Donald Trump’s former White House aide is under fire after a video showed him claiming to distribute fake money to homeless people so that they will be arrested when they spend it.
Johnny McEntee, formerly the White House Presidential Personnel Office under the former president, posted a video on TikTok in which he discusses the purported scheme to “clean up the community.”
“So I always keep this fake Hollywood money in my car, so when a homeless person asks for money, and I give them like a $5 bill, I feel good about myself, they feel good,” said McEntee, also a senior advisor to Project 2025. “And then when they go to use it, they get arrested, so I’m actually helping to clean up the community and get them off the street.”
Can anyone eli5 why the Secret Service would have anything to do with this? Up until now, I thought their sole role was protecting POTUS. Do they prosecute money fraud, too?
The Secret Service was created to investigate counterfeiting. The president stuff came later.
https://www.secretservice.gov/investigations
Counterfeiting of United States currency, bonds, checks, and other financial obligations and securities. Distributing or passing of counterfeited, forged, or altered U.S. currency and other financial obligations and securities. Criminals sometimes use online forums to sell bulk counterfeited U.S. or foreign currency.
Well their original charter was to investigate counterfeiting. The presidential protection thing was kind of an add-on. But my impression was that the original function was moved to a different agency and the USSS, originally under the treasury department, moved to Homeland Security. So I don’t know why they would have anything to with this. Unless I remembered that wrong.
Right. I always thought the FBI was responsible for hunting down counterfeiting. The whole point of the FBI is to be federal level police, and our currency is a federal concern.
I understand why you would think that, but it’s wrong. The secret service is absolutely still in charge of investigating counterfeit money.
I handled a lot of cash for an old job and I had to submit a form to the secret service whenever I reported counterfeits.
They basically handle counterfeit money cases, so people spending counterfeit money provided by this asshole would have been investigated by the secret service.
Their original job was to go after counterfeiting And it’s still their jam. (Along with other similar financial crimes.)
(Edit fuck autocorrect,)
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