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Feb 23, 2023
Feb 22, 2023
Bamboozlement
Newly released documents show how Republican Mark Brnovich publicized an incomplete account of his office’s probe of the 2020 election in Maricopa County
PHOENIX — Nearly a year after the 2020 election, Arizona’s then-attorney general Mark Brnovich launched an investigation into voting in the state’s largest county that quickly consumed more than 10,000 hours of his staff’s time.
Investigators prepared a report in March 2022 stating that virtually all claims of error and malfeasance were unfounded, according to internal documents reviewed by The Washington Post. Brnovich, a Republican, kept it private.
In April, the attorney general — who was running in the GOP primary for a U.S. Senate seat — released an “Interim Report” claiming that his office had discovered “serious vulnerabilities.” He left out edits from his own investigators refuting his assertions.
His office then compiled an “Election Review Summary” in September that systematically refuted accusations of widespread fraud and made clear that none of the complaining parties — from state lawmakers to self-styled “election integrity” groups — had presented any evidence to support their claims. Brnovich left office last month without releasing the summary.
That timeline emerges from documents released to The Post this week by Brnovich’s successor, Kris Mayes, a Democrat. She said she considered the taxpayer-funded investigation closed and, earlier this month, notified leaders on Maricopa County’s governing board that they were no longer in the state’s crosshairs.
The records show how Brnovich used his office to further claims about voting in Maricopa County that his own staff considered inaccurate. They suggest that his administration privately disregarded fact-checks provided by state investigators while publicly promoting incomplete accounts of the office’s work. The innuendo and inaccuracies, circulated not just in the far reaches of the internet but with the imprimatur of the state’s attorney general, helped make Arizona an epicenter of distrust in the democratic process, eroding confidence not just in the 2020 vote but in subsequent elections.
Brnovich did not respond to questions about his conduct of the probe, his decision not to release additional documents or differences between his public statements and his office’s private findings.
The documents — two investigative summaries and a draft letter with edits, totaling 41 pages — are far from an exhaustive record of Brnovich’s investigation. But they fill in details about the sometimes-enigmatic actions of the state’s former top law enforcement officer.
Brnovich quickly affirmed then-President Trump’s loss in Arizona in November 2020, angering fellow Republicans. And he went on to resist Trump’s efforts to overturn the vote. Yet he flirted with claims of fraud as he courted GOP support over the subsequent two years, trumpeting his interim report on a far-right radio show and saying, “It’s frustrating for all of us, because I think we all know what happened in 2020.” It was only in the final days before the November 2022 midterm election, several months after Brnovich had lost his Senate primary, that he began to denounce politicians who denied Trump’s defeat, calling them “clowns” engaged in a “giant grift.”
In releasing materials that Brnovich’s administration had kept from public view, Mayes said she was reorienting the work of the attorney general’s office — away from pursuing conspiratorial claims of fraud and toward protecting the right to vote, investigating the few cases of wrongdoing that typically occur every election and preventing threats against election workers.
“The people of Arizona had a right to know this information before the 2022 election,” Mayes said in an interview. “Maricopa County election officials had a right to know that they were cleared of wrongdoing. And every American had a right to know that the 2020 election in Arizona, which in part decided the presidency, was conducted accurately and fairly.”
The records released this week represent a fraction of the thousands of pages produced by investigators and attorneys during the investigation, including additional material from drafts of reports and interviews and correspondence with witnesses and election officials. Mayes’s staff is reviewing those documents and is redacting sensitive information before making them public in the coming months, said Richie Taylor, her spokesperson.
Brnovich’s administration did not release the investigative summaries, which The Post requested under Arizona’s public records law before he left office in January. Brnovich and his staff said repeatedly throughout the investigation that they were limited in what they could disclose since the probe was ongoing.
But his office did on occasion make public some aspects of its findings. On Aug. 1, the day before the state’s primary election, Brnovich said his office had finished its probe of allegations that hundreds of votes had been cast in the name of deceased people. His office found one instance. In December 2022, as Brnovich was preparing to leave office, an executive assistant wrote in an email to The Post that “regardless of transition, we will continue processing and will release when completed.”
The 2020 election in Maricopa County drew intense scrutiny because it’s the state’s largest voting jurisdiction, home to more than half of voters, and helped swing Arizona to Joe Biden and deliver him the presidency. Brnovich launched the investigation shortly after Cyber Ninjas, a Florida-based firm hired by the GOP-led state senate, ended its own review of the election in September 2021. The months-long legislative review, which was roundly criticized by election experts, affirmed Trump’s loss in the state. Brnovich was competing at the time in a Senate primary contest against Trump-aligned candidates who said they would have taken steps following the 2020 election to thwart certification of Biden’s victory.
The attorney general’s probe stretched through 2022, as Brnovich’s office spent more than 10,000 hours examining claims of irregularities, malfeasance and fraud, records show. At one point, the office set up a command center, and “the review of the audit was made a singular, high-level priority; all hands were assigned to work exclusively on reviewing the audit with other matters being placed on hold unless a matter required immediate action on our part,” a report said. Mayes said the office has about 60 investigators, all of whom participated in the probe at some point, along with lawyers and support staff.
By September 2022, a year into the inquiry, the special investigations section had received 638 election-related complaints and deemed 430 of them worthy of investigation. Of those, just 22 cases were submitted for prosecutorial review; two cases involving felons who illegally sought to vote were prosecuted, leading to convictions.
note: in case you're wondering, those 430 instances deemed worthy of investigation means the election was 99.99% clean. These pricks aren't seriously asserting "the election was rigged". They're attacking our trust in democratic processes.
eg: raise the question of shenanigans, intimating there are massive problems, then move to solve those make-believe problems by proposing drastic measures that you say are meant to protect the system, while actually intending them to dismantle democracy altogether. Exactly the way they taught it at School Of The Americas, when we were training assholes like Pinochet and Noriega to seize power.
Brnovich never broadcast the full findings, declining to close the books on suspicions raised by an interim report with characterizations directly rebutted by his own office.
The interim report, delivered in the form of a letter to Karen Fann, then the Republican president of the state senate, was met by Trump allies as confirmation that voting in Maricopa County was corrupted. The letter, sent on April 6, highlighted management of early voting, saying, “We can report that there are problematic systemwide issues that relate to early ballot handling and verification.”
But Brnovich’s staff took issue with his criticism of the handling and verification of ballots, writing in a draft of the letter, “we did not uncover any criminality or fraud having been committed in this area during the 2020 general election.”
State investigators took issue with certain language included in an April 2022 draft of then-Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovoch's interim report on his office's investigation of the 2020 election in Maricopa County, highlighting problematic text in yellow and offering corrections in blue.
State investigators took issue with certain language included in an April 2022 draft of then-Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovoch's interim report on his office's investigation of the 2020 election in Maricopa County, highlighting problematic text in yellow and offering corrections in blue. (Arizona Attorney General)
The staff comments were made in blue type, below disputed statements highlighted in yellow, and included in a document sent by a chief special agent in the criminal division to several others in the office on April 1. That document was forwarded to Brnovich’s top aide. The subject line was, “Additional Considerations for Draft Interim Report.” It’s not clear who else reviewed the document.
The considerations were largely not reflected in Brnovich’s final version.
Brnovich speculated that a large number of early ballots in the 2020 contest may have prevented county officials from properly verifying signatures on the ballots, even though his staff advised him that the county had rigorous training and processes, as well as additional staff, to ensure proper verification.
Brnovich went ahead with his claim that “Maricopa County had not always timely and fully responded to our requests for records,” even though staff advised in the draft document that it was the “collective opinion of … investigators” that the county “was cooperative and responsive to our requests.”
When Brnovich released his interim report, it was not accompanied by a fuller “Investigation Summary,” prepared by the assistant chief special agent and dated March 8. The 24-page summary described a range of allegations probed by the attorney general’s office, including improper signature verification, misuse of drop boxes and incomplete access to records for the state senate’s audit. That report was also shared with Brnovich’s top aide, Taylor said.
Virtually all allegations had been deemed unfounded, according to the summary. Several issues were listed as undetermined, including a claim by Cyber Ninjas that certain files had been deleted by the county; investigators had yet to review all archived data.
The summary revealed that there had been procedural violations in one instance — involving the retrieval of ballots from drop boxes. The state did not find that the county had mishandled ballots, according to the summary, but that it had not always properly recorded certain details, such as the time of retrieval.
Regarding signature verification, the issue highlighted in Brnovich’s interim report, the prepared summary found, “No improper Election Procedures were discovered during the Signature Verification review.”
Later the same year, Brnovich’s office came to further conclusions about the absence of any basis for claims of systematic fraud, but kept those findings private as well.
On Sept. 19, about a month after Brnovich had lost the GOP nomination for Senate to a MAGA-aligned candidate who insisted that “Trump won in 2020,” a memo summarized the work of investigators. The memo, drawn up by a chief special agent in anticipation of a final report, was not shared with office leadership since no such final report was ever drafted or requested, Taylor said.
The memo, titled “Election Review Summary,” emphasized that, “no evidence of election fraud, manipulation of the election process, or any instances of organized/coordinated fraud was provided by any of the complaining parties.”
Of the more conspicuous claims examined by investigators — including those circulated by Cyber Ninjas, Texas-based True the Vote and others — the groups “did not provide any evidence to support their allegations,” the memo concluded. The information they did provide “was speculative in many instances and when investigated by our agents and support staff, was found to be inaccurate.”
The memo also reported that some high-profile Republican officials — who had publicly made fantastical claims of fraud — did not reiterate those assertions under questioning by agents, when they were subject to a state law prohibiting false reporting to law enforcement.
Mark Finchem, then a state representative who later ran unsuccessfully for secretary of state, had repeatedly claimed that a “source” told him that more than 30,000 fictitious votes had appeared during the general election in a county south of Phoenix. But when questioned by agents, he did not repeat the claim, “specifically stating he did not have any evidence of fraud and that he did not wish to take up our time.” Finchem provided four ballots that he said reflected a flawed voting process, but those ballots had not been counted and were unopened.
Sonny Borrelli, a GOP state senator who had alleged a coverup of election irregularities, did not repeat those claims during an interview but did provide what he said was the name of a deceased voter, the memo stated. Investigators learned that the alleged deceased voter was alive, had not voted and was not a resident of Arizona.
Investigators sought a meeting with Wendy Rogers, a Republican state senator and vocal election denier who now chairs the chamber’s elections committee. But Rogers refused to meet, the report said, “saying she was waiting to see the ‘perp walk’ of those who committed fraud during the election.”
No perp walk resulted from allegations presented to the unit, including that aerial objects flipped votes; that election workers scrubbed hard drives; and that satellites under the control of the Italian military penetrated vote-counting machines.
The interim report, delivered in the form of a letter to Karen Fann, then the Republican president of the state senate, was met by Trump allies as confirmation that voting in Maricopa County was corrupted. The letter, sent on April 6, highlighted management of early voting, saying, “We can report that there are problematic systemwide issues that relate to early ballot handling and verification.”
But Brnovich’s staff took issue with his criticism of the handling and verification of ballots, writing in a draft of the letter, “we did not uncover any criminality or fraud having been committed in this area during the 2020 general election.”
State investigators took issue with certain language included in an April 2022 draft of then-Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovoch's interim report on his office's investigation of the 2020 election in Maricopa County, highlighting problematic text in yellow and offering corrections in blue.
State investigators took issue with certain language included in an April 2022 draft of then-Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovoch's interim report on his office's investigation of the 2020 election in Maricopa County, highlighting problematic text in yellow and offering corrections in blue. (Arizona Attorney General)
The staff comments were made in blue type, below disputed statements highlighted in yellow, and included in a document sent by a chief special agent in the criminal division to several others in the office on April 1. That document was forwarded to Brnovich’s top aide. The subject line was, “Additional Considerations for Draft Interim Report.” It’s not clear who else reviewed the document.
The considerations were largely not reflected in Brnovich’s final version.
Brnovich speculated that a large number of early ballots in the 2020 contest may have prevented county officials from properly verifying signatures on the ballots, even though his staff advised him that the county had rigorous training and processes, as well as additional staff, to ensure proper verification.
Brnovich went ahead with his claim that “Maricopa County had not always timely and fully responded to our requests for records,” even though staff advised in the draft document that it was the “collective opinion of … investigators” that the county “was cooperative and responsive to our requests.”
State investigators took issue with certain language included in an April 2022 draft of then-Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovoch's interim report on his office's investigation of the 2020 election in Maricopa County, highlighting problematic text in yellow and offering corrections in blue.
When Brnovich released his interim report, it was not accompanied by a fuller “Investigation Summary,” prepared by the assistant chief special agent and dated March 8. The 24-page summary described a range of allegations probed by the attorney general’s office, including improper signature verification, misuse of drop boxes and incomplete access to records for the state senate’s audit. That report was also shared with Brnovich’s top aide, Taylor said.
Virtually all allegations had been deemed unfounded, according to the summary. Several issues were listed as undetermined, including a claim by Cyber Ninjas that certain files had been deleted by the county; investigators had yet to review all archived data.
The summary revealed that there had been procedural violations in one instance — involving the retrieval of ballots from drop boxes. The state did not find that the county had mishandled ballots, according to the summary, but that it had not always properly recorded certain details, such as the time of retrieval.
Regarding signature verification, the issue highlighted in Brnovich’s interim report, the prepared summary found, “No improper Election Procedures were discovered during the Signature Verification review.”
Later the same year, Brnovich’s office came to further conclusions about the absence of any basis for claims of systematic fraud, but kept those findings private as well.
On Sept. 19, about a month after Brnovich had lost the GOP nomination for Senate to a MAGA-aligned candidate who insisted that “Trump won in 2020,” a memo summarized the work of investigators. The memo, drawn up by a chief special agent in anticipation of a final report, was not shared with office leadership since no such final report was ever drafted or requested, Taylor said.
The memo, titled “Election Review Summary,” emphasized that, “no evidence of election fraud, manipulation of the election process, or any instances of organized/coordinated fraud was provided by any of the complaining parties.”
A September 2022 memo summarizing the state probe of the 2020 election in Maricopa County went unreleased by the outgoing attorney general, Mark Brnovich
Of the more conspicuous claims examined by investigators — including those circulated by Cyber Ninjas, Texas-based True the Vote and others — the groups “did not provide any evidence to support their allegations,” the memo concluded. The information they did provide “was speculative in many instances and when investigated by our agents and support staff, was found to be inaccurate.”
The memo also reported that some high-profile Republican officials — who had publicly made fantastical claims of fraud — did not reiterate those assertions under questioning by agents, when they were subject to a state law prohibiting false reporting to law enforcement.
Mark Finchem, then a state representative who later ran unsuccessfully for secretary of state, had repeatedly claimed that a “source” told him that more than 30,000 fictitious votes had appeared during the general election in a county south of Phoenix. But when questioned by agents, he did not repeat the claim, “specifically stating he did not have any evidence of fraud and that he did not wish to take up our time.” Finchem provided four ballots that he said reflected a flawed voting process, but those ballots had not been counted and were unopened.
Sonny Borrelli, a GOP state senator who had alleged a coverup of election irregularities, did not repeat those claims during an interview but did provide what he said was the name of a deceased voter, the memo stated. Investigators learned that the alleged deceased voter was alive, had not voted and was not a resident of Arizona.
Investigators sought a meeting with Wendy Rogers, a Republican state senator and vocal election denier who now chairs the chamber’s elections committee. But Rogers refused to meet, the report said, “saying she was waiting to see the ‘perp walk’ of those who committed fraud during the election.”
No perp walk resulted from allegations presented to the unit, including that aerial objects flipped votes; that election workers scrubbed hard drives; and that satellites under the control of the Italian military penetrated vote-counting machines.
Shifting The Blame
Typical. Instead of looking at Russia's invasion of Ukraine and seeing what an asshole Putin is for launching a war of conquest, China says we should look at it and see the big bad American boogey man.
Permanent Standard Disclaimer:
That's not to say the US has nothing to be ashamed of when it comes to fucking with things we have no business fucking with.
But this is not one of those things.
Yes, we have a vested interest in a free and democratic Ukraine, and helping Ukraine in service to that interest is good dual-purpose policy.
The spread of democracy is an all-round good thing in itself. And whenever democracy takes hold anywhere, it works against autocratic dickheads everywhere - like Putin and Xi. And also against plutocratic dickheads like most of the "conservatives" here in USAmerica, Inc.
As always, I maintain a firm belief that forces are at work all over the joint trying to move every country towards a global plutocracy. But that's a slightly different rant.
The focus here is on the way these dickheads try to deflect and shift the blame. They either blame the victim (Putin'a bullshit about "De-Nazification"), or they deflect to something like his secondary rationalization of "NATO is out to get us", which is what Xi is picking up on, with the variation of "everything bad that happens can be blamed on Washington".
Democracy in Ukraine is in fact a "threat to Russian", but it's only a threat to "Putin's Russia", and it's in Xi's best interest to lean in favor of a fellow-autocrat, while trying not to look like he's directly supporting Putin's war. And that's another exercise in selective reasoning because of Xi's ambitions of "taking Taiwan back".
It's been said that Geopolitics is a worldwide poker game where everybody's cheating and everybody knows everybody's cheating. So it should never come as a surprise when some event or series of events reveals what a fucked up mess it really is.
Anyway ...
Ahead of the first anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, China has launched a public diplomacy offensive to wrest control of the narrative about its role in the conflict, trying to clear itself of accusations that it has sided with Russia while accusing the United States of turning the conflict into a “proxy” war.
Few of the positions staked out by Chinese officials in a flurry of speeches and documents this week are new, but they have underscored why Beijing continues to stand by Moscow even as it professes “deep concern” about the conflict: It considers the United States — not Russia — the progenitor of global insecurity, including in Ukraine.
Beijing insists it is neutral in the conflict, but those claims routinely clash with its rhetorical and diplomatic support for Russia.
That was illustrated this week, with China’s top diplomat, Wang Yi, arriving in Moscow in a show of solidarity with Russia — especially when contrasted with President Biden’s unannounced trip to Kyiv, where he walked the streets with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
The China-Russia relationship has stood the test of stormy international circumstances and remained “as stable as Mount Tai,” Wang told Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday, using a Chinese idiom for rock-solid.
“Crisis and chaos appear repeatedly before us, but within crisis there is opportunity,” he said.
By actively responding to the challenges of the times, the two nations can bring about an even deeper comprehensive strategic partnership, and that relationship “will not be overpowered by a third party’s coercion or pressure” because it is built on a strong economic, political and cultural foundation, Wang added.
Chinese leader Xi Jinping is expected to visit Russia some time this year, but the Kremlin declined Wednesday to be drawn on reports that it could be as soon as April.
From the beginning of the war, China has tried to protect its rapidly deepening economic and political ties with Russia at the same time it tried to assure Western audiences that it wants peace and should not be a target for sanctions.
But as China’s role as a lifeline for an isolated Russia grows, it is becoming harder for Beijing to stay on the sidelines.
The Foreign Ministry in Beijing has declined to comment on reports that Xi will deliver a “peace speech” on Friday, exactly one year since Russia launched its invasion, saying only that China will issue a document clarifying its stance on the day.
The problem with China’s story of being an honest broker is that Russia remains a “key ally in the effort to push back against the U.S.-led order,” said Arthur Kroeber, partner at the research firm Gavekal Dragonomics.
“The true purpose of Xi’s speech” — assuming it takes place — “will be to drive a wedge between the U.S. and its European allies, by suggesting that China, not the U.S., is the real advocate of a peaceful resolution of the Russia-Ukraine war,” he wrote in a note on Wednesday.
The latest propaganda blitz also provides a clearer picture of Xi’s foreign policy priorities as he embarks on a third term in power. Bringing about an end to the war is only one item in Xi’s ambitious agenda to reshape the global order so that the United States and its allies cannot slow China’s rise or challenge its territorial claims. And to that end, China remains closely aligned with Russia.
An attempt to justify China’s stance on the war in Ukraine to a conflicted domestic audience, the new wave of propaganda is also a way to rebuff growing concern that Beijing will step up support for Putin’s war effort as it enters its second year.
Beijing has rejected U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s warning that China might be considering providing “lethal” support to Russia as a “wild accusation” and accused the United States of wanting Ukraine to “fight till the last Ukrainian.”
“It’s plain for the world to see who is calling for dialogue and striving for peace and who is adding fuel to the fire, handing out knives and instigating hostility,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said on Tuesday.
Ding Chun, director of the Center for European Studies at Fudan University in Shanghai, said Blinken’s claim was a “strategic statement” meant to warn China. “It’s not a substantive accusation, but rather a part of U.S. strategy to tell China not to have the intention [to do so],” he said.
But it’s not just the United States that is concerned about China’s intentions. Zelensky told the German daily Die Welt this week that he hoped China would make a “pragmatic assessment” and avoid allying itself with Russia’s war effort, because if it did “there will be a world war.”
In response to fears that the conflict could expand, Wang Wen, a professor at Renmin University, said it was wrong for Zelensky to speculate about Beijing’s actions. Instead, “he should thank China for promoting humanitarian aid to Ukraine. If China really were to support Russia, then Zelensky’s life would get even worse,” he said.
(In the month after the invasion, China gave Ukraine $725,000 of humanitarian aid and $1.5 million in other forms of aid. It hasn’t announced additional support since then.)
Seeing the United States as a source of instability — while giving aggression from Russia and other authoritarian states a pass — is a longtime stance of the Chinese Communist Party. But under Xi, it is a worldview that has become more deeply embedded into China’s foreign policy and echoed by its national security establishment.
Lu Xiang, a researcher at the state-run Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said the true threat to Ukraine’s autonomy is Western support. Having once been part of the Soviet Union means that “if a big country from outside the region uses Ukraine as a chess piece to weaken Russia’s strategic interests, then that means [Ukraine’s] sovereign interests will of necessity be suppressed,” he said.
At the core of Xi’s priorities for promoting China’s security is an effort to counteract the United States’ influence in the international order, often by enlisting countries that share similar grievances.
Chinese complaints about American “abuse of hegemony” in global military, political and economic affairs were listed in a five-page document issued by the Chinese Foreign Ministry on Monday, which called the Ukraine conflict a case of the United States “repeating its old tactics of waging proxy … wars.”
Separately this week, China issued a “concept paper” that staked out positions on global hot-spot issues, from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to the Pacific islands.
China’s foreign minister, Qin Gang, released the document at an event in Beijing, running through a string of broad commitments to uphold the U.N. charter, reject the use of nuclear weapons and protect territorial integrity, while also taking thinly veiled swipes at the United States for “abusing unilateral sanctions” and building security blocs.
The document, which did not mention Russia, made only passing reference to the “Ukraine crisis” as an issue to be resolved through dialogue. It repeated that “legitimate security concerns of all countries” should be taken seriously — a phrase often used by Beijing in defense of Moscow.
Qin also used the event to call for countries to stop “clamoring about ‘Ukraine today, Taiwan tomorrow.’”
Since the start of the war, China has tried to draw a distinction between Russia’s actions and its own escalating military aggression in the Taiwan Strait. For many in the self-governed island democracy, however, the war has been a wake-up call for the need to be better prepared to repel an attack from China.
Missing from the newly proactive stance China laid out this week is any indication that Beijing is willing to take a leading role in peace negotiations.
“Neither Russia nor Ukraine can defeat each other completely in the short term,” said Fudan University’s Ding. “China has emphasized the need to stop the war and promote peace, but it has not explicitly said that it wants to be a mediator in this war, and it is very difficult to do so in practice. Although China has a better relationship with Russia, it is a question of to what extent Russia will listen to China’s thoughts.”
Feb 21, 2023
Putin Speaks
To save time, I've summed it up for y'all - here's what he said:
“The West wants us to suffer. They made us invade Ukraine. The conflict will never end. I'm gonna go play with my nukes for a while. Fuck everybody but us.”
And the crowd went wild!
Russian President Vladimir Putin suspended Moscow’s participation in the last remaining nuclear arms control pact with the U.S., announcing the move Tuesday in a bitter speech where he made clear he would not change his strategy in the war in Ukraine.
In his long-delayed state-of-the-nation address, Putin cast his country — and Ukraine — as victims of Western double-dealing and said it was Russia, not Ukraine, fighting for its very existence.
“We aren’t fighting the Ukrainian people,” Putin said in a speech days before the war’s first anniversary on Friday. “The Ukrainian people have become hostages of the Kyiv regime and its Western masters, which have effectively occupied the country.”
The speech reiterated a litany of grievances that the Russian leader has frequently offered as justification for the widely condemned military campaign while vowing no military let-up in a conflict that has reawakened fears of a new Cold War.
In his long-delayed state-of-the-nation address, Putin cast his country — and Ukraine — as victims of Western double-dealing and said it was Russia, not Ukraine, fighting for its very existence.
“We aren’t fighting the Ukrainian people,” Putin said in a speech days before the war’s first anniversary on Friday. “The Ukrainian people have become hostages of the Kyiv regime and its Western masters, which have effectively occupied the country.”
The speech reiterated a litany of grievances that the Russian leader has frequently offered as justification for the widely condemned military campaign while vowing no military let-up in a conflict that has reawakened fears of a new Cold War.
On top of that, Putin sharply upped the ante by declaring that Moscow would suspend its participation in the so-called New START Treaty. The pact, signed in 2010 by the U.S. and Russia, caps the number of long-range nuclear warheads the two sides can deploy and limits the use of missiles that can carry atomic weapons.
- more -
In Case You're Wondering
... or not wondering, or whatever: No, I don't miss this phony bullshit at all.
Today's Quote
-- Primo Levi
Today's Tweet
A bodyguard armed with - what? an Uzi? Fake lord have mercy.
The cult outside Mar-a-Lago today. pic.twitter.com/za32oHvo0s
— Ron Filipkowski 🇺🇦 (@RonFilipkowski) February 20, 2023
Because Always
In the end it always reveals itself to be about money and power. There's no ideology, and since there's no honor in it, there can be no commitment to anything but doing the shittiest things they can conjure up out of the depths of their own depravity, fueled by their own self-hatred.
- Eventually, torture is always about the torture.
- Cruelty, even though you've convinced yourself it's in furtherance of some noble-sounding objective, always degrades to cruelty for the sake of being cruel.
- A willingness to do shitty things will always drag you down to where we can all see you're not reluctant to do shitty things in service to a just cause - you're eager to do them for their own sake.
A bitter management dispute pulled back the curtain on allegations of workplace misconduct and mismanagement of donor money
Project Veritas, the right-wing organization known for its undercover sting operations, has split with James O’Keefe, the group’s founder and chairman, following a bitter management dispute that pulled back the curtain on allegations of workplace misconduct and mismanagement of donor money.
The group’s executive director, Daniel Strack, informed some staff on Monday that O’Keefe had issued an ultimatum demanding that the board of directors resign as a condition for him to stay, according to people familiar with Strack’s account. R.C. Maxwell, a spokesman for Project Veritas, wrote on Twitter that O’Keefe “was removed from his position as CEO by the Project Veritas board.”
Neither Strack nor O’Keefe responded to requests for comment. O’Keefe notified employees of his exit on Monday morning at the organization’s headquarters in Mamaroneck, N.Y., and proceeded to pack up his belongings.
He hinted that he would form a rival organization, according to a video of his remarks obtained by The Washington Post, saying “the mission will perhaps take on a new name.”
“I don’t know why this is happening now,” O’Keefe said of the move against him. Dressed in suit and tie, he accused his internal adversaries of “ruining our reputation in front of supporters and donors and leaking confidential information and fabricating stories.”
O’Keefe’s exit spells an uncertain future for Project Veritas, a controversial organization closely identified with its 38-year-old founder. The group, formed in 2010, has employed deceptive tactics in attempts to expose alleged wrongdoing by journalists, liberals and labor unions. O’Keefe’s secretly recorded videos, sometimes landing their subjects in hot water, have been shown to be selectively edited, often leaving out key context. Recent stings have been aimed at Pfizer, the pharmaceutical giant behind one of the coronavirus vaccines, though the company has defended its methods.
O’Keefe’s tactics have sometimes put him in legal jeopardy. He pleaded guilty in 2010 to a misdemeanor charge of entering a federal building under false pretenses; agreed in 2013 to pay $100,000 to settle a lawsuit arising from his efforts to target a community organizing group; and in 2021 faced a court-ordered FBI search of his apartment in connection with the alleged theft of a diary belonging to President Biden’s daughter, Ashley Biden.
All the while, O’Keefe gained clout in conservative circles and found common cause with Donald Trump, which boosted fundraising. By 2020, the nonprofit’s annual revenue had broken $20 million, according to public filings. In 2021, the most recent year for which a tax filing is available, Project Veritas paid O’Keefe about $400,000.
But behind the scenes, O’Keefe struggled to manage his growing organization.
His exit follows internal conflict that pitted O’Keefe against two of the group’s executives — Barry Hinckley, the chief strategy officer, and Tom O’Hara, the chief financial officer. Earlier this month, O’Keefe sought to oust Hinckley and O’Hara after they raised concerns about his approach to fundraising and treatment of staff.
“Last night I stood up to a Bully and was fired,” Hinckley wrote to colleagues in a group chat on the messaging app Telegram. “Management by shaming and bullying is never acceptable and it doesn’t belong in the workplace.”
The board, after an emergency meeting, brought back both executives, placed O’Keefe on paid leave and indicated to Project Veritas leadership that it would deliberate over O’Keefe’s fate at the organization. In the meantime, some Project Veritas staff prepared a memo airing grievances against O’Keefe, which his allies strenuously denied.
The 11-page document, which was obtained by The Post, accused O’Keefe of demeaning his employees, mistreating donors and squandering the group’s resources. One person labeled him a “power drunk tyrant.”
Some objected to the use of donor money on highly produced videos featuring O’Keefe. “All the theatre stuff and how that is handled makes me very uneasy,” wrote this person, who went unnamed. “I understand it is rationalized as ‘raising awareness of our brand,’ but the cost of that both in a financial sense as well as personnel and resources, becomes priority over why donors actually give us money, which is to conduct undercover investigations which expose waste fraud and abuse.”
The memo paints a picture of fear and paranoia within the organization. One person recounted an episode in which employees were required to travel to headquarters for questioning by two private investigators over concerns about a “mole” in the office. Another person wrote, “Everyone is operating in fear because James is erratic.”
The alleged instability extended to interactions with donors, according to the memo. O’Keefe is said to have rudely demanded money from benefactors, rebuffed a donor when she asked for a photo with him and arrived late to donor meetings.
The criticism of O’Keefe prompted a backlash among some of his employees and outside allies, who heaped blame on the group’s executives and some of its board members. They singled out Matthew Tyrmand, a right-wing commentator described by O’Keefe’s defenders as the “ringleader” of a “coup” against him. Tyrmand has told associates that people weighing in on internal developments “don’t have a clue” about what’s going on, according to messages reviewed by The Post. He did not respond to requests for comment.
The suggestion of disquietude among donors met a vehement response from a lawyer who claimed to be representing a “large group of significant donors to Project Veritas.” The lawyer, Stephen C. Piepgrass, sent a cease-and-desist letter to the group’s board of directors expressing “grave concerns” about any effort to remove O’Keefe and warning that the board “may already be acting in violation” of charity law.
In addition to Tyrmand, the letter was addressed to four other board members, not including O’Keefe.
O’Keefe asked allies who reached out to him to promote the cease-and-desist letter, according to people in touch with him.
In his speech on Monday morning, O’Keefe said the board rebuffed his offer to apologize to staff for his brusque manner. He read aloud from what he said were board minutes recording that he had been “indefinitely suspended from this organization,” even though Project Veritas publicly maintained that he was on vacation.
O’Keefe also described the terms of what Strack, the group’s executive director, referred to as an ultimatum. O’Keefe said he wrote a letter to the board on Feb. 16 proposing that its members resign by the end of last week “or I’ll be forced to walk away.”
“I was asked to be gone until the 20th; it is now the 20th,” he said. “I asked the board to resign for their conduct, and they did not. So currently I have no job at Project Veritas. I have no position here based on what the board has done.”
Toward the end of his remarks to staff, O’Keefe choked up as he thanked his parents, recalling how he founded Project Veritas, 13 years ago, from his father’s carriage house.
Because it is set up as a nonprofit, Project Veritas is not required to disclose its donors. Details of its financing, however, can be glimpsed in separate disclosures by its benefactors. More than a quarter of its revenue in 2020 came from the Bradley Impact Fund, a donor-advised conservative philanthropy based in Milwaukee, according to a tax filing by that group. Project Veritas sought unsuccessfully in 2017 to plant a false story in The Post about failed Senate candidate Roy Moore. In 2020, it aimed to furnish evidence for Trump’s false claims of voter fraud.
Feb 20, 2023
Predators
In 1977, the guy borrowed $5,250 to get him some college learnin'. For that money, he could've bought a brand new Oldsmobile Cutlas Supreme Brougham with all the trimmings ...
Instead, he bought himself a nightmare - a problem that's followed him his whole adult life.
He took out a student loan in ’77. Today, he’s barely cracked the principal.
The struggles of some borrowers to clear their debts expose flaws in the system
The Biden-Harris Administration’s Student Debt Relief Plan Explained
Instead, he bought himself a nightmare - a problem that's followed him his whole adult life.
And it's still causing him trouble.
The struggles of some borrowers to clear their debts expose flaws in the system
When C.W. Hamilton took out his first student loan in 1977, the Education Department wasn’t even a federal agency. The $5,250 he borrowed to complete an associate’s degree at Cochise College in Arizona was supposed to be an investment in his future, not a lifelong burden. Yet after more than 40 years of payments and bouts of default, Hamilton still owes almost as much as he first borrowed.
“It’s like an anchor around my neck,” said Hamilton, a 72-year-old Army veteran in Reno, Nev. “I live on peanuts. ... I can never get from underneath this debt.”
There are nearly 47,000 people like Hamilton who have been in repayment on their federal student loans for at least 40 years, according to data obtained from the Education Department through a Freedom of Information Act request. About 82 percent of them are in default on their loans, meaning they haven’t made a voluntary payment in at least 270 days.
“This is sort of a monumental failure,” said Abby Shafroth, director of the National Consumer Law Center’s Student Loan Borrower Assistance Project. “There are so many relief programs in the student loan system to address some sort of financial distress. But it’s this real patchwork, and borrowers struggle to navigate it. The department itself and its servicers often can’t navigate it either.”
While these borrowers represent a sliver of the 43.5 million people with federal student debt, their existence is an indictment of policies meant to help people manage their loans. Years of administrative failures and poorly designed programs have denied many borrowers an off-ramp from a perpetual cycle of debt. Even as the Biden administration tries to remedy these problems — including fighting legal challenges to its plan to cancel up to $20,000 in debt for many — the fixes could still leave vulnerable borrowers like Hamilton on the sidelines.
The road to repayment
“It’s like an anchor around my neck,” said Hamilton, a 72-year-old Army veteran in Reno, Nev. “I live on peanuts. ... I can never get from underneath this debt.”
There are nearly 47,000 people like Hamilton who have been in repayment on their federal student loans for at least 40 years, according to data obtained from the Education Department through a Freedom of Information Act request. About 82 percent of them are in default on their loans, meaning they haven’t made a voluntary payment in at least 270 days.
“This is sort of a monumental failure,” said Abby Shafroth, director of the National Consumer Law Center’s Student Loan Borrower Assistance Project. “There are so many relief programs in the student loan system to address some sort of financial distress. But it’s this real patchwork, and borrowers struggle to navigate it. The department itself and its servicers often can’t navigate it either.”
While these borrowers represent a sliver of the 43.5 million people with federal student debt, their existence is an indictment of policies meant to help people manage their loans. Years of administrative failures and poorly designed programs have denied many borrowers an off-ramp from a perpetual cycle of debt. Even as the Biden administration tries to remedy these problems — including fighting legal challenges to its plan to cancel up to $20,000 in debt for many — the fixes could still leave vulnerable borrowers like Hamilton on the sidelines.
The road to repayment
To understand how tens of thousands of people could be in debt for decades, consider the options for repaying federal student loans. When borrowers leave school, they are automatically assigned to a standard 10-year repayment plan. Others extend the period by enrolling in graduated plans that increase payments over time or income-driven repayment plans that tie their monthly bill to earnings and family size.
People can also temporarily pause their payments through deferment or forbearance, which can lengthen the timeline. From the time student loan borrowers’ first loans enter repayment, the median length of time it takes to pay in full is 15½ years, according to the Education Department. How much you borrow, how much you earn and whether you get your degree can all play a role in how quickly you pay off the debt.
Those last two factors played a starring role in Hamilton’s struggle to repay his student loans. After a dispute with an instructor, he left Cochise before completing his aviation studies. That led to a series of low-wage jobs and relocations for work. School loans were low on the list of priorities for the father of five. Hamilton doesn’t recall receiving any notice to make payments for the first decade after leaving school, which he suspects is because he moved around so much.
“The job market was really tight at the time, so I was taking different jobs for a while and didn’t have a locked-down address,” Hamilton recalls. “We didn’t have cellphones at that time, so they couldn’t call and say, ‘Hey, you’re behind on your loans.’”
But the debt caught up with him soon after he began receiving Social Security disability benefits. Injuries from stints fighting wildfires and fixing airplanes left Hamilton unable to work, and his federal benefits became fair game for collection. Through the Treasury Offset Program, the federal government has been garnishing his disability benefits on and off since 2002.
Before the Education Department paused payments and collection in 2020 because of the coronavirus pandemic, he’d involuntarily paid more than $13,000. Treasury last deducted $175.05 from his $1,165 monthly Social Security check to service fees and interest on his loans — leaving Hamilton still owing $4,963.
“It’s tough because they’re taking all of this money, for all of these years, and nothing is going to the principal,” Hamilton said. “I’m getting nowhere. I was climbing up, but my debt kept going up.”
He had tried to shake free from the offset. Given his disability, Hamilton applied for a discharge of his loans through a program for totally and permanently disabled borrowers but was denied. He opted for student loan rehabilitation, a one-time process that brings a borrower back into good standing after nine consecutive payments. But Hamilton fell back into default. He said he was then advised to consolidate, another way to exit default by taking out a new loan to repay the past-due debt, but felt uneasy about another loan.
A fresh start
An analysis of federal data from July 2003 to April 2016 found 70 percent of borrowers in default were able to bring their student loans back into good standing within 10 years, but the rest remained in default. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau found that up to a third of borrowers who exit through loan rehabilitation default again within two years. It’s a problem that reflects the limitations of the system, said Brian Denten, an officer with the Pew Charitable Trusts’ project on student borrower success.
“You only get one shot at each of these options,” Denten said. “After that, if you default again, you can either pay off your entire loan in full or essentially sit there and have your wages, Social Security or tax refund garnished until your obligation is resolved.”
The Biden administration is temporarily waiving the rules governing default, offering 7.5 million people like Hamilton a “fresh start” by placing their loans in good standing when the payment pause ends even if they’ve defaulted multiple times in the past.
The initiative will eliminate borrowers’ record of default before the repayment pause and reinstate their eligibility for federal Pell grants, work-study and additional student loans to help those who may have dropped out before completing their degrees. It will also spare people from the seizure of wages, tax refunds and Social Security benefits.
Rich Williams, senior adviser in the Office of the Undersecretary at the department, said the Biden administration is working to understand the administrative, regulatory and statutory changes needed to realign the existing delinquency and default consequences.
“The principles that we are following as we’re exploring policies like the new income-based repayment plan ... [are] that borrowers shouldn’t be in repayment for more than 25 years,” Williams said. “We’re going through that exploration phase, and Fresh Start is the first step.”
The one-time initiative isn’t exactly seamless. Rather than being automatically enrolled, people in default must contact the department’s Default Resolution Group or their loan holders to take full advantage of the program. They will have one year from the end of the student loan payment pause — set to expire later this year — to make payment arrangements. Failure to act will throw borrowers back into default.
“A big part of it will be getting the word out,” Denten said. “We know from speaking with servicers and borrowers that it can be hard to establish a regular line of communication.”
Even if people take advantage of the program, they could end up defaulting again. Denten said connecting distressed borrowers to an income-driven repayment plan will be critical. Depending on their income, people enrolled in such plans can pay as little as $0 a month and it would count as credit toward loan cancellation. It is a lifeline, however, that doesn’t always reach the people most in need.
Promise and failure
With the advent of income-driven repayment nearly 30 years ago, borrowers could avoid being saddled with education loans in old age: If you keep up with payments, the federal government will forgive your remaining balance after 20 years for undergrad loans or after 25 years for graduate school debt. The plans also let people struggling with their debt avoid delinquency and default, as the less you earn, the less you pay each month.
But in the early days, the Education Department and its student loan servicers did little to publicize the plans.
Rosalie Lynch, 72, said she learned about them only in 2015 after doing her own research. By then, she had twice defaulted on the $25,000 in student loans she amassed in the early 1980s for a bachelor’s degree in social work from Bethel College and master’s degree in counseling from Kansas State University. Lynch had tried to stay ahead of her payments but stumbled in the wake of a “toxic” marriage, she said.
“He wouldn’t help me and expected me to take on all of the financial responsibilities,” said Lynch, who works as a mental health counselor in Idaho. “There were times I just couldn’t afford [my student loans]. They had to be a low priority. The kids needed food, they needed clothes. I don’t make that much money.”
On the advice of her loan servicer, Lynch said she often postponed her payments through forbearance. It paused the bill, but not the interest. Between the periods of forbearance and default, Lynch accumulated enough interest and fees to more than double her debt to $65,000. Because of her wages, Lynch qualified to make a $0 monthly payment under the IDR plan. Still, she worries she will die in debt. Federal student loans are discharged upon death.
Like Lynch, Patricia C. Vener-Saavedra, 70, spent years in forbearance before enrolling in an income-driven repayment plan a decade ago. Working as an adjunct instructor for years left her stretching to cover basic living expenses, which didn’t include student loans. Vener-Saavedra said she learned about income-driven repayment after her loans were transferred to a new servicer.
“I kept asking my different servicers if there was anything I can do besides forbearance. And all I heard was ‘No, no,’” Vener-Saavedra said. “Finally, it changed to someone who said, ‘Oh, yeah, you can get an income-based plan.’ And I’m like, ‘How long has this existed?’”
With a $0 monthly payment, the IDR plan provided a path to clearing the debt Vener-Saavedra acquired for a master’s degree in astrophysics from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York. But the $35,000 in student loans she graduated with in 1991 has since ballooned to $88,141.
“I’ll be 85 when the loans are forgiven,” Vener-Saavedra said. “If I knew about these income plans earlier, I might not be in this position.”
Shafroth at the National Consumer Law Center said that with the existence of income-driven plans, no one in the federal student loan system should be in repayment for more than 25 years. The Education Department has previously disclosed that 4.4 million borrowers have been repaying their debt for at least 20 years, with half of them in default.
Yet a 2022 Government Accountability Office report found that the department had erased the balances of only 132 people as of June 2021 under the IDR plans. It said the agency failed to ensure that payments were accurately tracked until a decade after the first income-driven plan was implemented. As a result, some people with older loans are at high risk of spending more time in repayment than necessary.
Researchers at the GAO said the department never provided borrowers regular updates on their progress toward debt cancellation or readily available information about forgiveness requirements. Without that guidance, researchers said, people who believed they were making progress may not have known that postponing payments doesn’t count.
The blistering report arrived a day after the Biden administration announced in April that it would temporarily allow any month in which borrowers made payments to retroactively count toward forgiveness, even if they were not enrolled in an income-driven plan. The one-time revision meant at least 40,000 people would now receive automatic loan cancellation.
“There are student debts that should have been canceled, but no one bothered to do that,” Williams of the Education Department said. “So we’re automatically correcting those errors and discharging those loans.”
Under the initiative, the department will also grant a one-time account adjustment to count the months borrowers postponed their payments through forbearance if they remained in that status for years. Still, other features of the IDR adjustment will shut out many distressed borrowers.
Months in which borrowers are delinquent or in default do not count toward the forgiveness threshold. What’s more, the department is only counting payments as far back as 1994. Both of those stipulations will probably leave Hamilton and Lynch out in the cold.
“There doesn’t seem to be a good reason for this,” Shaforth said of the exclusions.
In January, the advocacy group Student Borrower Protection Center sent a letter urging the Education Department to reconsider excluding time in default from the account adjustment, saying “failure to fully remedy these harms would be an unforced error.”
The Education Department declined to comment on the matter.
Advocates have long questioned the rationale behind the federal government’s relentless pursuit of student loan payments from distressed borrowers.
Unlike the Education Department, banks and lenders in the private market routinely write off the debt they can’t collect, and there is a statute of limitations on collection, Shaforth said. While the federal student loan program is not as flexible, she said, the department does have the power to settle, compromise and terminate the collection of debts. She said the agency could use other regulations that give the government an out when it can’t collect a debt within a reasonable time.
“I would think that 40 years should be a reasonable time,” Shaforth said.
People can also temporarily pause their payments through deferment or forbearance, which can lengthen the timeline. From the time student loan borrowers’ first loans enter repayment, the median length of time it takes to pay in full is 15½ years, according to the Education Department. How much you borrow, how much you earn and whether you get your degree can all play a role in how quickly you pay off the debt.
Those last two factors played a starring role in Hamilton’s struggle to repay his student loans. After a dispute with an instructor, he left Cochise before completing his aviation studies. That led to a series of low-wage jobs and relocations for work. School loans were low on the list of priorities for the father of five. Hamilton doesn’t recall receiving any notice to make payments for the first decade after leaving school, which he suspects is because he moved around so much.
“The job market was really tight at the time, so I was taking different jobs for a while and didn’t have a locked-down address,” Hamilton recalls. “We didn’t have cellphones at that time, so they couldn’t call and say, ‘Hey, you’re behind on your loans.’”
But the debt caught up with him soon after he began receiving Social Security disability benefits. Injuries from stints fighting wildfires and fixing airplanes left Hamilton unable to work, and his federal benefits became fair game for collection. Through the Treasury Offset Program, the federal government has been garnishing his disability benefits on and off since 2002.
Before the Education Department paused payments and collection in 2020 because of the coronavirus pandemic, he’d involuntarily paid more than $13,000. Treasury last deducted $175.05 from his $1,165 monthly Social Security check to service fees and interest on his loans — leaving Hamilton still owing $4,963.
“It’s tough because they’re taking all of this money, for all of these years, and nothing is going to the principal,” Hamilton said. “I’m getting nowhere. I was climbing up, but my debt kept going up.”
He had tried to shake free from the offset. Given his disability, Hamilton applied for a discharge of his loans through a program for totally and permanently disabled borrowers but was denied. He opted for student loan rehabilitation, a one-time process that brings a borrower back into good standing after nine consecutive payments. But Hamilton fell back into default. He said he was then advised to consolidate, another way to exit default by taking out a new loan to repay the past-due debt, but felt uneasy about another loan.
A fresh start
An analysis of federal data from July 2003 to April 2016 found 70 percent of borrowers in default were able to bring their student loans back into good standing within 10 years, but the rest remained in default. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau found that up to a third of borrowers who exit through loan rehabilitation default again within two years. It’s a problem that reflects the limitations of the system, said Brian Denten, an officer with the Pew Charitable Trusts’ project on student borrower success.
“You only get one shot at each of these options,” Denten said. “After that, if you default again, you can either pay off your entire loan in full or essentially sit there and have your wages, Social Security or tax refund garnished until your obligation is resolved.”
The Biden administration is temporarily waiving the rules governing default, offering 7.5 million people like Hamilton a “fresh start” by placing their loans in good standing when the payment pause ends even if they’ve defaulted multiple times in the past.
The initiative will eliminate borrowers’ record of default before the repayment pause and reinstate their eligibility for federal Pell grants, work-study and additional student loans to help those who may have dropped out before completing their degrees. It will also spare people from the seizure of wages, tax refunds and Social Security benefits.
Rich Williams, senior adviser in the Office of the Undersecretary at the department, said the Biden administration is working to understand the administrative, regulatory and statutory changes needed to realign the existing delinquency and default consequences.
“The principles that we are following as we’re exploring policies like the new income-based repayment plan ... [are] that borrowers shouldn’t be in repayment for more than 25 years,” Williams said. “We’re going through that exploration phase, and Fresh Start is the first step.”
The one-time initiative isn’t exactly seamless. Rather than being automatically enrolled, people in default must contact the department’s Default Resolution Group or their loan holders to take full advantage of the program. They will have one year from the end of the student loan payment pause — set to expire later this year — to make payment arrangements. Failure to act will throw borrowers back into default.
“A big part of it will be getting the word out,” Denten said. “We know from speaking with servicers and borrowers that it can be hard to establish a regular line of communication.”
Even if people take advantage of the program, they could end up defaulting again. Denten said connecting distressed borrowers to an income-driven repayment plan will be critical. Depending on their income, people enrolled in such plans can pay as little as $0 a month and it would count as credit toward loan cancellation. It is a lifeline, however, that doesn’t always reach the people most in need.
Promise and failure
With the advent of income-driven repayment nearly 30 years ago, borrowers could avoid being saddled with education loans in old age: If you keep up with payments, the federal government will forgive your remaining balance after 20 years for undergrad loans or after 25 years for graduate school debt. The plans also let people struggling with their debt avoid delinquency and default, as the less you earn, the less you pay each month.
But in the early days, the Education Department and its student loan servicers did little to publicize the plans.
Rosalie Lynch, 72, said she learned about them only in 2015 after doing her own research. By then, she had twice defaulted on the $25,000 in student loans she amassed in the early 1980s for a bachelor’s degree in social work from Bethel College and master’s degree in counseling from Kansas State University. Lynch had tried to stay ahead of her payments but stumbled in the wake of a “toxic” marriage, she said.
“He wouldn’t help me and expected me to take on all of the financial responsibilities,” said Lynch, who works as a mental health counselor in Idaho. “There were times I just couldn’t afford [my student loans]. They had to be a low priority. The kids needed food, they needed clothes. I don’t make that much money.”
On the advice of her loan servicer, Lynch said she often postponed her payments through forbearance. It paused the bill, but not the interest. Between the periods of forbearance and default, Lynch accumulated enough interest and fees to more than double her debt to $65,000. Because of her wages, Lynch qualified to make a $0 monthly payment under the IDR plan. Still, she worries she will die in debt. Federal student loans are discharged upon death.
Like Lynch, Patricia C. Vener-Saavedra, 70, spent years in forbearance before enrolling in an income-driven repayment plan a decade ago. Working as an adjunct instructor for years left her stretching to cover basic living expenses, which didn’t include student loans. Vener-Saavedra said she learned about income-driven repayment after her loans were transferred to a new servicer.
“I kept asking my different servicers if there was anything I can do besides forbearance. And all I heard was ‘No, no,’” Vener-Saavedra said. “Finally, it changed to someone who said, ‘Oh, yeah, you can get an income-based plan.’ And I’m like, ‘How long has this existed?’”
With a $0 monthly payment, the IDR plan provided a path to clearing the debt Vener-Saavedra acquired for a master’s degree in astrophysics from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York. But the $35,000 in student loans she graduated with in 1991 has since ballooned to $88,141.
“I’ll be 85 when the loans are forgiven,” Vener-Saavedra said. “If I knew about these income plans earlier, I might not be in this position.”
Shafroth at the National Consumer Law Center said that with the existence of income-driven plans, no one in the federal student loan system should be in repayment for more than 25 years. The Education Department has previously disclosed that 4.4 million borrowers have been repaying their debt for at least 20 years, with half of them in default.
Yet a 2022 Government Accountability Office report found that the department had erased the balances of only 132 people as of June 2021 under the IDR plans. It said the agency failed to ensure that payments were accurately tracked until a decade after the first income-driven plan was implemented. As a result, some people with older loans are at high risk of spending more time in repayment than necessary.
Researchers at the GAO said the department never provided borrowers regular updates on their progress toward debt cancellation or readily available information about forgiveness requirements. Without that guidance, researchers said, people who believed they were making progress may not have known that postponing payments doesn’t count.
The blistering report arrived a day after the Biden administration announced in April that it would temporarily allow any month in which borrowers made payments to retroactively count toward forgiveness, even if they were not enrolled in an income-driven plan. The one-time revision meant at least 40,000 people would now receive automatic loan cancellation.
“There are student debts that should have been canceled, but no one bothered to do that,” Williams of the Education Department said. “So we’re automatically correcting those errors and discharging those loans.”
Under the initiative, the department will also grant a one-time account adjustment to count the months borrowers postponed their payments through forbearance if they remained in that status for years. Still, other features of the IDR adjustment will shut out many distressed borrowers.
Months in which borrowers are delinquent or in default do not count toward the forgiveness threshold. What’s more, the department is only counting payments as far back as 1994. Both of those stipulations will probably leave Hamilton and Lynch out in the cold.
“There doesn’t seem to be a good reason for this,” Shaforth said of the exclusions.
In January, the advocacy group Student Borrower Protection Center sent a letter urging the Education Department to reconsider excluding time in default from the account adjustment, saying “failure to fully remedy these harms would be an unforced error.”
The Education Department declined to comment on the matter.
Advocates have long questioned the rationale behind the federal government’s relentless pursuit of student loan payments from distressed borrowers.
Unlike the Education Department, banks and lenders in the private market routinely write off the debt they can’t collect, and there is a statute of limitations on collection, Shaforth said. While the federal student loan program is not as flexible, she said, the department does have the power to settle, compromise and terminate the collection of debts. She said the agency could use other regulations that give the government an out when it can’t collect a debt within a reasonable time.
“I would think that 40 years should be a reasonable time,” Shaforth said.
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