It feels like it’s been approximately six millennia since a West Virginia official was fired, then reinstated, the re-fired for calling then-FLOTUS Michelle Obama an “ape in heels,” yet somehow this happened only two years ago. My, how time drags when you are internally dying! Now, that ex-official faces up to 30 years behind bars—not for explicit racism, but for defrauding FEMA for over $18,000 in benefits.
ABC News reports that Pamela Ramsay Taylor, the disgraced director of Clay County Development Corp., pleaded guilty last week to falsely registering for FEMA benefits following a massive flood event in Clay County in June 2016. Taylor filed documents claiming her house had been damaged in the flood, and was awarded upwards in $18,000 in funds. Her house was just fine, and now she is in trouble. Per ABC:
“Taking advantage of federal funds intended for disaster relief misappropriates taxpayer dollars, reduces monies available to true victims and erodes public confidence in relief programs,” Mark Tasky, special agent-in-charge of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General, said in a statement last Wednesday. “The defendant knowingly submitted a fraudulent application for disaster relief, in order to enrich herself and divert critical funds away from true disaster victims.”
Taylor will pay FEMA $18,149.04 in restitution. She also faces up to 30 years in prison, as well as an additional fine of up to $500,000.
Note that the FEMA fraud actually preceded Taylor’s most infamous malfeasance—after Donald Trump was elected in November 2016, she wrote the following celebratory post on Facebook:
“It will be so refreshing to have a classy, beautiful, dignified First Lady back in the White House. I’m tired of seeing an ape in heels.”
To which Clays’ mayor, Beverly Whaling, notably responded, “Just made my day, Pam,” because it is more fun to be racist when we do it all together.
The rest is history. Whaling resigned. Taylor was fired, then un-fired, then fired again. Michelle Obama wrote a bestselling memoir.
And the allegedly “classy, beautiful, dignified First Lady” Clay was so thrilled to see instated in the White House certainly…is…there, though it seems she might prefer to be just about anywhere else. Life sure is weird!