The controversy around an Army veteran accused of fabricating a tale of homeless veterans being booted from hotels to make room for migrants deepened on Friday—with state officials launching an investigation and questions raised about her claims of being a Purple Heart recipient.
The woman at the center of the maelstrom is and said they had been promised payment of $200 each to pose as veterans who were kicked out of the hotel in favor of the migrants.
On Friday, Maher issued a mea culpa, claiming that he “believed [Toney-Finch and the veterans] at their word.”
“I had absolutely no knowledge of any wrongdoing and believed that their stories were real until a phone conversation with Sharon yesterday afternoon when she explained to me that this did not happen the way she purported it to,” Maher told Mid-Hudson News.
According to Maher, Toney-Finch admitted she lied about the situation and said she did it “to help the veterans.” She told The Daily Beast that “we didn’t pay any fake actors” and said she wanted to “apologize for any confusion that’s dealing with the veterans and asylum seekers.”
Toney-Finch said she is struggling under the scrutiny and that she is staying with her parents so they can “watch over me.”
“Even though I take care of veterans, I still have my own issues,” she said.
Some of those issues emerged in a public notice published in 2021, when Toney-Finch petitioned to have a previous marriage annulled. In 2011, Toney-Finch, then simply Sharon Denise Toney, “did not have the Mental Capacity to enter into an Agreement of Marriage,” the annulment notice says. “She had served two tours in Iraq… [during] which she was subjected to attacks, accidents, and battle injuries from the enemy the U.S. was fighting. She sustained injuries to her brain (TBI-Traumatic Brain Injury), diagnosed Bi-Polar, diagnosed with PTSD, and a number of other injuries.”
The New York State Attorney General’s Office is now looking into whether any laws were broken, according to the Times Union.
On Friday, an emotional Toney-Finch expressed hope that things would soon “die down.”
“The foundation will always take care of veterans and families,” she told The Daily Beast of her charity, adding, “We are not against asylum seekers… I’m not Republican, I’m not Democrat, I just want to fight for my veterans.”
