Recordings Reveal White House Secretly Worked To Help Christian Groups Snort Up Billions In COVID Handouts

The Freedom From Religion Foundation reports:

The audio of two calls between religious leaders and the White House, made available today by FFRF, confirms that the White House secretly worked to give church leaders special access to PPP, ensuring they could receive top dollars from U.S. taxpayers.

The first such conference call took place on April 3, just as the PPP went into gear and a full two weeks before the Small Business Administration published its final rules on church eligibility — for the first time — for SBA funds.

This secret announcement to clergy reveals that the SBA had no intention of listening to public comments on the proposed rule, and had already decided to extend these loans to churches, in spite of the Constitution and any public outcry. At the time of this call, SBA had only awarded about 10,000 of the 661,218 PPP loans.

Read the full article and listen to the calls. As I’ve previously reported, far-right and anti-LGBT groups that scooped up millions in handouts include the Liberty Counsel, Jim Bakker Ministries, Paula White Ministries, the megachurch headed by Trump cultist Robert Jeffress, and many others. The Catholic Church hauled in as much as $3.4 billion. According to the FFRF, the total ladled out to religion-based groups is as much as $7.3 billion.