HuffPo Front Page: Blue Dog Congressman Sanford Bishop Knew about Pigford Fraud

From Lee Stranahan writing at the Huffington Post:

While I was conducting a video interview with a Georgia farmer named Eddie Slaughter a couple of weeks ago, he made a surprising and stunning allegation: that he had told his congressman about fraud in the multibillion dollar Pigford v. Glickman settlement and that the congressman responded by telling him that an investigation into Pigford would “shut it down.” Mr. Slaughter’s congressman — a man you may not have heard much about despite his nearly two decades as a Blue Dog Democrat and Congressional Black Caucus member — is Sanford Bishop.

I followed up with Mr. Slaughter and I asked him if others were in the meeting with Congressman Bishop. I’ve since interviewed two of those farmers — one on the phone and one, farmer Willie Head, on video. Both confirmed Mr. Slaughter’s story.

Here’s a a segment of my interview with Mr. Slaughter where he says:

We went to him [Sanford Bishop] several times about this fraud. [We asked] ‘why don’t you have them tell you how many of these people that are getting this money have an actual farm ID number and are actual farmers?’ [Bishop responded] ‘no, no, no — man, they’ll shut this thing down.’

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And here is Willie Head:

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I posted these videos to my YouTube account and then wrote pieces for Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com site. The controversial Mr. Breitbart is funding the documentary I’m working on but has given me complete journalistic freedom and has had no direct involvement in shooting any of the more than 12 hours of video interviews I’ve done so far. As a liberal, I disagree with Breitbart on most issues, but I also found him to be a very different person than he’s been portrayed as in the media, and working with him has been a great experience, just like my previous work for MoveOn.org and Brave New Films. I also don’t believe he’s a racist. If he were, I wouldn’t be working with him.

Within a couple of days, Congressman Bishop had responded to three different newspapers. His story was different each time.

• Rep. Bishop told the Albany Herald that he was aware of the fraud but it wasn’t his job to police it. This admission is significant because USDA Sec. Tom Vilsack has claimed that there was almost no fraud in Pigford.
• When speaking to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Rep. Bishop was suddenly stunned and perplexed and suggested that the farmers had been drinking. The AJC also played up the Breitbart angle and made no mention of me or my background as the sole reporter/videographer.
• Most recently, Rep. Bishop told the Columbus Ledger-Inquirer that he remembered the meeting, repeated that he wasn’t responsible for monitoring fraud, suggested that there were anti-fraud provisions in the second Pigford bill and again insulted the farmers calling them disgruntled and irresponsible.

Full article here.