In the video cited by Tommy Boy, reference is made to several investigations into voter registration fraud that ACORN has been charged with. Here is the part these conservative pundits do not tell you about that story:
"Dropped down the memory hole is the fact that ACORN was at the center of the so-called 'prosecutor-gate' scandal, when the Bush administration pressured U.S. Attorneys to bring indictments over the grassroots group's voter-registration drives and then fired some prosecutors who resisted what they viewed as a partisan strategy not supported by solid evidence.
...a stark example of how Republicans - aided by the giant megaphone of the right-wing media - continue to keep Democrats on the defensive, while evidence of Republican guilt gets little sustained attention except at a handful of Internet sites.
That pattern holds true even for issues connected to ACORN.
For instance, much less media interest followed the House Judiciary Committee's August release of Bush administration e-mails related to the role that Rove and other Bush administration officials played in the firings of nine U.S. attorneys amid a Republican effort to target ACORN's voter- registration work during the 2004 presidential election between President George W. Bush and Sen. John Kerry.
Two of the nine U.S. Attorneys who were fired in 2006 were targeted because they refused to bring criminal charges against individuals affiliated with ACORN. The firing of another U.S. Attorney was due, in large part, to his refusal to convene a grand jury and secure a voter-fraud indictment against individuals, some of who were affiliated with ACORN.
In a May 2, 2005, Rove deputy Scott Jennings sent to another Rove protege Tim Griffin an e-mail, which said that in the fall of 2004, Bernalillo County's Republican Sheriff Darren White and Pat Rogers and Mickey Barnett, Republican Party operatives in New Mexico, turned over hundreds of 'suspected fraudulent voter registration forms' handled by ACORN workers. The e-mail was also forwarded to Leslie Fahrenkopf, Bush's associate counsel.
In 2004, New Mexico was considered a swing state in the Bush-Kerry race and Bernalillo County had been targeted by ACORN for a major grassroots effort to register voters, which resulted in about 65,000 newly registered voters, many of who were low-income and minorities who tend to vote for Democrats.
Sheriff White challenged the integrity of some of the names on the voter registration rolls, according to then-New Mexico U.S. Attorney David Iglesias in his book, In Justice: Inside ?the Scandal that Rocked the Bush Administration. White held a press conference along with other Republican officials in the county to call attention to the matter.
'The purported examples that were then produced included a woman who had correctly filled out two different registrations with slightly different signatures and another in which a husband, with his wife's permission, had signed her name to the form,' Iglesias wrote. 'It was demanded that I take action against what was perceived as rampant abuse of the system.'
Scant Evidence
Iglesias said he established an election fraud task force in September 2004 and spent more than two months probing claims of widespread voter fraud in his state. In testimony before a Senate committee in 2007, Iglesias said the task force received about 108 complaints of alleged voter fraud through a hotline over the course of about eight weeks.
'Most of the complaints made to the hotline were clearly not prosecutable ? citizens would complain of their yard signs being removed from their property and de minimis matters like that,' Iglesias testified.
'Only one case of the over 100 referrals had potential. ACORN had employed a woman to register voters. The evidence showed she registered voters who did not have the legal right to vote. The law, 42 USC 1973 had the maximum penalty of 5 years imprisonment and a $5,000 fine.
'After personally reviewing the FBI investigative report and speaking to the agent, the prosecutor I had assigned, Mr. [Rumaldo] Armijo, and conferring with [a Justice Department official] I was of the opinion that the case was not provable. I, therefore, did not authorize a prosecution.
'I have subsequently learned that the State of New Mexico did not file any criminal cases as a result of the' election fraud task force.
Iglesias said Republican officials in his state were far less interested in election reforms and more intent on suppressing votes. He wrote in his book that the Justice Department issued a directive to every U.S. Attorney in the country to find and prosecute cases of voter fraud in their states during the height of hotly contested elections in 2002, 2004, and 2006, even though evidence was thin or non-existent.
During this period, ACORN had stepped up its voter registration efforts and boasted in press releases about registering tens of thousands of first-time voters.
Iglesias said in late summer 2002 he received an e-mail from the Justice Department suggesting 'in no uncertain terms' that U.S. Attorneys should immediately begin working with local and state election officials 'to offer whatever assistance we could in investigating and prosecuting voter fraud cases.'
Other pressure also came from congressional and state Republicans. In New Mexico, Barnett, Rogers ?White were among Republican operatives who complained directly to Rove at the White House and to officials in Bush's Justice Department that Iglesias would not prosecute ACORN employees. These unhappy Republicans demanded that Iglesias be replaced.
According to a report by the Justice Department's inspector general released last year, 'In a March 2006 e-mail forwarded to [Craig] Donsanto in the [Justice Department's] Public Integrity Section, Rogers complained about voter fraud in New Mexico and added, 'I have calls in, to the USA [U.S. Attorney] and his main assistant, but they were not much help during the ACORN fraudulent registration debacle last election.'
In June 2006, Rogers sent Iglesias's Executive Assistant U.S. Attorney Rumaldo Armijo an e-mail, which said, 'The voter fraud wars continue. Any indictment of the Acorn woman would be appreciated. . . . The ACLU/Wortheim [sic] democrats will turn to the camera and suggest fraud is not an issue, because the USA would have done something by now. Carpe Diem!' [Carpe Diem is translated, ?seize the day.?]
Despite positive job reports, Iglesias was fired in December 2006 as part of a purge of nine federal prosecutors who were deemed not 'loyal Bushies' or had other supposed shortcomings.
Last August, Rove went on Fox News to downplay his role in Iglesias's firing, but acknowledged that he did pass on complaints to the Bush Justice Department about 'the performance of the U.S. Attorney in New Mexico, that he failed to go after ACORN in clear cases of vote fraud?'
Expanded Warfare
But the Republican war against ACORN didn't stop with Iglesias.
In Missouri, former U.S. Attorney Todd Graves was another federal prosecutor who fell into disfavor with the Bush administration because of alleged inaction on ACORN and voter fraud issues.
Graves would not file criminal charges of voter fraud against four employees of ACORN, according to documents later released by the Justice Department in connection with the fired-prosecutors probe.
Graves also resisted pressure from Bradley Schlozman, head of the Bush Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, to file a lawsuit against Robin Carnahan, Missouri's Democratic Secretary of State, on charges that Carnahan failed to take action on cases of voter fraud, Graves testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2007.
Graves was forced to resign in March 2006 and was replaced by Schlozman as Missouri's acting U.S. Attorney. Schlozman then filed the civil suit against Carnahan.
The case was later dismissed by a federal court judge who ruled, 'The United States has not shown that any Missouri resident was denied his or her right to vote as a result of deficiencies alleged by the United States. Nor has the United States shown that any voter fraud has occurred.'
Schlozman also filed federal criminal charges of voter registration fraud against members of ACORN five days before the November 2006 mid-term elections. Schlozman came under criticism for breaking with longstanding Justice Department policy against bringing voting related charges so close to an election.
Schlozman testified before a Senate committee in 2007 that he received approval to file the voter registration fraud charges from a Justice Department ethics official. He later changed his testimony, was accused of perjury and was the subject of a federal investigation. The Justice Department, however, recently declined to prosecute Schlozman on allegations that he lied to Congress."
For more of the news story:
The Public Record
