Brad Ashford’s trust-but-don’t-verify defense

April 22, 2015

Today, Nebraska Watchdog reported that Brad Ashford is “lobbying HUD to give the Omaha Housing Authority more time to repay $1.1 million it misspent a few years ago,” creating a potential conflict of interest because Ashford ran the housing authority during “part of the time an audit found the misallocated money.”HUD

Ashford was the CEO of the Omaha Housing Authority from 2002-2006, right in the heart of the audited years of 2001-2012, strongly implicating him in the decision making process of the misallocations. By now lobbying HUD to grant a reprieve to the agency he used to run, Ashford appears to be using his current position in Congress to clean up a mess he made in his previous position.

However, when asked about the issue, Ashford decided to take a page out of Hillary Clinton’s playbook, failing to provide any evidence, saying he “looked into it” and decided he was not involved. How can Ashford say definitively he wasn’t involved? Did he have access to documents the public hasn’t seen?

This trust-but-don’t-verify assertion fell flat when Hillary made it, and it is falling flat with Ashford. Brad Ashford needs to come clean to 2nd District families about his role in millions of misspent taxpayer dollars and prove he isn’t using his sway in Congress to clean up his old mistakes.