

Lincoln – A scrivener’s error by the Nebraska Secretary of State has been corrected on the petition that would repeal&nbsp; LB753, the bill that would give tax dollars to private schools. The Secretary of State’s office inadvertently titled the&nbsp; petition “Initiative Petition” instead of “Referendum Petition” but has corrected the title and new petitions have been&nbsp; printed and are being distributed.&nbsp;

“It’s just a hiccup,” said Jenni Benson, a Support Our Schools Nebraska petition sponsor. “The support for this effort has&nbsp; been great and we are energized and ready to meet our goal of 90,000 signatures in 90 days. The new petitions are&nbsp; already being printed and we’ll be distributing them yet today.”&nbsp;

For more information or questions, please visit <a href="https://supportourschoolsnebraska.org/">https://supportourschoolsnebraska.org/&nbsp;</a>

Support Our Schools Nebraska is also on these social media sites:&nbsp;

<a href="https://www.facebook.com/SOSNebraska">• https://www.facebook.com/SOSNebraska/&nbsp;</a>

<a href="https://twitter.com/SOSNebraska">• https://twitter.com/SOSNebraska&nbsp;</a>

• <a href="https://www.instagram.com/SOSNebraska/">https://www.instagram.com/SOSNebraska/&nbsp;</a>

State law requires the Secretary of State to provide a petition proof (the actual size, layout, language, and look of the&nbsp; petition) to the petition sponsors after they file the object statement and slip, which the group filed with the Secretary&nbsp; of State on the morning of May 31, the day after the governor signed LB753.&nbsp;&nbsp;

The petition sponsors are required to take the Secretary of State’s petition proof to a printer to create a printer’s&nbsp; proof/sample of the petition and then physically deliver that printer’s proof/sample to the Secretary of State for final&nbsp; approval. The Support Our Schools Nebraska petition proof was finalized and accepted by the Secretary of State last&nbsp; Tuesday, June 6.&nbsp;

On Monday afternoon, June 12, the Secretary of State’s office provided Support Our Schools Nebraska with a revised&nbsp; petition. Support Our Schools Nebraska gave that revised petition proof to a printer for a printer’s proof/sample and&nbsp; then submitted the printer’s proof/sample for final approval.&nbsp;&nbsp;

The Secretary of State’s office will accept the petitions that were signed prior to June 13; however, moving forward,&nbsp; Support Our Schools Nebraska will use only the revised version of the petition.&nbsp;

Lincoln – A scrivener’s error by the Nebraska Secretary of State has been corrected on the petition that would repeal&nbsp; LB753, the bill that would give tax dollars to private schools. The Secretary of State’s office inadvertently titled the&nbsp; petition “Initiative Petition” instead of “Referendum Petition” but has corrected the title and new petitions have been&nbsp; printed and are being distributed.&nbsp;“It’s just a hiccup,” said Jenni Benson, a Support Our Schools Nebraska petition sponsor. “The support for this effort has&nbsp; been great and we are energized and ready to meet our goal of 90,000 signatures in 90 days. The new petitions are&nbsp; already being printed and we’ll be distributing them yet today.”&nbsp;For more information or questions, please visit <a href="https://supportourschoolsnebraska.org/">https://supportourschoolsnebraska.org/&nbsp;</a>Support Our Schools Nebraska is also on these social media sites:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.facebook.com/SOSNebraska">• https://www.facebook.com/SOSNebraska/&nbsp;</a><a href="https://twitter.com/SOSNebraska">• https://twitter.com/SOSNebraska&nbsp;</a>• <a href="https://www.instagram.com/SOSNebraska/">https://www.instagram.com/SOSNebraska/&nbsp;</a>Background&nbsp;State law requires the Secretary of State to provide a petition proof (the actual size, layout, language, and look of the&nbsp; petition) to the petition sponsors after they file the object statement and slip, which the group filed with the Secretary&nbsp; of State on the morning of May 31, the day after the governor signed LB753.&nbsp;&nbsp;The petition sponsors are required to take the Secretary of State’s petition proof to a printer to create a printer’s&nbsp; proof/sample of the petition and then physically deliver that printer’s proof/sample to the Secretary of State for final&nbsp; approval. The Support Our Schools Nebraska petition proof was finalized and accepted by the Secretary of State last&nbsp; Tuesday, June 6.&nbsp;On Monday afternoon, June 12, the Secretary of State’s office provided Support Our Schools Nebraska with a revised&nbsp; petition. Support Our Schools Nebraska gave that revised petition proof to a printer for a printer’s proof/sample and&nbsp; then submitted the printer’s proof/sample for final approval.&nbsp;&nbsp;The Secretary of State’s office will accept the petitions that were signed prior to June 13; however, moving forward,&nbsp; Support Our Schools Nebraska will use only the revised version of the petition.&nbsp;

Secretary of State Corrects its Scrivener's Error on Petition

State troopers worked 14% more hours to cover protests, and long string of night meetings

LINCOLN — The 2023 session of the Nebraska Legislature had an unprecedented string of debate-extending filibusters, as well as more night sessions than ever.

And the prime-time hour discussions, that sometimes extended to 11 p.m. and beyond, came with a cost.

Figures from the legislative accounting office indicate that expenses for staffing college-aged pages and the red-coated sergeants of arms that help keep order in the legislative chambers rose 23% in 2023 compared to the last 90-day session in 2021.

Overtime payments for the clerk’s office, revisor of statutes, legislative fiscal office and sergeants of arms this year were more than double what was spent in 2021.

The Nebraska State Patrol devoted 14% more hours providing security during the session, which included a couple of nights when the galleries had to be cleared due to unruly spectators.

Twenty extra state troopers, reportedly, were deployed one night to handle the throng of protesters objecting to the abortion/trans right measure, Legislative Bill 574. Six people were arrested.

The figures do not include salaried employees of legislative offices, who do not get overtime pay but may get compensatory time for the late hours.

“There was a lot of strain on them this session,” State Sen. John Arch, the Speaker of the Legislature, of legislative staffers.

“They’ve got work ethic like you wouldn’t believe,” said the Clerk of the Legislature, Brandon Metzler, of his staff’s willingness to work nights and rearrange schedules.

The state senators — who do not get overtime pay — &nbsp;also deserve credit, according to Arch, for forgoing time with family and friends to get work done.

&nbsp;“When the votes came late at night, they were there,” the Speaker said.

At least 25 of the 49 legislators in the one-house Unicameral are needed to have a quorum and conduct business.

The Legislature typically has some night meetings each session, usually near the end of a session when there’s a logjam of bills that need to get over the finish line.

But usually it’s a handful or so of late nights. This year, night sessions were held over 10 weeks, with late nights beginning on March 28, only the 51st day of the scheduled 90-day session.

The 10- to 13-hour work days were an effort to work around a series of time-consuming filibusters launched by Omaha Sens. Machaela Cavanaugh and Megan Hunt in protest of a bill — eventually amended and passed — that banned gender-affirming surgeries and called for regulating&nbsp;puberty blockers and hormones&nbsp;for minors.

Filibusters usually last eight hours during first-round debate, meaning that if the Legislature wanted to tackle more than one first-round debate a day, it had to work into the night. That often meant advancing one bill, then beginning another at night, to chip away at the next eight-hour debate.

Arch said that he and his staff calculated how many hours it would take to pass bills when putting together the 10-week-long stretch of night sessions.

“We were counting hours,” he said. “I tried to give everyone&nbsp; advance warning — as much advance notice as I could&nbsp;— that we were going late.

“I was careful. I didn’t want to run extremely late every night so we didn’t put too much stress on legislative staff,” Arch said.

Lunch breaks at noon were shortened from 90 minutes to 60 minutes, to provide more time for floor debate. And a nightly supper break lasted only 30 minutes, with dinner provided by lobbyists so, Arch said, senators could stay in the Capitol and continue working.

The night sessions continued every week starting March 28 and continued nearly every day. The exception was the last day of the week when lawmakers traditionally work through lunch and adjourn in early- or mid-afternoon to facilitate long drives home for rural senators.

Metzler said the latest night lasted till 11:30 p.m.,

He pointed out that while senators got to return home when a night session ended, workers in the clerk’s office, bill drafters and fiscal offices usually had at least another hour’s worth of work to document what happened that day and get ready for the next.

“There were a lot of late nights,” he said. “It was hard on all of us.”

Expenses for 90-day sessions in 2021 and 2023

Sgt. at Arms&nbsp;overtime:&nbsp;$944 vs. $2,220

Clerk’s Office overtime:&nbsp;$3,975&nbsp; vs.&nbsp;$11,867

Revisor Office overtime:&nbsp;$4,435 vs. $8,117

Logged 4,193 hours in 2021 covering the Legislature vs. 4,789&nbsp;in&nbsp;2021.

One-third of the hours troopers logged this year were for those not&nbsp;regularly assigned to the Capitol, illustrating the need for extra personnel.

The hardest cost to calculate, Arch said, was for the stress put on senators and staff from being away from their families.

“They were in the Capitol working,” he said. “I’m so appreciative of their work.”

Arch, in his speech at the end of the session, noted the dedication of legislative staff during the session. He said that&nbsp;2,000 amendments were introduced, 900 fiscal notes were prepared and&nbsp;1,158 motions — most associated with extending debate in a filibuster — were filed.

The Speaker said that in discussions with fellow senators, no one&nbsp; wants to see a repeat of the rancor and hard feelings generated by the 2023 session, which dealt with controversial and emotional issues, ranging from abortion to gun rights and from tax breaks to voter ID.

Speaker Arch said he’s encouraged that some senators are meeting over the summer to build stronger relationships.

<figure>
 <img src="https://media.eaglewebservices.com/public/2023/6/1686692238512.png" alt=" An endless string of filibusters slowed progress of bills in the Nebraska Legislature, requiring lawmakers to work into the night. State senators began night sessions on Day 51 of the 88-day session, which was much earlier than past years. (Paul Hammel/Nebraska Examiner)" />
 <figcaption> An endless string of filibusters slowed progress of bills in the Nebraska Legislature, requiring lawmakers to work into the night. State senators began night sessions on Day 51 of the 88-day session, which was much earlier than past years. (Paul Hammel/Nebraska Examiner)</figcaption>
 </figure><h2>State troopers worked 14% more hours to cover protests, and long string of night meetings</h2>By Paul Hammel <a href="https://nebraskaexaminer.com/2022/02/08/state-approved-use-of-pesticide-coated-seed-corn-for-ethanol-plant-a-decade-ago/">Nebraska Examiner</a>LINCOLN — The 2023 session of the Nebraska Legislature had an unprecedented string of debate-extending filibusters, as well as more night sessions than ever.And the prime-time hour discussions, that sometimes extended to 11 p.m. and beyond, came with a cost.Figures from the legislative accounting office indicate that expenses for staffing college-aged pages and the red-coated sergeants of arms that help keep order in the legislative chambers rose 23% in 2023 compared to the last 90-day session in 2021.Overtime payments for the clerk’s office, revisor of statutes, legislative fiscal office and sergeants of arms this year were more than double what was spent in 2021.The Nebraska State Patrol devoted 14% more hours providing security during the session, which included a couple of nights when the galleries had to be cleared due to unruly spectators.Twenty extra state troopers, reportedly, were deployed one night to handle the throng of protesters objecting to the abortion/trans right measure, Legislative Bill 574. Six people were arrested.The figures do not include salaried employees of legislative offices, who do not get overtime pay but may get compensatory time for the late hours.<h2>‘There was a lot of strain’</h2>“There was a lot of strain on them this session,” State Sen. John Arch, the Speaker of the Legislature, of legislative staffers.“They’ve got work ethic like you wouldn’t believe,” said the Clerk of the Legislature, Brandon Metzler, of his staff’s willingness to work nights and rearrange schedules.The state senators — who do not get overtime pay — &nbsp;also deserve credit, according to Arch, for forgoing time with family and friends to get work done.&nbsp;“When the votes came late at night, they were there,” the Speaker said.At least 25 of the 49 legislators in the one-house Unicameral are needed to have a quorum and conduct business.The Legislature typically has some night meetings each session, usually near the end of a session when there’s a logjam of bills that need to get over the finish line.<h2>Night sessions started earlier</h2>But usually it’s a handful or so of late nights. This year, night sessions were held over 10 weeks, with late nights beginning on March 28, only the 51st day of the scheduled 90-day session.The 10- to 13-hour work days were an effort to work around a series of time-consuming filibusters launched by Omaha Sens. Machaela Cavanaugh and Megan Hunt in protest of a bill — eventually amended and passed — that banned gender-affirming surgeries and called for regulating&nbsp;puberty blockers and hormones&nbsp;for minors.Filibusters usually last eight hours during first-round debate, meaning that if the Legislature wanted to tackle more than one first-round debate a day, it had to work into the night. That often meant advancing one bill, then beginning another at night, to chip away at the next eight-hour debate.Arch said that he and his staff calculated how many hours it would take to pass bills when putting together the 10-week-long stretch of night sessions.<h2>‘We were counting hours’</h2>“We were counting hours,” he said. “I tried to give everyone&nbsp; advance warning — as much advance notice as I could&nbsp;— that we were going late.“I was careful. I didn’t want to run extremely late every night so we didn’t put too much stress on legislative staff,” Arch said.Lunch breaks at noon were shortened from 90 minutes to 60 minutes, to provide more time for floor debate. And a nightly supper break lasted only 30 minutes, with dinner provided by lobbyists so, Arch said, senators could stay in the Capitol and continue working.The night sessions continued every week starting March 28 and continued nearly every day. The exception was the last day of the week when lawmakers traditionally work through lunch and adjourn in early- or mid-afternoon to facilitate long drives home for rural senators.Metzler said the latest night lasted till 11:30 p.m.,He pointed out that while senators got to return home when a night session ended, workers in the clerk’s office, bill drafters and fiscal offices usually had at least another hour’s worth of work to document what happened that day and get ready for the next.“There were a lot of late nights,” he said. “It was hard on all of us.”<h2>Expenses compared</h2>Expenses for 90-day sessions in 2021 and 2023Pages: $98,871 vs.&nbsp;$105,458Sgt. at arms: $43,987 vs. $67,792sSgt. at Arms&nbsp;overtime:&nbsp;$944 vs. $2,220Clerk’s Office overtime:&nbsp;$3,975&nbsp; vs.&nbsp;$11,867Revisor Office overtime:&nbsp;$4,435 vs. $8,117Fiscal Office overtime: $2,636 vs.$4,710Nebraska State Patrol/Capitol SecurityLogged 4,193 hours in 2021 covering the Legislature vs. 4,789&nbsp;in&nbsp;2021.One-third of the hours troopers logged this year were for those not&nbsp;regularly assigned to the Capitol, illustrating the need for extra personnel.The hardest cost to calculate, Arch said, was for the stress put on senators and staff from being away from their families.“They were in the Capitol working,” he said. “I’m so appreciative of their work.”Arch, in his speech at the end of the session, noted the dedication of legislative staff during the session. He said that&nbsp;2,000 amendments were introduced, 900 fiscal notes were prepared and&nbsp;1,158 motions — most associated with extending debate in a filibuster — were filed.<h2>No one wants a repeat in 2024</h2>The Speaker said that in discussions with fellow senators, no one&nbsp; wants to see a repeat of the rancor and hard feelings generated by the 2023 session, which dealt with controversial and emotional issues, ranging from abortion to gun rights and from tax breaks to voter ID.Speaker Arch said he’s encouraged that some senators are meeting over the summer to build stronger relationships.“That goes a long ways,” Arch said.

Nebraska Legislature worked overtime and racked up extra costs

MIAMI (AP) —&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/hub/donald-trump">Donald Trump</a>&nbsp;became the first former president to face a judge on federal charges as he pleaded not guilty in a Miami courtroom Tuesday to dozens of felony counts accusing him of hoarding classified documents and refusing government demands to give them back.

The history-making court date,&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-classified-documents-indictment-c15a5f36e4e83417805718d81a035441">centered on charges</a>&nbsp;that Trump mishandled government secrets that as commander-in-chief he was entrusted to protect, kickstarts a legal process that could unfold at the height of the&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/trump-2024-republican-primary-indictment-impact-charges-a4708142eb57749eef7785e427c14695">2024 presidential campaign</a>&nbsp;and carry profound consequences not only for his political future but also for his own personal liberty.

Trump approached his arraignment with characteristic bravado, posting social media broadsides against the prosecution from inside his motorcade en route to the courthouse and insisting as he has through years of legal woes that he has done nothing wrong and was being persecuted for political purposes. But&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/trump-classified-documents-court-live-updates-a2b5152a9d0de6b278491b7e26d19aaf">inside the courtroom</a>, he sat silently, scowling and arms crossed as a lawyer entered a not guilty plea on his behalf in a brief arraignment that ended without him having to surrender his passport or otherwise restrict his travel.

The arraignment, though largely procedural in nature, was the latest in an unprecedented public reckoning this year for Trump, who faces charges in New York arising from hush money payments during his 2016 presidential campaign as well as&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/trump-investigations-charges-classified-documents-d822569227ea882cedfeffd3284f9d4c">ongoing investigations</a>&nbsp;in Washington and Atlanta into efforts to undo the results of the 2020 race.

He’s sought to project confidence in the face of unmistakable legal peril, attacking the Justice Department special counsel who filed the case as “a Trump hater,” pledging to remain in the race and scheduling a speech and fundraiser for Tuesday night at his Bedminster, New Jersey, club. He&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/trump-court-miami-protests-documents-2b1f3fea757c77f4064ed34e7132d27a">stopped on his way out of Miami</a>&nbsp;at Versailles, an iconic Cuban restaurant in the city’s Little Havana neighborhood where supporters serenaded Trump, who turns 77 years old on Wednesday, with “Happy Birthday.”

Even so, the gravity of the moment was clear.

Until last week, no former president had ever been charged by the Justice Department, let alone accused of mishandling top-secret information. The&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/trump-florida-indictment-highlights-857476c71e98e91521212a826efc8816">indictment unsealed last week</a>&nbsp;charged Trump with 37 felony counts -- many under the Espionage Act -- that accuse him of illegally storing classified documents in his bedroom, bathroom, shower and other locations at Mar-a-Lago and trying to hide them from the Justice Department as investigators demanded them back. The charges carry a yearslong prison sentence in the event of a conviction.

Trump has relied on a familiar playbook of painting himself as a victim of political persecution. But Attorney General Merrick Garland, an appointee of President Joe Biden, sought to insulate the department from political attacks by handing ownership of the case to a special counsel, Jack Smith, who on Friday declared, “We have one set of laws in this country, and they apply to everyone.”

Smith attended Tuesday’s arraignment, sitting in the front row behind his team of prosecutors.

The court appearance unfolded against the backdrop of potential protests, with some high-profile backers using barbed rhetoric to voice support. Trump himself encouraged supporters to join a planned protest Tuesday at the courthouse. Though city officials said they prepared for possible unrest around the courthouse, there were little signs of significant disruption.

While Trump was not required to surrender a passport – prosecutor David Harbach said he was not considered a flight risk, a likely recognition of his status as a presidential candidate – he was directed to not discuss the case with any witnesses. That includes&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/trump-walt-nauta-valet-indictment-7f600a2d10987d1aca0c65e4e8ba9e73">Walt Nauta, his valet and close aide</a>, who was indicted last week on charges that he moved boxes of documents at Trump’s direction and misled the FBI about it. He did not enter a plea Tuesday because he did not have a local lawyer with him.

The magistrate judge who presided over the arraignment directed Trump not to discuss the case with any witnesses, including Nauta, but said they can discuss work.

Even for a man whose post-presidential life has been defined by criminal investigations, the documents probe had long stood out both because of the volume of evidence that prosecutors had seemed to amass and the severity of the allegations.

A federal grand jury in Washington had heard testimony for months, but the Justice Department filed it in Florida, where Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort is located and where many of the alleged acts of obstruction occurred. Though Trump appeared Tuesday before a federal magistrate, the case has been assigned to a District Court judge he appointed,&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/who-is-aileen-cannon-trump-judge-52964c2098546f8ade989b1555e44aae">Aileen Cannon</a>, who ruled in his favor last year in a dispute over whether an outside special master could be appointed to review the seized classified documents. A federal appeals panel ultimately overturned her ruling.

It’s unclear what defenses Trump is likely to invoke as the case moves forward. Two of his lead lawyers announced their resignation the morning after his indictment, and the notes and recollections of another attorney, M. Evan Corcoran, are cited repeatedly throughout the 49-page charging document, suggesting prosecutors envision him as a potential key witness.

In the indictment the Justice Department unsealed Friday most of the charges — 31 or the 37 felony counts — against Trump relate to the willful retention of national defense information. Other charges include conspiracy to commit obstruction and false statements.

The indictment alleges Trump intentionally retained hundreds of classified documents that he took with him from the White House to Mar-a-Lago after leaving office in January 2021. The material he stored, including in a bathroom, ballroom, bedroom and shower, included material on nuclear programs, defense and weapons capabilities of the U.S. and foreign governments and a Pentagon “attack plan,” prosecutors say.

Beyond that, prosecutors say, he sought to obstruct government efforts to recover the documents, including by directing Nauta to move boxes to conceal them and also suggesting to his own lawyer that he hide or destroy documents sought by a Justice Department subpoena. ___ Tucker reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Jill Colvin in New York and Terry Spencer, Kate Brumback, Curt Anderson and Joshua Goodman in Miami, contributed to this report. ___ More on Donald Trump-related investigations:&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/hub/donald-trump">https://apnews.com/hub/donald-trump</a>

MIAMI (AP) —Former President Donald Trump has pleaded not guilty to federal charges alleging he hoarded classified documents detailing sensitive military secrets and schemed to thwart government efforts to get them back.

<a href="https://assets.bwbx.io/documents/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/r01AWvuP8TD0/v0">Click here to read</a>&nbsp;the full indictment&nbsp;

Trump appeared before a judge in Miami’s federal courthouse on Tuesday in a stunning moment in American history days after he became the first former president charged with federal crimes.

Authorities say Trump schemed and lied to block the government from recovering the documents concerning nuclear programs and other sensitive military secrets stored at his Mar-a-Lago estate.

It’s the second criminal case Trump is facing as he seeks to reclaim the White House in 2024. He’s also accused in New York state court of falsifying business records related to hush-money payments made during the 2016 campaign.

Trump has denied wrongdoing in both cases and slammed the prosecutions as politically motivated. He’s expected to return later Tuesday to New Jersey, where he’s scheduled a press event to publicly respond to the charges.

Trump rode to court with his son Eric, who accompanied the motorcade from the former president’s Doral resort to the federal courthouse in Miami.

CNN aired footage of Trump walking to a line of SUVs with his son by his side while someone yelled, “Let’s go Trump!”

The former president could be seen stopping and waving at supporters, as well as chatting with staff members. Eric Trump appeared to clap his father on the back just before he climbed in a vehicle.

As he rode to court, Trump posted on his social media site that the case against him was a “witch hunt.”

Later, outside the courthouse Trump lawyer Alina Habba said, “Today is not about President Donald J. Trump, who is defiant.”

“It is not about the Republican Party, it is not about the 2024 election,” Habba added. “It is about the destruction of longstanding principles that have set this country apart.”

<figure>
 <img src="https://media.eaglewebservices.com/public/2023/6/1686700913232.png" alt="Former President Donald Trump gestures before boarding his personal plane at Miami International Airport, Tuesday, June 13, 2023, in Miami. Trump appeared in federal court Tuesday on dozens of felony charges accusing him of illegally hoarding classified documents and thwarting the Justice Department's efforts to get the records back. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)" />
 <figcaption>Former President Donald Trump gestures before boarding his personal plane at Miami International Airport, Tuesday, June 13, 2023, in Miami. Trump appeared in federal court Tuesday on dozens of felony charges accusing him of illegally hoarding classified documents and thwarting the Justice Department's efforts to get the records back. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)</figcaption>
 </figure>MIAMI (AP) —&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/hub/donald-trump">Donald Trump</a>&nbsp;became the first former president to face a judge on federal charges as he pleaded not guilty in a Miami courtroom Tuesday to dozens of felony counts accusing him of hoarding classified documents and refusing government demands to give them back.The history-making court date,&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-classified-documents-indictment-c15a5f36e4e83417805718d81a035441">centered on charges</a>&nbsp;that Trump mishandled government secrets that as commander-in-chief he was entrusted to protect, kickstarts a legal process that could unfold at the height of the&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/trump-2024-republican-primary-indictment-impact-charges-a4708142eb57749eef7785e427c14695">2024 presidential campaign</a>&nbsp;and carry profound consequences not only for his political future but also for his own personal liberty.Trump approached his arraignment with characteristic bravado, posting social media broadsides against the prosecution from inside his motorcade en route to the courthouse and insisting as he has through years of legal woes that he has done nothing wrong and was being persecuted for political purposes. But&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/trump-classified-documents-court-live-updates-a2b5152a9d0de6b278491b7e26d19aaf">inside the courtroom</a>, he sat silently, scowling and arms crossed as a lawyer entered a not guilty plea on his behalf in a brief arraignment that ended without him having to surrender his passport or otherwise restrict his travel.The arraignment, though largely procedural in nature, was the latest in an unprecedented public reckoning this year for Trump, who faces charges in New York arising from hush money payments during his 2016 presidential campaign as well as&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/trump-investigations-charges-classified-documents-d822569227ea882cedfeffd3284f9d4c">ongoing investigations</a>&nbsp;in Washington and Atlanta into efforts to undo the results of the 2020 race.He’s sought to project confidence in the face of unmistakable legal peril, attacking the Justice Department special counsel who filed the case as “a Trump hater,” pledging to remain in the race and scheduling a speech and fundraiser for Tuesday night at his Bedminster, New Jersey, club. He&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/trump-court-miami-protests-documents-2b1f3fea757c77f4064ed34e7132d27a">stopped on his way out of Miami</a>&nbsp;at Versailles, an iconic Cuban restaurant in the city’s Little Havana neighborhood where supporters serenaded Trump, who turns 77 years old on Wednesday, with “Happy Birthday.”Even so, the gravity of the moment was clear.Until last week, no former president had ever been charged by the Justice Department, let alone accused of mishandling top-secret information. The&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/trump-florida-indictment-highlights-857476c71e98e91521212a826efc8816">indictment unsealed last week</a>&nbsp;charged Trump with 37 felony counts -- many under the Espionage Act -- that accuse him of illegally storing classified documents in his bedroom, bathroom, shower and other locations at Mar-a-Lago and trying to hide them from the Justice Department as investigators demanded them back. The charges carry a yearslong prison sentence in the event of a conviction.Trump has relied on a familiar playbook of painting himself as a victim of political persecution. But Attorney General Merrick Garland, an appointee of President Joe Biden, sought to insulate the department from political attacks by handing ownership of the case to a special counsel, Jack Smith, who on Friday declared, “We have one set of laws in this country, and they apply to everyone.”Smith attended Tuesday’s arraignment, sitting in the front row behind his team of prosecutors.The court appearance unfolded against the backdrop of potential protests, with some high-profile backers using barbed rhetoric to voice support. Trump himself encouraged supporters to join a planned protest Tuesday at the courthouse. Though city officials said they prepared for possible unrest around the courthouse, there were little signs of significant disruption.While Trump was not required to surrender a passport – prosecutor David Harbach said he was not considered a flight risk, a likely recognition of his status as a presidential candidate – he was directed to not discuss the case with any witnesses. That includes&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/trump-walt-nauta-valet-indictment-7f600a2d10987d1aca0c65e4e8ba9e73">Walt Nauta, his valet and close aide</a>, who was indicted last week on charges that he moved boxes of documents at Trump’s direction and misled the FBI about it. He did not enter a plea Tuesday because he did not have a local lawyer with him.The magistrate judge who presided over the arraignment directed Trump not to discuss the case with any witnesses, including Nauta, but said they can discuss work.Even for a man whose post-presidential life has been defined by criminal investigations, the documents probe had long stood out both because of the volume of evidence that prosecutors had seemed to amass and the severity of the allegations.A federal grand jury in Washington had heard testimony for months, but the Justice Department filed it in Florida, where Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort is located and where many of the alleged acts of obstruction occurred. Though Trump appeared Tuesday before a federal magistrate, the case has been assigned to a District Court judge he appointed,&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/who-is-aileen-cannon-trump-judge-52964c2098546f8ade989b1555e44aae">Aileen Cannon</a>, who ruled in his favor last year in a dispute over whether an outside special master could be appointed to review the seized classified documents. A federal appeals panel ultimately overturned her ruling.It’s unclear what defenses Trump is likely to invoke as the case moves forward. Two of his lead lawyers announced their resignation the morning after his indictment, and the notes and recollections of another attorney, M. Evan Corcoran, are cited repeatedly throughout the 49-page charging document, suggesting prosecutors envision him as a potential key witness.In the indictment the Justice Department unsealed Friday most of the charges — 31 or the 37 felony counts — against Trump relate to the willful retention of national defense information. Other charges include conspiracy to commit obstruction and false statements.The indictment alleges Trump intentionally retained hundreds of classified documents that he took with him from the White House to Mar-a-Lago after leaving office in January 2021. The material he stored, including in a bathroom, ballroom, bedroom and shower, included material on nuclear programs, defense and weapons capabilities of the U.S. and foreign governments and a Pentagon “attack plan,” prosecutors say.Beyond that, prosecutors say, he sought to obstruct government efforts to recover the documents, including by directing Nauta to move boxes to conceal them and also suggesting to his own lawyer that he hide or destroy documents sought by a Justice Department subpoena. ___ Tucker reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Jill Colvin in New York and Terry Spencer, Kate Brumback, Curt Anderson and Joshua Goodman in Miami, contributed to this report. ___ More on Donald Trump-related investigations:&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/hub/donald-trump">https://apnews.com/hub/donald-trump</a>MIAMI (AP) —Former President Donald Trump has pleaded not guilty to federal charges alleging he hoarded classified documents detailing sensitive military secrets and schemed to thwart government efforts to get them back.<figure>
 <img src="https://media.eaglewebservices.com/public/2023/6/1686684668841.png" alt="Protesters outside the courthouse in Miami on Tuesday -photo courtesy CSPAN via&nbsp;Florida 24 news" />
 <figcaption>Protesters outside the courthouse in Miami on Tuesday -photo courtesy CSPAN via&nbsp;Florida 24 news</figcaption>
 </figure><a href="https://assets.bwbx.io/documents/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/r01AWvuP8TD0/v0">Click here to read</a>&nbsp;the full indictment&nbsp;Trump appeared before a judge in Miami’s federal courthouse on Tuesday in a stunning moment in American history days after he became the first former president charged with federal crimes.Authorities say Trump schemed and lied to block the government from recovering the documents concerning nuclear programs and other sensitive military secrets stored at his Mar-a-Lago estate.It’s the second criminal case Trump is facing as he seeks to reclaim the White House in 2024. He’s also accused in New York state court of falsifying business records related to hush-money payments made during the 2016 campaign.Trump has denied wrongdoing in both cases and slammed the prosecutions as politically motivated. He’s expected to return later Tuesday to New Jersey, where he’s scheduled a press event to publicly respond to the charges.Trump rode to court with his son Eric, who accompanied the motorcade from the former president’s Doral resort to the federal courthouse in Miami.CNN aired footage of Trump walking to a line of SUVs with his son by his side while someone yelled, “Let’s go Trump!”The former president could be seen stopping and waving at supporters, as well as chatting with staff members. Eric Trump appeared to clap his father on the back just before he climbed in a vehicle.As he rode to court, Trump posted on his social media site that the case against him was a “witch hunt.”Later, outside the courthouse Trump lawyer Alina Habba said, “Today is not about President Donald J. Trump, who is defiant.”“It is not about the Republican Party, it is not about the 2024 election,” Habba added. “It is about the destruction of longstanding principles that have set this country apart.”

Trump pleads not guilty to federal charges on classified documents

WASHINGTON (AP) — Much of the theft was brazen, even simple.

Fraudsters used the Social Security numbers of dead people and federal prisoners to get unemployment checks. Cheaters collected those benefits in multiple states. And federal loan applicants weren’t cross-checked against a Treasury Department database that would have raised red flags about sketchy borrowers.

Criminals and gangs grabbed the money. But so did a U.S. soldier in Georgia, the pastors of a defunct church in Texas, a former state lawmaker in Missouri and a roofing contractor in Montana.

All of it led to the greatest grift in U.S. history, with thieves plundering billions of dollars&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-pandemics-bills-legislation-coronavirus-pandemic-2d5b0ce9771b0ad88c607123b3bad8ee">in federal COVID-19 relief aid intended to combat the worst pandemic</a>&nbsp;in a century and to stabilize an economy in free fall.

An Associated Press analysis found that fraudsters potentially stole more than $280 billion in COVID-19 relief funding; another $123 billion was wasted or misspent. Combined, the loss represents 10% of the $4.2 trillion the U.S. government has so far disbursed in COVID relief aid.

That number is certain to grow as investigators dig deeper into thousands of potential schemes.

How could so much be stolen? Investigators and outside experts say the government, in seeking to quickly spend trillions in relief aid, conducted too little oversight during the pandemic’s early stages and instituted too few restrictions on applicants. In short, they say, the grift was just way too easy.

“Here was this sort of endless pot of money that anyone could access,” said&nbsp;<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/dan-fruchter-b2640b22/">Dan Fruchter</a>, chief of the fraud and white-collar crime unit at the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.justice.gov/usao-edwa">U.S. Attorney’s office in the Eastern District of Washington</a>. “Folks kind of fooled themselves into thinking that it was a socially acceptable thing to do, even though it wasn’t legal.”

The U.S. government has charged more than 2,230 defendants with pandemic-related fraud crimes and is conducting thousands of investigations.

Most of the looted money was swiped from three large pandemic-relief initiatives launched during the Trump administration and inherited by President Joe Biden. Those programs were designed to help small businesses and unemployed workers survive the economic upheaval caused by the pandemic.

The pilfering was wide but not always as deep as the eye-catching headlines about cases involving many millions of dollars. But all of the theft, big and small, illustrates an epidemic of scams and swindles at a time America was grappling with overrun hospitals, school closures and shuttered businesses. Since the pandemic began in early 2020,&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic">more than 1.13 million people in the U.S. have died from COVID-19</a>, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Michael Horowitz,&nbsp;<a href="https://oig.justice.gov/">the U.S. Justice Department inspector general</a>&nbsp;who chairs the federal Pandemic Response Accountability Committee, told Congress the fraud is “clearly in the tens of billions of dollars” and may eventually exceed $100 billion.

Horowitz told the AP he was sticking with that estimate, but won’t be certain about the number until he gets more solid data.

“I’m hesitant to get too far out on how much it is,” he said. “But clearly it’s substantial and the final accounting is still at least a couple of years away.”

Mike Galdo, the U.S. Justice Department’s acting director for COVID-19 Fraud Enforcement, said, “It is an unprecedented amount of fraud.”

Before leaving office, former President Donald Trump approved emergency aid measures totaling $3.2 trillion, according to figures from the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.pandemicoversight.gov/">Pandemic Response Accountability Committee</a>. Biden’s 2021 American Rescue Plan authorized the spending of another $1.9 trillion. About a fifth of the $5.2 trillion has yet to be paid out, according to the committee’s most recent accounting.

Never has so much federal emergency aid been injected into the U.S. economy so quickly. “The largest rescue package in American history,” U.S. Comptroller General Gene Dodaro told Congress.

The enormous scale of that package has obscured multibillion-dollar mistakes.

An $837 billion&nbsp;<a href="https://newsroom.ap.org/www.irs.gov">IRS</a>&nbsp;program, for example, succeeded 99% of the time in getting economic stimulus checks to the proper taxpayers, according to the tax agency. Nevertheless, that 1% failure rate translated into nearly $8 billion going to “ineligible individuals,” a Treasury Department inspector general told AP.

An IRS spokesman said the agency does not agree with all the figures cited by the watchdog and noted that, even if correct, the loss represented a tiny fraction of the program’s budget.

The health crisis thrust the&nbsp;<a href="https://newsroom.ap.org/www.sba.gov">Small Business Administration</a>, an agency that typically gets little attention, into an unprecedented role. In the seven decades before the pandemic struck, for example, the SBA had doled out $67 billion in disaster loans.

When the pandemic struck, the agency was assigned to manage two massive relief efforts — the COVID-19 Economic Injury Disaster Loan and Paycheck Protection programs, which would swell to more than a trillion dollars. SBA’s workforce had to get money out the door, fast, to help struggling businesses and their employees. COVID-19 pushed SBA’s pace from a walk to an Olympic sprint. Between March 2020 and the end of July 2020, the agency granted 3.2 million COVID-19 economic injury disaster loans totaling $169 billion, according to an SBA inspector general’s report, while at the same time implementing the huge new Paycheck Protection Program.

In the haste, guardrails to protect federal money were dropped. Prospective borrowers were allowed to “self-certify” that their loan applications were true. The CARES Act also barred SBA from looking at tax return transcripts that could have weeded out shady or undeserving applicants, a decision eventually reversed at the end of 2020.

“If you open up the bank window and say, give me your application and just promise me you really are who you say you are, you attract a lot of fraudsters and that’s what happened here,” Horowitz said.

The SBA inspector general’s office has estimated fraud in the COVID-19 economic injury disaster loan program at $86 billion and the Paycheck Protection program at $20 billion. The watchdog is expected in coming weeks to release revised loss figures that are likely to be much higher.

In an interview, SBA Inspector General Hannibal “Mike” Ware declined to say what the new fraud estimate for both programs will be.

“It will be a figure that is fair, that is 1,000% defensible by my office, fully backed by our significant criminal investigative activity that is taking place in this space,” Ware said.

Ware and his staff are overwhelmed with pandemic-related audits and investigations. The office has a backlog of more than 80,000 actionable leads, close to a 100 years’ worth of work.

“Death by a thousand cuts might be death by 80,000 cuts for them,” Horowitz said of Ware’s workload. “It’s just the magnitude of it, the enormity of it.”

A 2022 study from the University of Texas at Austin found almost five times as many suspicious Paycheck Protection loans as the $20 billion SBA’s inspector general has reported so far. The research, led by finance professor John Griffin, found as much as $117 billion in questionable and possibly fraudulent loans, citing indicators such as non-registered businesses and multiple loans to the same address.

Horowitz, the pandemic watchdog chairman, criticized the government’s failure early on to use the “Do Not Pay” Treasury Department database, designed to keep government money from going to debarred contractors, fugitives, felons or people convicted of tax fraud. Those reviews, he said, could have been done quickly.

“It’s a false narrative that has been set out, that there are only two choices,” Horowitz said. “One choice is, get the money out right away. And that the only other choice was to spend weeks and months trying to figure out who was entitled to it.”

In less than a few days, a week at most, Horowitz said, SBA might have discovered thousands of ineligible applicants.

“24 hours? 48 hours? Would that really have upended the program?” Horowitz said. “I don’t think it would have. And it was data sitting there. It didn’t get checked.”

The Biden administration put in place stricter rules to stem pandemic fraud, including use of the “Do Not Pay” database. Biden also recently proposed a $1.6 billion plan to boost law enforcement efforts to go after pandemic relief fraudsters.

“I think the bottom line is regardless of what the number is, it emanates overwhelmingly from three programs that were designed and originated in 2020 with too many large holes that opened the door to criminal fraud,” Gene Sperling, the White House&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/biden-covid-business-health-congress-310542ef5cddc914104960a00ae356e0">American Rescue Plan</a>&nbsp;coordinator, said in an interview.

“We came into office when the largest amounts of fraud were already out of the barn,” Sperling added.

In a statement, an SBA spokesperson declined to say whether the agency agrees with the figures issued by Ware’s office, saying the federal government has not developed an accepted system for assessing fraud in government programs. Previous analyses have pointed to “potential fraud” or “fraud indicators” in a manner that conveys those numbers as a true fraud estimate when they are not, according to the statement.

Han Nguyen, a spokesman for the SBA, said Monday that “the vast majority of the likely fraud originated in the first nine months of the pandemic programs, under the Trump administration.” For the COVID-19 economic injury disaster loan program, Nguyen said, SBA's “working estimate” found $28 billion in likely fraud.

The coronavirus pandemic plunged the U.S. economy into a short but devastating recession. Jobless rates soared into double digits and Washington sent hundreds of billions of dollars to states to help the suddenly unemployed.

<figure>
 <img src="https://media.eaglewebservices.com/public/2020/2/1581011016098.png" alt="Former Kansas lawmaker Michael Capps who was convicted of 12 felonies for lying on applications for federal COVID-19 relief was sentenced last month to two years and three months in prison, according to online court records." />
 <figcaption>Former Kansas lawmaker Michael Capps who was convicted of 12 felonies for lying on applications for federal COVID-19 relief was sentenced last month to two years and three months in prison, according to online court records.</figcaption>
 </figure>WASHINGTON (AP) — Much of the theft was brazen, even simple.Fraudsters used the Social Security numbers of dead people and federal prisoners to get unemployment checks. Cheaters collected those benefits in multiple states. And federal loan applicants weren’t cross-checked against a Treasury Department database that would have raised red flags about sketchy borrowers.Criminals and gangs grabbed the money. But so did a U.S. soldier in Georgia, the pastors of a defunct church in Texas, a former state lawmaker in Missouri and a roofing contractor in Montana.All of it led to the greatest grift in U.S. history, with thieves plundering billions of dollars&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-pandemics-bills-legislation-coronavirus-pandemic-2d5b0ce9771b0ad88c607123b3bad8ee">in federal COVID-19 relief aid intended to combat the worst pandemic</a>&nbsp;in a century and to stabilize an economy in free fall.An Associated Press analysis found that fraudsters potentially stole more than $280 billion in COVID-19 relief funding; another $123 billion was wasted or misspent. Combined, the loss represents 10% of the $4.2 trillion the U.S. government has so far disbursed in COVID relief aid.That number is certain to grow as investigators dig deeper into thousands of potential schemes.How could so much be stolen? Investigators and outside experts say the government, in seeking to quickly spend trillions in relief aid, conducted too little oversight during the pandemic’s early stages and instituted too few restrictions on applicants. In short, they say, the grift was just way too easy.“Here was this sort of endless pot of money that anyone could access,” said&nbsp;<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/dan-fruchter-b2640b22/">Dan Fruchter</a>, chief of the fraud and white-collar crime unit at the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.justice.gov/usao-edwa">U.S. Attorney’s office in the Eastern District of Washington</a>. “Folks kind of fooled themselves into thinking that it was a socially acceptable thing to do, even though it wasn’t legal.”The U.S. government has charged more than 2,230 defendants with pandemic-related fraud crimes and is conducting thousands of investigations.Most of the looted money was swiped from three large pandemic-relief initiatives launched during the Trump administration and inherited by President Joe Biden. Those programs were designed to help small businesses and unemployed workers survive the economic upheaval caused by the pandemic.The pilfering was wide but not always as deep as the eye-catching headlines about cases involving many millions of dollars. But all of the theft, big and small, illustrates an epidemic of scams and swindles at a time America was grappling with overrun hospitals, school closures and shuttered businesses. Since the pandemic began in early 2020,&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic">more than 1.13 million people in the U.S. have died from COVID-19</a>, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.Michael Horowitz,&nbsp;<a href="https://oig.justice.gov/">the U.S. Justice Department inspector general</a>&nbsp;who chairs the federal Pandemic Response Accountability Committee, told Congress the fraud is “clearly in the tens of billions of dollars” and may eventually exceed $100 billion.Horowitz told the AP he was sticking with that estimate, but won’t be certain about the number until he gets more solid data.“I’m hesitant to get too far out on how much it is,” he said. “But clearly it’s substantial and the final accounting is still at least a couple of years away.”Mike Galdo, the U.S. Justice Department’s acting director for COVID-19 Fraud Enforcement, said, “It is an unprecedented amount of fraud.”Before leaving office, former President Donald Trump approved emergency aid measures totaling $3.2 trillion, according to figures from the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.pandemicoversight.gov/">Pandemic Response Accountability Committee</a>. Biden’s 2021 American Rescue Plan authorized the spending of another $1.9 trillion. About a fifth of the $5.2 trillion has yet to be paid out, according to the committee’s most recent accounting.Never has so much federal emergency aid been injected into the U.S. economy so quickly. “The largest rescue package in American history,” U.S. Comptroller General Gene Dodaro told Congress.The enormous scale of that package has obscured multibillion-dollar mistakes.An $837 billion&nbsp;<a href="https://newsroom.ap.org/www.irs.gov">IRS</a>&nbsp;program, for example, succeeded 99% of the time in getting economic stimulus checks to the proper taxpayers, according to the tax agency. Nevertheless, that 1% failure rate translated into nearly $8 billion going to “ineligible individuals,” a Treasury Department inspector general told AP.An IRS spokesman said the agency does not agree with all the figures cited by the watchdog and noted that, even if correct, the loss represented a tiny fraction of the program’s budget.The health crisis thrust the&nbsp;<a href="https://newsroom.ap.org/www.sba.gov">Small Business Administration</a>, an agency that typically gets little attention, into an unprecedented role. In the seven decades before the pandemic struck, for example, the SBA had doled out $67 billion in disaster loans.<figure>
 <img src="https://media.eaglewebservices.com/public/2020/4/1588075781384.png" alt="" />
 <figcaption></figcaption>
 </figure>When the pandemic struck, the agency was assigned to manage two massive relief efforts — the COVID-19 Economic Injury Disaster Loan and Paycheck Protection programs, which would swell to more than a trillion dollars. SBA’s workforce had to get money out the door, fast, to help struggling businesses and their employees. COVID-19 pushed SBA’s pace from a walk to an Olympic sprint. Between March 2020 and the end of July 2020, the agency granted 3.2 million COVID-19 economic injury disaster loans totaling $169 billion, according to an SBA inspector general’s report, while at the same time implementing the huge new Paycheck Protection Program.In the haste, guardrails to protect federal money were dropped. Prospective borrowers were allowed to “self-certify” that their loan applications were true. The CARES Act also barred SBA from looking at tax return transcripts that could have weeded out shady or undeserving applicants, a decision eventually reversed at the end of 2020.“If you open up the bank window and say, give me your application and just promise me you really are who you say you are, you attract a lot of fraudsters and that’s what happened here,” Horowitz said.The SBA inspector general’s office has estimated fraud in the COVID-19 economic injury disaster loan program at $86 billion and the Paycheck Protection program at $20 billion. The watchdog is expected in coming weeks to release revised loss figures that are likely to be much higher.In an interview, SBA Inspector General Hannibal “Mike” Ware declined to say what the new fraud estimate for both programs will be.“It will be a figure that is fair, that is 1,000% defensible by my office, fully backed by our significant criminal investigative activity that is taking place in this space,” Ware said.Ware and his staff are overwhelmed with pandemic-related audits and investigations. The office has a backlog of more than 80,000 actionable leads, close to a 100 years’ worth of work.“Death by a thousand cuts might be death by 80,000 cuts for them,” Horowitz said of Ware’s workload. “It’s just the magnitude of it, the enormity of it.”A 2022 study from the University of Texas at Austin found almost five times as many suspicious Paycheck Protection loans as the $20 billion SBA’s inspector general has reported so far. The research, led by finance professor John Griffin, found as much as $117 billion in questionable and possibly fraudulent loans, citing indicators such as non-registered businesses and multiple loans to the same address.Horowitz, the pandemic watchdog chairman, criticized the government’s failure early on to use the “Do Not Pay” Treasury Department database, designed to keep government money from going to debarred contractors, fugitives, felons or people convicted of tax fraud. Those reviews, he said, could have been done quickly.“It’s a false narrative that has been set out, that there are only two choices,” Horowitz said. “One choice is, get the money out right away. And that the only other choice was to spend weeks and months trying to figure out who was entitled to it.”In less than a few days, a week at most, Horowitz said, SBA might have discovered thousands of ineligible applicants.“24 hours? 48 hours? Would that really have upended the program?” Horowitz said. “I don’t think it would have. And it was data sitting there. It didn’t get checked.”The Biden administration put in place stricter rules to stem pandemic fraud, including use of the “Do Not Pay” database. Biden also recently proposed a $1.6 billion plan to boost law enforcement efforts to go after pandemic relief fraudsters.“I think the bottom line is regardless of what the number is, it emanates overwhelmingly from three programs that were designed and originated in 2020 with too many large holes that opened the door to criminal fraud,” Gene Sperling, the White House&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/biden-covid-business-health-congress-310542ef5cddc914104960a00ae356e0">American Rescue Plan</a>&nbsp;coordinator, said in an interview.“We came into office when the largest amounts of fraud were already out of the barn,” Sperling added.In a statement, an SBA spokesperson declined to say whether the agency agrees with the figures issued by Ware’s office, saying the federal government has not developed an accepted system for assessing fraud in government programs. Previous analyses have pointed to “potential fraud” or “fraud indicators” in a manner that conveys those numbers as a true fraud estimate when they are not, according to the statement.Han Nguyen, a spokesman for the SBA, said Monday that “the vast majority of the likely fraud originated in the first nine months of the pandemic programs, under the Trump administration.” For the COVID-19 economic injury disaster loan program, Nguyen said, SBA's “working estimate” found $28 billion in likely fraud.The coronavirus pandemic plunged the U.S. economy into a short but devastating recession. Jobless rates soared into double digits and Washington sent hundreds of billions of dollars to states to help the suddenly unemployed.For crooks, it was like tossing chum into the sea to lure fish. Many of these state unemployment agencies used antiquated computer systems or had too few staff to stop bogus claims from being paid.“Yes, the states were overwhelmed in terms of demand,” said Brent Parton, acting assistant secretary of the U.S. Labor Department’s Employment and Training Administration. “We had not seen a spike like this ever in a global event like a pandemic. The systems were underfunded. They were not resilient. And I would say, more importantly, were vulnerable to sophisticated attacks by fraudsters.”Fraud in pandemic unemployment assistance programs stands at $76 billion, according to congressional testimony from Labor Department Inspector General Larry Turner. That’s a conservative estimate. Another $115 billion mistakenly went to people who should not have received the benefits, according to his testimony.Turner declined AP’s request for an interview.Turner’s task in identifying all of the pandemic unemployment insurance fraud has been complicated by a lack of cooperation from the federal Bureau of Prisons, according to a September “alert memo” issued by his office. Scam artists used Social Security numbers of federal prisoners to steal millions of dollars in benefits.His office still doesn’t know exactly how much was swiped that way. The prison bureau had declined to provide current data about federal prisoners. The AP reached out to the bureau several times for comment, starting June 2. Bureau spokesperson Emery Nelson said on Monday the agency had provided in February and March “all the necessary data” to the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee. Turner is a member of the committee.Ohio State Auditor Keith Faber saw trouble coming when safeguards to ensure the unemployment aid only went to people who legitimately qualified were lowered, making conditions ripe for fraud and waste. The state’s unemployment agency "took controls down because on the one hand, they literally were drinking from a firehose,” Faber said. “They had a year’s worth of claims in a couple of weeks. The second part of the problem was the (federal government) directed them to get the money out the door as quickly as possible and worry less about security. They took that to heart. I think that was a mistake.”Ohio’s Department of Job and Family Services reported in February $1 billion in fraudulent pandemic unemployment claims and another $4.8 billion in overpayments.The ubiquitous masks that became a symbol of the COVID-19 pandemic are seen on fewer and fewer faces. Hospitalizations for the virus have steadily declined, according to CDC data, and Biden in April ended the national emergency to respond to the pandemic.But on politically divided Capitol Hill, lawmakers have not put the pandemic behind them and are engaged in a fierce debate over the success of the relief spending and who’s to blame for the theft.Too much government money, Republicans argue, breeds fraud, waste and inflation. Democrats have countered that all the financial muscle from Washington saved lives, businesses and jobs.The GOP-led House Oversight and Accountability Committee is investigating pandemic relief spending. “We must identify where this money went, how much ended up in the hands of fraudsters or ineligible participants, and what should be done to ensure it never happens again," the panel's chairman, Rep. James Comer of Kentucky, said in a statement Tuesday.Republicans and Democrats did, however, find common ground last year on bills to give the federal government more time to catch fraudsters. Biden in August signed legislation to increase the statute of limitations from five to 10 years on crimes involving the two major programs managed by the SBA.The extra time will help federal prosecutors untangle pandemic fraud cases, which often involve identity theft and crooks overseas. But there’s no guarantee they’ll catch everyone who jumped at the chance for an easy payday. They’re busy, too, with crimes unrelated to pandemic relief funds.“Do we have enough cases and leads that we could be doing them in 2030? We absolutely could,” said Fruchter, the federal prosecutor in the Eastern District of Washington. “But my experience tells me that likely there will be other priorities that will come up and will need to be addressed. And unfortunately, in our office, we don’t have a dedicated pandemic fraud unit.”Congress has not yet passed a measure that would give prosecutors the additional five years to go after unemployment fraudsters. That worries Turner, the Labor Department watchdog. Without the extension, he told Congress in a late May report, people who stole the benefits may escape justice.Sperling, the White House official, said any future crisis that requires government intervention doesn’t have to be a choice between helping people in need and stopping fraudsters.“The prevention strategy going forward is that in a crisis, you can focus on fast delivery to people in desperate situations without feeling that you can only get that speed by taking down commonsense anti-fraud guardrails,” he said.______