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.
And who exactly
received the money?
“Environmental
groups, civil-rights groups, ACORN-type groups, that’s who was getting
this money,” said von Spakovsky.
“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.
And who exactly received
the money?
“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.
“Environmental groups, civil-rights groups, ACORN-type groups, that’s
who was getting this money,” 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.
FULL
DECK
A
decision by the FBI to charge Clinton or her top aides for mishandling
classified information would be a shock to the political system.
