SESSIONS ENDS REVENUE STREAM
FOR OBAMA'S LEFTIES Ex-DOJ official: Former
administration robbed public, by Greg Corombos, 6/9/17, WND
Attorney General Jeff Sessions is
pulling the plug on a Justice Department policy instituted during the Obama
years that effectively forced corporations to settle lawsuits by, in part,
funding Obama’s favorite leftist political organizations, a practice many
critics considered a liberal slush fund.
“When the federal government settles
a case against a corporate wrongdoer, any settlement funds should go first to
the victims and then to the American people – not to bankroll third-party
special interest groups or the political friends of whoever is in power,” said
Sessions in a statement.
Former Justice Department official
Hans von Spakovsky is now with the Heritage Foundation. He is also co-author of
“Obama’s Enforcer: Eric Holder’s Justice Department.” He calls the former
policy nothing more than the government stealing from the American people.
“It’s pretty clear the Obama
administration figured out a way to rob the public and help their political
allies,” said von Spakovsky, who adds that we’re talking about a lot of money
going to Obama’s political friends.
“We’re not talking about chump
change here. My understanding is in the last 30 months before the new
administration came in, the Justice Department had funneled about a billion
dollars to outside third party groups,” said von Spakovsky.
And who exactly received the money? “Environmental groups,
civil-rights groups, ACORN-type groups, that’s who was getting this money,”
said von Spakovsky.
He then explained how the process
worked. “When the Justice Department sued defendants such as Volkswagen or the
Bank of America claiming they had violated federal law, they entered into
settlement agreements with those defendants, in which the defendants agreed to
pay a large sum of money to end the litigation,” said von Spakovsky.
“The Obama Justice Department would
come in and say, ‘We want you to give a portion of this money to such-and-such
organization.’ These were not organizations that had anything to do with the
lawsuit. They weren’t parties to the lawsuit. They didn’t have members who were
injured by whatever the misbehavior was of the company,” said von Spakovsky. “These
are simply third-party, mostly advocacy organizations who were big political
allies of the administration.
That, frankly, is really stealing
money that is due to the American taxpayer and funneling it to political
friends of the government,” added von Spakovsky.
He says this wasn’t just unethical
but illegal. “I actually think it was illegal. There is a federal law called
the Miscellaneous Receipts Act, which requires DOJ lawyers to deposit settlement
checks into the U.S. Treasury Department. That was not happening, so I think it
was illegal. Thanks goodness Attorney General Jeff Sessions has said this is
not going to happen anymore,” said von Spakovsky.
However, Sessions appears content to
end the program. Von Spakovsky suspects there will be no legal danger for
anyone who created or operated this program.
“It sounds like he’s just going to
end the practice and move on. There doesn’t appear to be an effort by the
Justice Department to apply this [retroactively], in other words to go
backwards and go to some of these settlements of lawsuits, open them, and try
to get the money back. I don’t think they’re going to do that,” said von
Spakovsky.
http://www.wnd.com/2017/06/sessions-ends-revenue-stream-for-obamas-lefties/
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