ACORN Political Money Laundering in Texas
By Matthew Vadum
The taxpayer watchdog group Cause of Action is accusing the former Texas branch of ACORN of illegally diverting charitable funds for political activity benefiting Democrats.
ACORN’s Texas chapter may have changed its name but it still appears to be involved in the same kinds of financial shenanigans that made the radical group synonymous with corruption and sleaze. President Obama used to work for ACORN and represented it in court as an attorney.
There are two ACORN spinoff groups allegedly involved in the scheme.
They are the Texas Organizing Project (TOP), classified by the IRS as a 501c4 “social welfare” organization, and its sister group, the Texas Organizing Project Education Fund, a 501c3 charitable organization. The two legally separate nonprofit corporations were both created in December 2009, around the time Congress banned federal taxpayer funding of ACORN. ACORN was infamous for its embrace of the brutal in-your-face political tactics espoused by Rules for Radicals author Saul Alinsky.
Cause of Action says TOP used funds transferred to it by TOP Education Fund for political activity – a huge no-no according to federal tax law. This kind of accounting sleight-of-hand was standard operating procedure for the racketeers who ran the relentlessly corrupt ACORN network.
TOP and TOP Education Fund are engaging “in improper political activities under the radar of the IRS,” said Dan Epstein, executive director of Cause of Action. Epstein’s group is asking the IRS “to investigate these groups for potential abuses of their tax-exempt status, and to hold them accountable for any violations they find.”
