Thread by @DataRepublican

🧵DEEP DIVE INTO THE AUTHORS.
Lawrence Summers met with Jeffrey Epstein more than a dozen times after Epstein’s conviction—then took a $110,000 donation from him for his wife’s nonprofit, which made poetry videos. This was in 2016, so the records are not in my datset.

Robert Rubin cofounded the Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution.

The Brookings Institution is a direct recipient of nearly a million dollars in federal awards as well as a recipient of many university grants.

Brookings Institution is led by Democratic powerhouses - Cecilia Rouse, former Biden & Obama economic adviser. Strobe Talbott, ex-Deputy Secretary of State under Clinton. John R. Allen, Obama’s Special Envoy vs. ISIL.

Rubin is also on the board of Local Initiatives Support Corporation which has over 140 million dollars worth of active awards to build low-income housing. They say they created more than 489,000 homes with 30 billion dollars since 1979.

More morally ambiguous is that Rubin tried to forestall a downgrade of Enron by calling a Treasury Department official directly.

(Going to pick up on this a bit later, @watilo and I have to fix a bug)

Mr. Lew played a key role in designing AmeriCorps. Today, the program manages over $1 billion in active spending awards, yet AmeriCorps has failed an audit eight years in a row now.

AmeriCorps has faced numerous allegations of partisan bias, the most infamous being its funding of ACORN, a now-defunct organization accused of voter fraud.

@watilo As Treasury Secretary, Janet Yellen had significant discretion over USAID funds, including announcing 3.4B in assistance for Ukraine efforts.

@watilo She sits on several nonprofits, but none had clear association to taxpayer funds.

The purpose of this thread is to contextualize any motives into opposing external audits of federal payments.