A cancer charity started by Joe Biden gave out no money to research, and spent most of its contributions on staff salaries, federal filings show.
The Biden Cancer Initiative was founded in 2017 by the former vice president and his wife Jill Biden to “develop and drive implementation of solutions to accelerate progress in cancer prevention, detection, diagnosis, research and care and to reduce disparities in cancer outcomes,” according to its IRS mission statement. But it gave out no grants in its first two years, and spent millions on the salaries of former Washington DC aides it hired.
The charity took in $4,809,619 in contributions in fiscal years 2017 and 2018, and spent $3,070,301 on payroll in those two years. The group’s president, Gregory Simon, raked in $429,850 in fiscal 2018 (July 1, 2018 to June 30, 2019), according to the charity’s most recent federal tax filings.
Simon, a former Pfizer executive and longtime health care lobbyist who headed up the White House’s cancer task force in the Obama administration, saw his salary nearly double from the $224,539 he made in fiscal 2017, tax filings show.
Danielle Carnival, former chief of staff for Obama’s cancer initiative, the Cancer Moonshot Task Force, who took home $258,207 in 2018.
The charity spent $56,738 on conferences and $59,356 on travel that year. The following year, the travel expenditure swelled to $97,149, and the non-profit spent $742,953 on conferences, tax filings show.
A case against reputed Mafia members revealed their conversations when their boss was killed. Francesco Cali, the reputed underboss of the Gambino crime family, was fatally shot in March outside his home, the brick building on the right, in the Todt Hill section of Staten Island.
Credit...Stephanie Keith for The New York Times
By Nicole Hong
On a quiet night in March, a mob leader was executed in New York City for the first time since 1985. The body of Francesco Cali, a reputed boss of the Gambino crime family, lay crumpled outside his Staten Island home, pierced by at least six bullets.Hours later, two soldiers in the Gambino family talked on the phone. One of them, Vincent Fiore, said he had just read a “short article” about the “news,” according to prosecutors.No tears were shed for their fallen leader. The murder was “a good thing,” Mr. Fiore, 57, said on the call. The vacuum at the top meant that Andrew Campos, described by the authorities as the Gambino captain who ran Mr. Fiore’s crew, was poised to gain more power.Mr. Cali’s death was just the beginning of surprises to come for the Gambino family.Last week, federal prosecutors in Brooklyn charged Mr. Fiore and 11 others in a sprawling racketeering scheme linked to the Gambinos, once the country’s pre-eminent organized crime dynasty. The charges stemmed from a yearslong investigation involving wiretapped calls, physical surveillance and even listening devices installed inside an office where mob associates worked.As part of the case, the government released a court filing that offered an extremely rare glimpse at the reactions inside a Mafia family to the murder — a curious mix of mourning and jockeying for power. The case showed that life in the mob can be just as petty as life in a corporate cubicle.“Mob guys are the biggest gossips in the world,” said James J. Hunt, the former head of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s office in New York. “You think they’re tough guys, but they’re all looking out for themselves. The only way they get promoted is by a guy dying or going to jail.” Francesco Cali in a mug shot taken in 2008 by the Italian police.
Francesco Cali, the reputed underboss of the Gambino crime family, was fatally shot in March outside his home, the brick building on the right, in the Todt Hill section of Staten Island.
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