When Tulare Regional Medical Center reopened its doors back in October, it was a new beginning. The embattled hospital had been closed for a year after its previous owner had bungled its finances so badly —and suspiciously—that declaring bankruptcy became the only way to start over.
But there’s so much more to the hospital’s previous life that it’s almost hard to believe. The latest developments, described last week in an explosive story by the New Yorker, involve election meddling—not from Russia, but from an Israeli intelligence company that was paid big money to sway the 2017 recall election for a former member of the hospital’s governing board. According to the story, the company, Israeli-based Psy-Group, is also under investigation by FBI Special Counsel Robert Mueller for attempting to interfere in the 2016 presidential election.
In this interview, we speak with Adam Entous, a staff writer at the New Yorker and one of the story’s co-authors, about Psy-Group’s entanglement with the hospital’s former CEO Yorai Benzeevi, the lengths to which it went to influence the Tulare hospital board's recall election, and the likely reasons it ultimately failed.
