File this in your “adding insult to injury” folder.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the dead one of the two Tsarnaev brothers alleged to be the Boston Marathon bombers, and his estranged wife and daughter were receiving Massachusetts welfare assistance as recently as 2012. When they were young, the two brothers were also recipients of taxpayers’ largesse because their parents had also been on welfare.
All of which raises the ugly question of whether the bombs had been made with ingredients purchased with taxpayer dollars.
Chris Cassidy reports for the Boston Herald, April 24, 2013:
Marathon bombings mastermind Tamerlan Tsarnaev was living on taxpayer-funded state welfare benefits even as he was delving deep into the world of radical anti-American Islamism, the Herald has learned.
State officials confirmed last night that Tsarnaev, slain in a raging gun battle with police last Friday, was receiving benefits along with his wife, Katherine Russell Tsarnaev, and their 3-year-old daughter. The state’s Executive Office of Health and Human Services said those benefits ended in 2012 when the couple stopped meeting income eligibility limits. Russell Tsarnaev’s attorney has claimed Katherine — who had converted to Islam — was working up to 80 hours a week as a home health aide while Tsarnaev stayed at home.
In addition, both of Tsarnaev’s parents received benefits, and accused brother bombers Dzhokhar and Tamerlan were recipients through their parents when they were younger, according to the state.
The news raises questions over whether Tsarnaev financed his radicalization on taxpayer money.
[...] The state did not say when the Tsarnaevs began receiving benefits. But Health and Human Services spokesman Alec Loftus said the Tsarnaevs “were not receiving transitional assistance benefits at the time of the incident,” a reference to the marathon bombing that killed three and injured 260.
Loftus declined to specify what kinds of benefits and the amount of benefits the family received.
Their taxpayer-funded status came to light last night after repeated calls and emails to welfare officials from the Herald. They refused to comment throughout the day, but pressure mounted last night when the Herald started asking lawmakers whether the Department of Transitional Assistance should release the information.
H/t The Weekly Standard and FOTM’s WildBillAlaska
By the way, the Tsarnaev brothers’ mother, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, who is loudly insisting that her sons are innocent because, you know, a mother just knows, was arrested for shoplifting $1,600 worth of clothing at a Massachusetts Lord & Taylor store last year. She was due to appear in court last October, but skipped the hearing, and she could be arrested on an outstanding warrant if she returns to the U.S. from Dagestan, Russia.
I wonder if her shoplifting was in the same Lord & Taylor store that’s located in the second Boston Marathon bomb blast, which reportedly has a surveillance tape showing, frame by frame, “a suspect” dropping off a black backpack, presumably with a bomb inside.
~Eowyn
