Brad Knott

Rep. Brad Knott, R-N.C., told Newsmax on Wednesday that the Justice Department's record healthcare fraud takedown should "be enraging to every American" and accused the Democrat fundraising platform ActBlue of stonewalling congressional investigators probing alleged foreign donations.

Knott, a former federal prosecutor who serves on the House Judiciary and Homeland Security committees, appeared on "Wake Up America" hours after the DOJ unveiled charges against 455 defendants, including 90 doctors and other licensed medical professionals, in schemes totaling more than $6.5 billion in false claims across 45 states and territories.

"It should be enraging to every American that our tax dollars are being stolen by international criminals who have exploited the open border of the Biden-Harris administration and far-left Democrats to steal from the country," Knott said.

He added that the theft "affects everybody from corner to corner of this country, whether it's with housing, whether it's with healthcare, whether it's with Social Security."

Knott tied the announcement to a separate June 18 Massachusetts case in which the DOJ charged 11 illegal aliens and four U.S. citizens in a $1.4 million benefit fraud scheme spanning SNAP, MassHealth, disability, and unemployment benefits.

"There's no tolerance for this. There shouldn't be any tolerance for it," he said. "I'm glad the administration is really working hard to root this stuff out."

Knott then turned to the contempt threat House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, Oversight Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., and Administration Chairman Bryan Steil, R-Wis., issued June 22 to ActBlue CEO Regina Wallace-Jones.

The chairmen set a June 26 deadline for the platform to surrender 422 documents it has withheld on attorney-client privilege grounds, including a former interim general counsel's resignation letter and an internal whistleblower message.

"This is not a very complicated system here. You need to have donor integrity, and you need to have funding integrity," Knott said.

"ActBlue has purposely hidden the ball here. And they've refused to turn over documents," he explained.

Knott singled out Wallace-Jones's June 10 appearance before the House Administration Committee, where she repeatedly invoked the Fifth Amendment under questioning about the platform's screening of foreign contributions.

"Their CEO, when asked about foreign donations, she could have said, 'I don't know' or 'Not to my knowledge,' but what did she do? She pled the Fifth," Knott said.

"And that's consistent with what we've seen top to bottom with ActBlue; they have had mass resignations. The people who were left came in for a deposition, and they pled the Fifth hundreds of times," he added.

ActBlue has denied wrongdoing and called the investigations partisan, saying it will continue to cooperate while protecting privileged material.

Knott said the standard should be simple: "If I send money to a candidate, I should be verified, and then the money is transferred."

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