Garden Grove, CA — Today, a new bombshell report from NPR’s LAist exposed Michelle Steel’s latest self-dealing scandal: misdirecting $1.2 million taxpayer dollars for a meal program meant to feed low-income seniors to her own campaign’s mail and print shop, DTN Tech, which had no experience ever administering a federal grants program, charged taxpayers “more than triple the amount per meal” than comparable programs in other districts, and refused to make meals available for home delivery to these needy seniors like every other program. An independent audit also found that the company was over three years late in submitting mandatory reports on their spending and paid itself the highest allowable amount in administrative costs – while LAist discovered that “at least two-thirds of the county funding…went to restaurants” that were paying clients of Michelle Steel’s campaign print shop.
Steel’s scheme shares some damning connections with the bribery and corruption crimes committed by her longtime political ally, Andrew Do, who yesterday pled guilty to conspiring to steal millions of dollars meant to feed needy seniors. Notably, Do’s district was “the only one besides Steel’s to select a vendor without a known track record of providing taxpayer-funded meals.”
In June of 2020, Steel and Do each voted to authorize each Orange County Supervisor to reward more than $1 million in federal CARES Act funding for programs of their choice, using a procedure that, according to LAist, “sidestepped the county’s usual transparency for taxpayer money, and allowed supervisors to make those spending decisions without public votes or competitive bidding.” This vote was listed as the first overt act in Andrew Do’s guilty plea documents. Instead of choosing an experienced non-profit organization that could quickly and competently stand up such a program, Michelle Steel selected her campaign’s for-profit mail and print vendor.
O.C. District Attorney Todd Spitzer called the funding method Supervisors Steel and Do used for their meals program a “horrible mistake by the board” that led to an unbelievable “lack of oversight,” – and Michelle Steel took full advantage. To make matters worse, not only did the mail firm receive tens of thousands of dollars from Steel’s campaign and thousands of taxpayer dollars from her congressional office…but also major business from Andrew Do.
“Public service means only one thing to Michelle Steel; an opportunity to line her pockets,” said Derek Tran. “There is no reason to hand out a $1.2 million contract to a political print shop for a nutrition program unless you’re getting something out of it. Her corruption and self-dealing know no bounds, but the walls are closing in on her and the criminal network she has fostered. The people of CA-45 deserve honest representation that puts them, not one’s own financial interests, first.”
Key findings from LAist’s reporting:
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