ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, is the nation's largest community organization, as well as ... a racketeering outfit.
Secret ACORN Legal Memo Confirms Worst Fears About ACORN
ACORN lawyer Elizabeth Kingsley warned ACORN to shape up last summer. ACORN not only ignored her, but fired national board members such as Marcel Reid and Karen Inman who dared to ask questions about the $948,000 Rathke embezzlement and 8-year long coverup.
I have the secret legal memo and published it with commentary ...
EXCLUSIVE: ACORN Legal Memo Confirms Depths of Troubles
The advice from Elizabeth Kingsley of Harmon, Curran, Spielberg Eisenberg LLP came in the form of an eerily prophetic legal memo to ACORN dated June 19, 2008, the day before ACORN’s national board fired disgraced founder Wade Rathke.
The memo is a kind of Holy Grail for ACORN researchers. One source of mine keeps a copy in a safety deposit box. I’ve lost track of how many people have asked me over the last year if I knew how to get ahold of it. One source told me that there are many people who would “kill” to gain possession of it. This is a bit of an exaggeration perhaps, but not much.
Having read this categorically damning memo, I now understand what all the fuss is about.
The Kingsley memo paints a picture of a once-proud activist conglomerate in utter meltdown and confirms some of the most serious allegations about ACORN now being heard on Capitol Hill.
The problems within ACORN, she admits, are systemic.
Americans who follow the news know that the activities of the ACORN network, a tangled mess of interlocking directorates and affiliated tax-exempt groups that routinely swap seven-figure checks, have long cried out for a probe under federal racketeering laws. The undercover prostitution sting videos that began popping up at BigGovernment.com in mid-September made America intensely interested in ACORN for the first time. While the mainstream media is now covering ACORN, kind of, sort of, no longer can ACORN be said to be the exclusive preserve of Fox News Channel and conservative talk show hosts.
[Elizabeth Kingsley] highlights the following policies or the lack of such policies:
• Whistle blower policy [priority: CRITICAL]
• Document retention and destruction policy (simple version prohibiting illegal destruction of documents) [priority: URGENT]
• Contemporaneous documentation of Board and Committee meetings [priority: URGENT]
• Conflicts of interest policy [priority: IMPORTANT]
• Documented process for determining compensation for the CEO and any other officers or key employees [priority: IMPORTANT]Apparently ACORN doesn't follow best practices.
Kingsley hits ACORN for its incestuous hiring practices. "Also, though we have not created a draft policy at this point, all corporations with staff should adopt an appropriate anti-nepotism policy," she writes.
Matthew Vadum is doing a fantastic job exposing ACORN's fraud. Make sure you read the whole thing!
Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, announced today that it filed two new Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuits on September 28th to obtain government records related to the activities of the controversial "community organization" Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN).
Judicial Watch's EBSA lawsuit involves monies embezzled by Dale Rathke, the brother of ACORN founder Wade Rathke. The New York Times has reported that, overall, Dale Rathke allegedly embezzled $948,607.50 in 1999 and 2000. According to a report by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, a portion of these funds, $215,000, allegedly came in the form of a "loan." The manner in which this "loan" was handled and concealed by ACORN internally may have violated the Employee Income Retirement Security Act (ERISA).
