Gary J Carter
2008-10-15 15:05:24 UTC
Ohio Right Wingers Resurrect Failed 2004 RICO Suit Against ACORN
Posted by Steven Rosenfeld at 4:02 PM on October 14, 2008.
In 2004, right wingers in Ohio sued ACORN under racketeering laws and
were forced to withdraw their suit. On Wednesday, history repeated
itself.
A right-wing Ohio think tank filed a lawsuit on Wednesday accusing
ACORN, the low-income advocacy group that has conducted massive voter
drives in 2008, of violating voting rights law under the state's
anti-racketeering laws. The group, whose staff includes Ohio's former
Republican Secretary of State and Bush-Cheney '04 re-election campaign
co-chair, J. Kenneth Blackwell, is skating on the thinnest of legal
ice.
Why? Because the same tactic was tried in 2004 by some of the same
GOP-connected election lawyers -- who were forced to withdraw their
suit -- and because ACORN did not even register voters in the Ohio
county where the suit was filed on Wednesday, Warren County, according
to ACORN officials.
Warren County is notable because in 2004 county officials lied to the
media and public and declared a homeland security emergency on
Election Night, causing the county to take all ballots to a warehouse
to be counted away from any public observers. The FBI denied it ever
issued such a security alert. Moreover, subsequent reporting by the
Cincinnati Enquirer found county officials had been planning to
announce the alert days before the election.
But that was 2004. On Wednesday, the Columbus-based Buckeye Institute,
filed the state RICO suit. While ACORN spokespeople said they would
vigorously fight this suit in court, a more telling response comes
from looking at what happened the last time GOP partisans used this
same tactic -- in 2004.
Here's what Ohio election lawyer Bob Fitrakis wrote about that
litigation for FreePress.org in 2005.
As the Free Press reported in 2005, (American Center for Voting Rights
founder Thor) Hearne, with the help of Republican attorney Alex Vogel,
concocted a story that the main problem with the 2004 elections in
Ohio was that the NAACP was paying people with crack cocaine to
register voters. Based on scant evidence and an incident of a
volunteer being linked to crack use, Hearne pushed a version of voter
fraud in Ohio that directly attacked not only the NAACP, but ACORN,
the AFL-CIO and ACT-Ohio. By attacking this combination of groups,
Rove and Hearne were targeting the leading forces for registering
blacks, poor, union workers and young people in Ohio - those most
likely to vote Democratic.
Aided by Vogel, then-attorney for Republican Senate Majority leader
Bill Frist, and a front group connected to the U.S. Chamber of
Commerce, the Free Enterprise Coalition, local Republican operative
Mark Rubrick filed an Ohio corrupt practices lawsuit (RICO) against
all the voter registration organizations listed above in Wood County.
The civil RICO case, backed by financing from the Free Enterprise
Coalition, alleged that the voter registration groups provided ". . .
payments made in connections with the violations (in the form of,
among other things, 'bounties,' payments or other rewards for
collecting and/or processing the registrations including but not
limited to illegal drugs, paid to individuals actually engaged in the
violations), . . ." At the bottom of the document filed by attorneys
Jeffrey Creemer and Douglas Haynam of Shumaker, Loop & Kendrick of
Toledo, the following words appear: "jscFree Enterprise
CoalitionAmended Complaint.doc" calling into question who was behind
the lawsuit.
The suit was later quietly withdrawn after election rights attorney
Cliff Arnebeck discovered that the Free Enterprise Coalition had
indemnified Rubrick and had promised to pay any and all expenses
related to his RICO suit. "I told Rubrick in no uncertain terms that
his accusations that the NAACP was a criminal organization were false
and that the indemnification from the Free Enterprise Coalition wasn't
worth the paper it was written on," Arnebeck said.
In writing about the Free Enterprise Coalition (FEC) on May 28, 2007,
the website SourceWatch contains the following quote: "No website, no
employees, a disconnected phone and a lapsed corporate registration.
Without the 990s, you'd be hard pressed to know the GOP funneled $2.8
million through the Free Enterprise Coalition to fund election-related
legal expenses between 2004 and 2005."
"The GOP pulled this exact same stunt in 2004," said Michael Slater,
executive director of Project Vote, which organizes ACORN's voter
registration activities. "This is a frivolous abuse of the legal
process. The court should respond and impose sanctions. You can expect
an aggressive response from us."
Posted by Steven Rosenfeld at 4:02 PM on October 14, 2008.
In 2004, right wingers in Ohio sued ACORN under racketeering laws and
were forced to withdraw their suit. On Wednesday, history repeated
itself.
A right-wing Ohio think tank filed a lawsuit on Wednesday accusing
ACORN, the low-income advocacy group that has conducted massive voter
drives in 2008, of violating voting rights law under the state's
anti-racketeering laws. The group, whose staff includes Ohio's former
Republican Secretary of State and Bush-Cheney '04 re-election campaign
co-chair, J. Kenneth Blackwell, is skating on the thinnest of legal
ice.
Why? Because the same tactic was tried in 2004 by some of the same
GOP-connected election lawyers -- who were forced to withdraw their
suit -- and because ACORN did not even register voters in the Ohio
county where the suit was filed on Wednesday, Warren County, according
to ACORN officials.
Warren County is notable because in 2004 county officials lied to the
media and public and declared a homeland security emergency on
Election Night, causing the county to take all ballots to a warehouse
to be counted away from any public observers. The FBI denied it ever
issued such a security alert. Moreover, subsequent reporting by the
Cincinnati Enquirer found county officials had been planning to
announce the alert days before the election.
But that was 2004. On Wednesday, the Columbus-based Buckeye Institute,
filed the state RICO suit. While ACORN spokespeople said they would
vigorously fight this suit in court, a more telling response comes
from looking at what happened the last time GOP partisans used this
same tactic -- in 2004.
Here's what Ohio election lawyer Bob Fitrakis wrote about that
litigation for FreePress.org in 2005.
As the Free Press reported in 2005, (American Center for Voting Rights
founder Thor) Hearne, with the help of Republican attorney Alex Vogel,
concocted a story that the main problem with the 2004 elections in
Ohio was that the NAACP was paying people with crack cocaine to
register voters. Based on scant evidence and an incident of a
volunteer being linked to crack use, Hearne pushed a version of voter
fraud in Ohio that directly attacked not only the NAACP, but ACORN,
the AFL-CIO and ACT-Ohio. By attacking this combination of groups,
Rove and Hearne were targeting the leading forces for registering
blacks, poor, union workers and young people in Ohio - those most
likely to vote Democratic.
Aided by Vogel, then-attorney for Republican Senate Majority leader
Bill Frist, and a front group connected to the U.S. Chamber of
Commerce, the Free Enterprise Coalition, local Republican operative
Mark Rubrick filed an Ohio corrupt practices lawsuit (RICO) against
all the voter registration organizations listed above in Wood County.
The civil RICO case, backed by financing from the Free Enterprise
Coalition, alleged that the voter registration groups provided ". . .
payments made in connections with the violations (in the form of,
among other things, 'bounties,' payments or other rewards for
collecting and/or processing the registrations including but not
limited to illegal drugs, paid to individuals actually engaged in the
violations), . . ." At the bottom of the document filed by attorneys
Jeffrey Creemer and Douglas Haynam of Shumaker, Loop & Kendrick of
Toledo, the following words appear: "jscFree Enterprise
CoalitionAmended Complaint.doc" calling into question who was behind
the lawsuit.
The suit was later quietly withdrawn after election rights attorney
Cliff Arnebeck discovered that the Free Enterprise Coalition had
indemnified Rubrick and had promised to pay any and all expenses
related to his RICO suit. "I told Rubrick in no uncertain terms that
his accusations that the NAACP was a criminal organization were false
and that the indemnification from the Free Enterprise Coalition wasn't
worth the paper it was written on," Arnebeck said.
In writing about the Free Enterprise Coalition (FEC) on May 28, 2007,
the website SourceWatch contains the following quote: "No website, no
employees, a disconnected phone and a lapsed corporate registration.
Without the 990s, you'd be hard pressed to know the GOP funneled $2.8
million through the Free Enterprise Coalition to fund election-related
legal expenses between 2004 and 2005."
"The GOP pulled this exact same stunt in 2004," said Michael Slater,
executive director of Project Vote, which organizes ACORN's voter
registration activities. "This is a frivolous abuse of the legal
process. The court should respond and impose sanctions. You can expect
an aggressive response from us."