While ACORN retreats across the nation, an upcoming voter
registration fraud trial may reveal embarrassing information that
hinders the ability of the embattled radical activist group to
function.
The testimony will come as soon as next month from former ACORN
Las Vegas field director Christopher Edwards.
Charged with election fraud by Nevada’s Democratic attorney
general, he cut a deal last week with prosecutors and has pleaded
guilty to two counts of conspiracy to commit the crime of
compensation for registration of voters.
ACORN allegedly enforced voter registration quotas with its
employees and offered bonuses for extra registrations. Nevada law
forbids the use of such incentives on the theory it encourages
canvassers to file fraudulent registrations. No wonder: ACORN
registers “Mickey Mouse” and various celebrities, out-of-state
residents, and dead people, every election cycle.
As part of the plea deal, Edwards, whom state investigators
consider to be the mastermind of the incentive program, has
agreed to testify against former regional director, Amy
Busefink, and against ACORN, which is a co-defendant. The Las
Vegas Sun reported that Edwards acknowledged he conspired
with Busefink and ACORN to create the “Blackjack” incentive
program that gave canvassers an extra $5 for submitting 21 or
more registration cards each day. The daily quota was allegedly
20 forms.
If ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now)
happens to be convicted, it could have its status as a nonprofit
corporation revoked in Nevada, which could make it very difficult
for the ACORN network to operate in that key battleground state.
Such a conviction would send shock waves through leftist
organizing circles across the nation and might embolden more
prosecutors to take on ACORN. Until it was charged by Nevada this
year, ACORN had boasted about its ability to duck prosecution for
election fraud.
Amy Schur, a senior ACORN official who has been in charge of the
group’s national campaigns, is likely to testify in the Nevada
case, said Karen Inman of St. Paul, Minnesota, a former member of
ACORN’s national board.
Schur’s testimony might be devastating to ACORN because it could
publicly air many of the group’s skeletons, suggested Inman, a
lawyer by training.
That’s because Schur has intimate knowledge of how ACORN operates
and was one member of a group within ACORN including then-chief
organizer and founder Wade
Rathke that covered up a nearly $1 million embezzlement by
Rathke’s brother, Inman said. Wade Rathke was fired by the board
last summer and ordered to sever all ties with ACORN. He has
failed to do so. He is still, for example, chief organizer of
SEIU Local 100 in New Orleans, an ACORN affiliate he founded.
Inman herself was ousted from the national board by management
last fall after she asked too many questions about the
embezzlement. Now she’s one of the leaders of the “ACORN 8,” a group of former ACORN
members trying to reform ACORN.
Inman also made the point that ACORN is in turmoil throughout
America.
Liz Wolf of Citizens Consulting Inc. (CCI), the shadowy financial
nerve center of the ACORN network, has been negotiating with tax
collectors on behalf of ACORN to have interest on its tax debts
waived and to have some of the debts partially forgiven, Inman
said.
CCI alone owes at least $400,000 in
back taxes to the IRS, various states, and the District of
Columbia. Collectively, the many affiliates within the ACORN
network owe millions of
dollars to tax authorities. The tax debts remain even after
ACORN took a controversial payment from a developer in exchange
for the group’s support for a sports stadium and mixed-use
complex in
Brooklyn.
Experts say the taxes owed are probably employment taxes, the
same taxes used to support the Big Government programs that ACORN
is so enamored of. Always resourceful, ACORN is using its massive
tax liabilities to cry poor and beg funders for more money.
According to Inman, so far this year ACORN has closed many of its
offices nationwide. Offices in Ohio (Dayton and Columbus),
Michigan (Grand Rapids), and Texas have closed their doors. The
offices in Oakland, California, and in her hometown of St. Paul
are barely operating, she said.
“This is the first time in Minnesota that the office has gone
dormant after an election,” she said.
ACORN is moving much of its operations out of its traditional
headquarters in New Orleans to New York so executive director
Steve Kest and chief organizer Bertha Lewis can exercise tighter
control over the whole network, Inman explained.
Former ACORN employees are facing trial on election fraud charges
in Pittsburgh, but those charges appear to be on hold now that
the
ACLU is challenging the constitutionality of Pennsylvania’s
voter registration law. ACORN remains under investigation by the
local Democratic prosecutor in Cleveland, Ohio, after a grand
jury indicted a local man for voting illegally after being
registered multiple times by ACORN. The Louisiana
attorney general’s office is also investigating ACORN.
The Edwards plea bargain came the same week that CCI, the
financial heart of the ACORN network, was accused of filing
false
lobbying disclosure reports with Congress. That revelation is
important because, as former D.C. ACORN housing committee member
Charles Turner said earlier this year, CCI “is where the shell
game begins.”
“ACORN has over 200 different entities that the money gets moved
around to - for this purpose to that purpose, this organization
to that organization,” said Turner. “We believe the way the money
has been moved around, they’ve been laundering money.”
Federal lawmakers have known for years about ACORN’s unorthodox
practices including its use of government resources to promote
legislation and its extensive commingling of funds within its
network of affiliates.
Former ACORN officials say these activities are controlled by the
mysterious CCI, which is located in ACORN’s headquarters in New
Orleans. CCI handles the financial affairs of hundreds of
affiliates within the ACORN network. ACORN member dues,
government money, and foundation grants, are all sucked into the
CCI vortex often never to be seen again.
Earlier this month, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-California), ranking
member on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee,
sent an
information request to the IRS about CCI, which he noted
“simultaneously managed the accounts of political and private
donor-funded organizations.”
In the letter, Issa asked if “CCI’s co-management of various
tax-exempt and non-exempt affiliate accounts, many of which
receive federal funds and some of which are 527s, violate[d]” the
Internal Revenue Code. His follow-up question was, “If so, has
the IRS taken steps to prevent CCI’s co-management of affiliate
accounts that are legally required to be separate and
segregated?”
Issa’s committee investigators released a report last month
stating that ACORN “is a shell game played in 120 cities, 43
states and the District of Columbia through a complex structure
designed to conceal illegal activities, to use taxpayer and
tax-exempt dollars for partisan political purposes, and to
distract investigators.”
The report examines the ACORN network’s abusive interlocking
directorates, and claims that the group deliberately organized
itself to escape legal and public scrutiny. “ACORN hides behind a
paper wall of nonprofit corporate protections to conceal a
criminal conspiracy on the part of its directors, to launder
federal money in order to pursue a partisan political agenda and
to manipulate the American electorate.”
There is “a pattern of loose financial accounting and no
firewalls” within the community-based group’s byzantine network
of hundreds of affiliated groups, Issa said.
Although the actions and possible outcomes explored in this
article aren’t likely to end up killing ACORN outright, it’s
clear that the group has already used up more than a few of its
nine lives.
