Rep. Michele Bachmann delivered opening remarks, noting that the Pigford scandal isn’t a partisan issue. She also hailed Andrew Breitbart’s role in gathering the facts on the massive fraud that Pigford has become. Congress has spent more than $1 billion on Pigford settlements and will spend another $1 billion, yet the black farmers at the heart of the story were done an injustice. They lost their land and have not been paid what is due them.
Andrew Breitbart delivered remarks, saying that Al Pires created a system to exploit black farmers in the South, who only numbered about 3,000 expected claimants at the outset. Pigford has ended up with about 94,000 claimants, thanks in no small part to Sen. Barack Obama’s sponsorship of a bill to extend Pigford when he was in the Senate. Meanwhile, black farmers who were actually discriminated against by the USDA were scammed to benefit the class action attorneys involved, who made a killing off of Pigford. The farmers, meanwhile, lost their land and continue to be victims of the entire process.
Film maker Lee Stranahan showed undercover video that he obtained, which proves that the lawyers involved defrauded the black farmers, while also teaching others how to scam the government out of money by exploiting the Pigford settlement. Stranaham’s undercover film also shows proof that Pigford is being used as a stealth reparations program.
Rep. Steve King delivered remarks following Stranaham. King looked into the Pigford settlements almost a decade ago, when a researcher delivered evidence to his office that about 75% of the Pigford I settlements were fraudulent. King noted that there were black farmers who were discriminated against, and they should be made whole. But the Pigford settlements have far exceeded the number of actual farmers who were harmed. King called for a congressional investigation into Pigford, to uncover the full extent of a “crime against the American taxpayers.”
Stranaham is showing clips of the full two-hour audio that will be released at Big Government today.
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