ACORN critic Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) is mystified that both the
Democratic-controlled Congress and the Obama administration
aren’t doing much about the tax-subsidized organized crime
syndicate ACORN even as evidence of its wrongdoing continues to
pile up.
In an exclusive interview, the House Judiciary Committee
member describes the ACORN saga as “the largest corruption crisis
in the history of America.”
“It’s thousands of times bigger than Watergate because
Watergate was only a little break-in by a couple of guys,” said
King. “By the time we pull ACORN out by its roots America’s going
to understand just how big this is.”
Unlike the Nixon-era Watergate scandal, the ACORN scandal
reaches not only to the highest levels of government, but also to
states and localities across America. The president himself and
his political advisor
Patrick Gaspard used to work for ACORN and the radical
advocacy group has allies throughout congressional leadership who
are bending over backwards to protect it. President Obama has
also hired as White House counsel Bob Bauer, whom King described
as “the number one defender of ACORN in the country.”
ACORN has ties to unions such as SEIU and has business
relationships with Wall Street. It has offices across the globe
in places like Canada, Kenya, and India. Quite apart from the
hidden camera videos that emerged in September showing ACORN
employees providing advice on establishing a brothel and
financing it with government grants, in the U.S. it stands
accused of political corruption, election fraud, racketeering,
money laundering, and countless other violations of the law. It
is involved in major campaigns pushing for socialized medicine,
green energy and cap-and-trade, enhanced welfare benefits, higher
minimum wages, greater federal regulation of the financial
services industry, and for a major expansion of the Community
Reinvestment Act.
“The legislative branch will not investigate. [House
Judiciary Committee chairman John] Conyers will not. [House
Judiciary subcommittee chairman Jerrold] Nadler will not. It’s
not going to come out of [House Ways & Means Committee
chairman Charles] Rangel’s committee. It’s not going to come out
of [House Financial Services Committee chairman] Barney Frank’s
committee or from anybody in the Senate. They’re going to protect
ACORN.”
Congress is deliberately dragging its heels on ACORN, just
as Democrats did during the Clinton impeachment process in 1998,
King said. As a member of the Iowa state senate, in December of
that year King spent three days observing the proceedings against
Clinton in the House Judiciary Committee.
“I saw the climate and the culture of the left’s shield of
former President Clinton,” King said. “No transgression could
have been too bad to cause their morality to flip the other way
on him and for them walk away from him.”
Today defenders of ACORN in Congress are acting like the
42nd president’s defenders.
“It is the same pattern. There was the shock, then the
revulsion, and then it was ‘the step away until you understand
where the crossfire’s coming from,’ and then it was ‘get your
tools in your arms and come back and circle the wagons and dig in
to defend your guy, defend your leader.’”
In Congress Democrats “got out their arsenal and now
they’re using everything to protect ACORN because that’s the
machine that keeps them in office.”
King was particularly incensed by U.S. District Judge Nina
Gershon’s ruling in favor of ACORN on Dec. 11. The Department of
Justice has reluctantly filed an appeal of the judge’s
ruling.
“Now the Democrats have the district court decision that
Jerry
Nadler solicited and now they will hide behind it if pressed.
They will ignore it if they’re not pressed. They’re never going
to move legislatively. They never wanted to unfund ACORN.”
Gershon, a Bill Clinton appointee, issued a temporary
injunction prohibiting Congress from cutting off funding for
ACORN. She determined that the funding ban was an
unconstitutional “bill of attainder” that singled out ACORN for
punishment without trial.
Only in the through-the-looking-glass world of a leftist
activist judge could cutting off taxpayer funding to an advocacy
group be deemed punishment. This injunction itself is
unconstitutional and an affront to the separation of powers. It
appears to rely on a novel, insidious legal doctrine known as
“legislative due process.” Simply put, groups have rights in the
appropriations process and have a right not to be deprived of
government funding without some kind of cause being shown. In
other words, Congress no longer has the power of the purse
regardless of what the Constitution says.
Gershon’s ruling is “sweeping and far reaching and she even
opined that ACORN has some kind of an implicit right to future
contracts because they’ve succeeded in bidding on contracts that
were similarly competitive,” King said.
Congress, he noted, has voted overwhelmingly to defund
ACORN, yet federal funds continue to flow to ACORN. “We haven’t
proved that we have a non-punitive motive,” as Gershon’s ruling
requires, he said.
Attorney General Eric Holder has made it abundantly clear
he has no interest in investigating his radical friends at ACORN.
Holder’s Justice Department released
a legal opinion late last month that allows the Obama
administration to ignore the will of Congress. He’s also ignored
the
88-page report on ACORN’s systemic corruption and flagrant
racketeering activities that was issued this summer by Republican
investigators on the House Oversight and Government Reform
Committee.
King said he doesn’t hold out much hope that the Obama
administration or Congress will decide to do the right thing and
investigate ACORN.
“This is one-party gangster government and they know what
they’re doing,” he said.
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