The White House defended the record of Deputy Labor Secretary Julie Su, who President Joe Biden nominated to replace Labor Secretary Marty Walsh, despite the fact that she oversaw billions in pandemic relief fraud during her time as a senior official in California.
Su led the California Labor Department, which oversees the Employment Development Department, as one-tenth of the $114 billion in pandemic relief claims handled by the agency involved fraudulent activity. An additional 17% of the benefits were made to accounts that were frozen for an investigation, meaning that the total amount of fraud could have surpassed $31 billion, according to a January 2021 report from the San Francisco Chronicle.
