The Trump administration had plans to classify 2.7 million living people — including some U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents — as dead as part of its immigration enforcement efforts, The Washington Post reported Friday, citing a former senior Social Security official.
"Donald Trump ran on a promise to protect Social Security, but this whistleblower report is the latest evidence of how he really views it: As nothing more than a weapon to wield against his enemies," Nancy Altman, president of Social Security Works, said Friday in an emailed statement.
According to The Post, Jeremiah Schofield, who worked for Social Security for 25 years and helped lead the agency's IT modernization efforts before leaving in October, "said he refused to help implement the plan after agency lawyers warned that falsely marking living people as dead could violate federal law."
Schofield, The Post reported, "said he realized the plan's possible intent — to intimidate and worsen the finances of immigrants — as well as its potential unlawfulness after taking a sample of people from the 2.7 million and discovering they were all alive. Some were U.S. citizens, lawful...
The relator managed to connect alleged upcode overcharging to the submission of bills to the government that would have necessarily contained inflated charges. A qui tam relator who did not plead ...