A former member of the Federal Election Commission is calling on the Department of Justice to launch an extensive investigation into the activities of the controversial community organizing group ACORN.
The Justice Department's inspector general said earlier this week that he will look into whether the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) received grant funds from Justice -- and if it did, what it did with that money. Congress voted to cut off funding to ACORN last week after videos surfaced showing employees at several ACORN offices across the country offering tax help to a couple posing as a pimp and a prostitute who wanted to obtain an illegal housing loan for their brothel. In addition, the Internal Revenue Service yesterday severed ties with the group over the scandal. Hans von Spakovksy, a visiting legal scholar at The Heritage Foundation, says the DOJ needs to conduct more than just an internal probe of its involvement with ACORN. "These videos show ACORN employees encouraging and instructing the filmmakers on how to engage in mortgage fraud and tax fraud -- and they have gotten a lot of federal money in the past," he notes. "So we don't know how much of that kind of fraud occurred in the past use of federal money. "That is a more-than-sufficient basis for a federal investigation," says the Heritage scholar, "and the Justice Department needs to open one up." Von Spakovsky says ACORN still has a tremendous amount of pull with the White House and Democratic lawmakers. He notes that Senator Dick Durbin (D-Illinois) voted to continue funding ACORN even though the group's employees were caught on tape encouraging both fraud and human trafficking in sex slaves.
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