Oct. 24, 2017, Fairfax, Va.—Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning today issued the following statement praising House Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Bob Goodlatte’s (R-Va.) release of documents proving the Obama Justice Department allocated settlement funds to third party groups for ideological reasons:
“Judiciary Committee Chairman Goodlatte was right when he sought to defund these third-party settlements, which were nothing more than political payola to radical, left-wing groups. The insidiousness of this scheme to turn mortgage bank settlements into multi-million-dollar payouts to support left-wing politics, is that it just hasn’t occurred out of the Justice Department. Through sue-and-settle and various federal government grants, the taxpayers are amongst the largest sugar daddies for far-left causes.
“The Justice Department emails released by Goodlatte show that only approved left-wing groups were eligible for the banks to make payouts to as part of their settlements, overtly excluding deemed to be too conservative. What’s worse, is that the settlements often gave the banks double credit if they gave money to the left-wing groups rather than paying the government. Meaning, every $10 million to left-wing groups was counted the same as $20 million to the government.
“Goodlatte’s disclosures show once again that there wasn’t single area of government that Obama did not corrupt into being a part of a left-wing funding machine. Obama’s Justice Department effectively appropriated federal funds to these third-party groups without Congressional approval, violating Article I of the Constitution as this was a revenue stream to the government that was then illegally diverted to political ends. The actors who signed off on those political allocations should be subjected to the full weight of the law, including loss of pension and at the very least significant fines.”
Attachments:
“No DOJ legal settlement monies to third-party groups should be allowed in omnibus,” Americans for Limited Government, Dec. 2, 2015 at https://getliberty.org/2015/12/no-doj-legal-settlement-monies-to-third-party-groups-should-be-allowed-in-omnibus/
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