Religious News - Ex-White House staffer's grant questioned

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Ex-White House staffer's grant questioned

A former White House official was awarded a lucrative U.S. Justice Department grant under pressure from two senior Bush administration appointees, sources say.

The $1.2 million grant was awarded jointly to a consulting firm run by Lisa Trevino Cummins, who previously headed Hispanic outreach efforts for the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, and a California evangelical group, Victory Outreach, ABC News reported Tuesday.

The network reported the grant was awarded amid objections from Justice Department staff who did not believe Victory Outreach was qualified for the grant. There was also concern that too much of the grant was going to go to Cummins' consulting company instead of being spent on services for children.

Cummins' company, Urban Strategies LLC, was slated to get one-third of the money for helping Victory Outreach use the rest of the funds.

Cummins' application for the grant should have immediately "raised red flags," a senior Justice Department official told ABC.

The official said most of the grant money should be going to services, but that "in this case, you have a third of the money up front going to a consulting company."

Copyright 2008 by United Press International.

This news arrived on: 06/25/2008

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