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In a statement Tuesday, Rep. Cori Bush, D-Mo., confirmed reports that the Justice Department had opened an investigation into whether she misused campaign funds by employing her husband on her security team.
“Since before I was sworn into office, I have endured relentless threats to my physical safety and life,” she said in a statement. “As a rank-and-file member of Congress I am not entitled to personal protection by the House, and instead have used campaign funds as permissible to retain security services.” She denied allegations that she’d misused campaign funds for her security.
Bush said her husband was paid “at or below a fair market rate” to be part of that team because of his “extensive experience in this area.” (Cortney Merritts, her husband, was part of her security prior to their marriage last February.) And she noted that an investigation into the matter by the Office of Congressional Ethics last year found no wrongdoing and the case was dismissed.
On Wednesday’s episode of "The ReidOut with Joy Reid," Bush explained that she’s not independently wealthy and couldn’t afford an expensive firm. She said that she found the security companies she could afford to be insufficient, and that Merritts, an Air Force veteran with professional security experience, often had to correct these companies’ mistakes.
Bush also denounced the bigotry of Texas GOP Rep. Troy Nehls, who said she might not have had to pay her husband (whom he called “her thug”) for security if she weren’t “so loud all the time.”
Neither Nehls nor the social media chatter around this probe should distract from the more pressing matter here: the apparent necessity for lawmakers like Bush to have personal security in our current political environment.
Bush was an activist in the Black Lives Matter movement before becoming a member of Congress. She was elected in 2020, the year that then-President Donald Trump framed her and fellow activists as “terrorists.” Once in office, she associated with members of “the Squad,” the well-known group of unabashed House progressives Trump has suggested are "not capable of loving the U.S." Bush has publicly shared some of the death threats she’s received as a congresswoman, and she even chose to move her Capitol office over confrontations with conspiratorial Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. So I’d say Bush has a clear need for personal security detail, and I find it shocking that lawmakers are left to fend for themselves on this front.
Mother Jones reported in 2021 that lawmakers were spending more than ever on security — which makes sense, given that was the year of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. And legal scholar Marcy Wheeler had it right when she suggested that some other politicians targeted with MAGA derision — such as GOP Sen. Mitt Romney and former Rep. Peter Meijer — may not have to tap into campaign funds to pay for security because, unlike Bush, their personal wealth allows them to afford security.
We’re living through a political moment when right-wing rioters in a deadly mob forced their way inside the Capitol. A time when right-wing officials have openly mocked the violent attack on Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s husband. When politicians on the left and the right, including the White House itself, have been targeted with death threats and "swatting" attempts.
Which is to say: Personal security seems like a requirement for the modern congress member. Bush is a prime example; and in my eyes, that necessity — and the political vitriol driving it — are the bigger story here.