Florida Republican Sen. Rick Scott is leading an effort to stop the Pentagon from auctioning off construction materials that were intended to build former President Donald Trump’s wall along the Mexican border.
In a letter dated Tuesday to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, Scott, Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi and the rest of the GOP lawmakers on the Senate Armed Services Committee indicated the Biden administration was violating federal law and demanded a full accounting of the materials sold so far.
As The Free Press posted last week, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is “disposing” of supposedly “excess” construction materials that lay dormant under Biden.
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The Corps reportedly began selling the goods in April and has netted $154 million so far.
In the letter to Austin, Scott and the other GOP senators wrote, “We are deeply disappointed to learn that rather than using construction materials that were purchased to secure the southwest border for that purpose, the Department of Defense has begun auctioning these materials off for other purposes.”
These sales, the letter continued, represent a “brazen attempt” to flout the federal FINISH IT Act, a federal law that requires the Defense Department “to use these construction materials to secure the southwest border as originally intended, or to transfer them to border states for that purpose.”
The senators then demanded that Austin suspend all auctions of the construction materials, including those that have been scheduled for disposal within the next week, and direct the department’s Inspector General investigate the internal bureaucrats who ignored multiple inquiries for information and failed to inform Congress about the plans to sell the materials.
Additionally, the lawmakers wanted Austin to provide a full accounting of the materials sold so far, including to whom they were sold and whether they went above or below what the Pentagon paid for them.
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The department should also provide a full accounting of where they were stored and the total amount paid for storage.
To encourage Austin to act, the senators added, “Please be advised that Senate Armed Services Committee Republicans will not consent to a confirmation hearing for the nominee for Under Secretary of Defense for Policy until this letter is answered appropriately.”
As The Free Press reported last week, the Pentagon still holds about $106 million of materials at the border.
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