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  • 2016-08-15 (xsd:date)
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  • Katrina Pierson Arrested for Shoplifting, Illegally Collected Unemployment? (en)
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  • On 13 August 2016 Donald Trump spokeswoman Katrina Pierson was the focus of the viral hashtag #KatrinaPiersonHistory over inaccurate statements she made during an appearance on CNN, prompting a groundswell of interest in resurrected rumors that Pierson was a shoplifter and a welfare cheat. Pierson's rise to social media infamy prompted intense interest into the longtime Texas tea party activist's work history, which was often condensed to reports that she'd once been arrested for stealing from a Texas J.C. Penney store, and that she collected unemployment insurance benefits while she was on the payroll of Senator Ted Cruz. The rumor about shoplifting was relatively well-established: Pierson herself openly discussed the incident during her early 2014 primary challenge for a U.S. House seat against incumbent Republican Rep. Pete Sessions: The unemployment aspect of the rumor is harder to authenticate. Supposedly, Pierson was paid for working on Ted Cruz's 2012 U.S. Senate re-election campaign as an organizer or spokeswoman yet was also collecting unemployment benefits at that time. Pierson filed financial disclosure forms [PDF] covering the period from January 2012 to November 2013 and state that she received $11,440 from the Texas Workforce Commission (TWC) during that time. Pierson played some role in Senator Ted Cruz's 2012 U.S. Senate re-election bid (she was variously described as campaigning with Ted Cruz, being a campaign organizer, or serving as a campaign spokeswman), but it's unclear whether she received any compensation for that effort. Pierson's 2013 financial disclosure forms report no income obviously related to the Cruz campaign for 2012, and the listing of the $11,440 amount in the current year column suggests that she received the unemployment insurance compensation in 2013 (and not while working for the Cruz campaign in 2012). Pierson's LinkedIn profile shows that she worked at Florida-based ASG Software Solutions until December 2012, and her disclosure form states that she received over $100,000 in salary from that company in 2012, so presumably the loss of that employment (for which Pierson blamed Obamacare) was what qualified her for unemployment insurance benefits: Pierson lost her House bid against Sessions in March 2014 and began work for a Tea Party Super PAC in August 2014: In December 2015, GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump signed Pierson as his new national spokeswoman. It's true that Katrina Pierson was arrested for shoplifting in 1997, but she hasn't attempted to hide that information, openly discussing it in multiple interviews as an example of her dealing with difficult circumstances in her early life. Allegations that Pierson was a welfare cheat stem from claims that she was performing compensated work for Senator Ted Cruz's campaign while simultaneously receiving unemployment benefits in 2012, but we've found no evidence documenting such an overlap. (en)
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