Biden COVID Bill Gave $1,400 to Boston Bomber 

Judge says money to be dispersed among victims

Karl Salzmann • January 6, 2022 1:21 pm

Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev received a $1,400 stimulus check under President Joe Biden’s COVID-19 relief bill. 

Massachusetts district court judge George O’Toole on Wednesday ordered that Tsarnaev give back the payment, which he received in June 2021 as part of Biden’s “American Rescue Plan.”

Congressional Republicans strongly criticized the bill for allowing felons to receive relief checks, with Sen. Tom Cotton (Ark.) asking, “How will sending stimulus checks to murderers and rapists in prison help solve the pandemic?”

Cotton and fellow Republican senators Bill Cassidy (La.) and Ted Cruz (Texas) offered an amendment to stop inmates from receiving direct funds. Democrats blocked the move.

Acting U.S. attorney for Massachusetts Nathaniel Mendell asked O’Toole to approve the seizure of all funds from Tsarnaev’s account, to which the judge agreed. Mendell said the relief check, and all of Tsarnaev’s other money, should go to the bomber’s victims.

Mendell will be replaced on Monday by far-left prosecutor Rachael Rollins, a Biden appointee.

Tsarnaev and his brother Tamerlan, both radicalized Muslims, planted bombs at the finish line of the 2013 Boston Marathon, killing three people and injuring hundreds. Tamerlan Tsarnaev was later killed in a shootout with police.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was sentenced to death in 2015, but the First U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed his sentence in July 2020. The Justice Department under former president Donald Trump appealed the ruling to the Supreme Court, which is expected to rule this summer on whether to reinstate the death sentence.