Of Course The 'Homeless Vets Displaced For Immigrants' Story Is A Hoax

'If it doesn't make sense, it's usually not true.' — Judge Judy

  It was a right-wing dream story. Last Saturday, the New York Post breathlessly reported that evil, heartless Democrats Eric Adams and Kathy Hochul had kicked at least 15 homeless veterans, who patriotically and selflessly served our nation (or, at the very least, our nation's oil companies), out of hotel rooms that a non-profit had already paid for so that immigrants could take the very beds they had been sleeping in.

The absolute drama of that cover. 

Sharon Toney-Finch, the CEO of the Yerik Israel Toney Foundation, which raises "awareness" of premature births and also provides some assistance to unhoused or low-income veterans (weird combo, but okay) told the Post that on Saturday night she started getting calls from veterans whose stays in upstate New York hotels her foundation had already paid for, saying that they were being kicked out and their extended stays canceled.

Via  New York Post  :

Toney-Finch said 15 of the veterans got the heave-ho from the Crossroads Hotel in Newburgh about 60 miles north of New York City in Orange County — a new epicenter of Big Apple’s migrant crisis since Mayor Eric Adams began bussing Gotham’s overflow there against local officials’ wishes.

The other five displaced veterans were split between two other local facilities — the Super 8 and Hampton Inn & Suites in Middletown, Toney-Finch said.

The Middletown hotels are not believed to have migrants yet but were reportedly on the city’s shortlist to take some.

Toney-Finch even went so far as to provide receipts for the $37,800 she had paid one of the motels in advance.

For days this week, Republicans like state Assemblyman Brian Maher of Orange County, New York (who was the Post 's second source in the story), and right-wing news organizations ran with this story, feeding into their endless outrage machine without daring once to ask, "Is that even legal? Because it doesn't sound like it's legal."

Maher even made an appearance on "Fox and Friends" to talk about the terrible cruelty of it all.

 www.youtube.com 

State Sens. William Weber and Rob Rolison, both Republicans, even went so far as to introduce a bill in response to the displacement that would authorize "a county, city, town or village to override a governor's declaration of a state disaster emergency in all or part of the territorial limits of such local government." Weber said the bill would specifically "prohibit hotels and homeless shelters from displacing vulnerable people in favor of non-U.S. citizens and non-lawful permanent residents of the United States."

At no point did any of these people take a moment to ask themselves, "Why would anyone do something that would obviously garner so much bad publicity by kicking unhoused veterans out of those specific hotels when there are obviously many, many other hotels and motels throughout New York state?"

Clearly, not one of them considered the wise words of the great American jurist Judge Judith Sheindlin here — "If it doesn't make sense, it's usually not true."

It did not make sense. And it wasn't true, which was quickly discovered after the hotels in question were asked about it. The whole thing was a hoax cooked up by Sharon Toney-Finch, whose only excuse now is that she thought it would help the imaginary veterans who were kicked out of their imaginary hotel rooms in order to be cruelly displaced by imaginary immigrants.

Via Times-Union:  

A GOP source in the state Assembly provided the Times Union with an image of a copy of what they initially said was Toney-Finch’s credit card as well as what was purported to be a receipt showing a payment with that credit card on April 12 for $37,800 to Crossroads Hotel. That was also sent to Maher as proof the hotel rooms had been booked and paid for by the foundation.

But the lawmaker wanted further proof of the receipt after concerns arose that the screenshot invoice had been digitally manipulated.

So Maher asked Toney-Finch to meet him at the bank to gather financial statements. She didn’t show. Maher said that as he realized Toney-Finch had made up the story, he called her and pressed her on why she would do that. He said she just kept repeating that she was trying to help the veterans and appeared to unravel emotionally.

But according to Maher, “She alluded to the fact that, ‘Maybe it’s not exactly how I said it was.’”

Long story short, a lady with a scammy non-profit called up a Republican assemblyman and told him an outrageous story about veterans being kicked out of hotel rooms that had been paid for, they both talked to the New York Post about it, she went so far as to fake a receipt for said hotel rooms, Fox News and other right-wing media organizations freaked out about it for several days until someone at the Times-Union actually bothered to contact the hotels about it and figure out that there had never been any damn veterans there in the first place.

Previously In This Exact Thing:  Fox Guest Rudely Denied Stay At Hotel That's Been Closed Over Two Years 

 
Just to be very clear here — having unhoused veterans or unhoused people in general is an active choice that we have made as a society. We choose to do things this way. We could do things another way, we could provide unhoused veterans and others with state-funded housing and help them in other ways, but we choose to do it this way instead.

If Republicans truly give a shit about homeless veterans, which I don't believe for a second they do, then they can actually go right ahead and support Florida Democratic Congresswoman Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick's Healthy Foundations for Homeless Veterans Act , which "would make permanent the temporary flexibilities granted to the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to address veterans' homelessness by providing shelter, transportation, and communication devices to veterans in need."

The bill currently has 50 Democratic cosponsors and one (1) Republican cosponsor — former Democrat Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey.

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