Meet Brett Kimberlin: Convicted Domestic Terrorist Bomber and Serial Litigator

Hat Tip to Lee Stranahan who has declared 25 May 2012  as Everybody Blog About Brett Kimberlin Day.

Zilla of the Resistance has a must read breakdown of Kimberlin’s criminal record,  his facilitation as a darling of leftwing progs who help finance his craziness, and a collection of bloggers and political commentators who are joining in the effort to virtually and electronically slap this yahoo back into his hole.

Like another domestic terrorist, Bill Ayers,  Kimberlin has reared his ugly head.  I did some research on Kimberlin. Aside from being a convicted serial bomber, he’s a certifiable nutcase, an obsessive sociopath, and a real bad person.  Kimberlin and his business cohort Brad Friedman have flooded the court system with hundreds of frivolous lawsuits claiming “defamation” and incredibly, “cyber stalking”.  He’s also pals with Dem operative/Daily Kos hack Neal Rauhauser, who likes to tweet conservative bloggers, telling them that they have “sexy, f&*kable children”.

What a class act.

Kimberlin and his group of leftard malfeasant thugs have mounted a campaign against anyone who points out that they’re actually leftard malfeasant thugs.

He threatened to sue conservative bloggers, Los Angeles County Assistant District Attorney Patrick Frey who blogs under the moniker Patterico, and Liberty Chick, who writes for Brietbart.

Patterico posted some of the clownish bullpuckey pulled by Kimberlin, including stalking and harrassing people who publish facts pertaining to his perjury, crime spree, questionable relationship with an adolescent girl, and leftwingnut activism.  In Patterico’s case, Kimberlin sent emails to his employer and placed ranting phone calls to his office, calling him a racist and threatening to get a restraining order against him. Another one of Kimberlin’s pals, Ron Brynart, a self-decribed ”journalist”, harrassed and threatened Frey and his wife on Twitter:

Frey was also a victim of “SWATting” by an unidentified caller whom he suspects was a Kimberlin associate.  “SWATting” is a hoax in which a caller, generally a computer hacker, calls a police department to report a shooting at the home of his enemy. The faux emergency brings a SWAT team or a deployment of cops to the target’s house and places them in danger of getting killed.

This is what happened to Frey:

Kimberlin also called up the employer of Stacey McCain’s wife (The Other McCain), claiming that Stacey was “harassing” him.

He sued Seth Allen, a commenter/blogger in Maryland, resulting in a default judgement of a whopping $100.  Hilarity ensued.  Kimberlin also brought litigation against Aaron Walker, the author of Allergic to Bull for giving Allen legal advice.   Walker published a lengthy record of the lawsuit,  during which, Kimberlin tried to frame him for assault.

A background on the douchebag from Liberty Chick at Big Journalism.

Excerpts:

……in 1981, Kimberlin, then the owner of vegetarian restaurant Good Earth, was finally convicted of a week-long bombing spree in Indianapolis, IN in which eight separate bombs caused extensive property damage, destroyed a police cruiser, and severely maimed a man, which eventually led to the man’s suicide. Kimberlin’s story has so often been overlooked or understated by the national media, which unfortunately all but failed to follow up on what were later proven by the same journalist who first reported on his story to be mistruths. But locals to IN know exactly what happened and have never forgotten it since. It’s time the public got the full story.

Infamously known as “The Speedway Bomber,” Brett Kimberlin exploded his eighth and final bomb on September 6, 1978, which nearly blew off the right leg of his victim, Carl DeLong, and seriously injured the man’s left leg and right hand, causing his leg to be amputated. DeLong committed suicide two years later, unable to cope with the pain and devastation of his injuries. The victim’s wife Sandra later won a civil judgment against Kimberlin for $1.6 million.

Police had immediately suspected Kimberlin in the bombing case. He’d been in trouble since high school, was a suspected drug trafficker and he was already the suspect in a murder that had occurred only months earlier. As the Indianapolis Starrecounted recently:

“On July 29, 1978, Speedway resident Julia Scyphers, 65, answered a knock at her door. A man she didn’t know was standing on her stoop asking about items she’d recently tried to sell at a yard sale. She let him into the garage to look at the items and he shot her in the head.

Mrs. Scypher’s husband, Fred, 68, heard the bang and came out in time to see a car pulling out of the driveway. He would later tell police he’d gotten a glimpse of the man who’d come to the door.

When police began looking for a motive in the Scyphers slaying, they found there’d been a recent family clash. Julia Scyphers’ daughter, Sandra Barton, had become involved with a man who seemed to Mrs. Scyphers to be inordinately close to one of Barton’s young daughters. Mrs. Scyphers told friends she was so concerned that she’d arranged for both of her granddaughters to come live with her. Whether or not Mrs. Scyphers’ fears were correct (no charges were ever filed to that effect), this incident led investigators to start looking at Brett C. Kimberlin.”

Investigators had learned that Sandra Barton’s pre-teen daughter had accompanied Kimberlin, in his 20′s, on several out of state trips. When the girl moved in with her grandmother as a protective measure on the family’s part, Kimberlin threatened to commit suicide.

But police still needed to collect more evidence in both the bombing and murder cases. After he was identified by a store-owner who’d unwittingly sold him the timer for one of the bombs, Kimberlin was subsequently reported to the U.S. Army by a nearby print shop owner who had become suspicious when Kimberlin wanted to reproduce military driver’s licenses. And when he returned to that print shop wearing a security guard uniform with an illegal Department of Defense insignia, an Army investigator was present to bust him for violating the law. Police used the opportunity to obtain a warrant to search Kimberlin’s vehicle, where they found the same timers and explosive chemical used in the bombs….

……Eventually, in three separate trials, Kimberlin was convicted of the bombings and sentenced to a fifty-year term of imprisonment for manufacturing and possessing a destructive device, and malicious damage by explosives with personal injury. He received a concurrent twelve-year sentence for impersonating a federal officer, illegal use of a Department of Defense insignia, and illegal use of the Presidential Seal, and a five-year term for receipt of explosives by a convicted felon….

……The Scyphers murder case however has remained open. One suspect was identified and charged at the time, but the victim’s husband, the only witness in the case, died of cancer two weeks later, leaving the authorities without a living witness.

Despite the evidence authorities were gathering, Kimberlin never would be formally charged with the murder. Still, he did serve nearly 17 years in prison for both the bombings and the drug case. After the conviction, more details were revealed about the case that unraveled a complex and creepy series of additional crimes that Kimberlin planned against numerous targets, most notably the chief government prosecutor, Bernard (Buddy) Pylitt, who happened to have political ambitions for governor. Indianapolis Star reporter Joseph Gelarden thoroughly documented the entire plot based on information and documents that were provided by the investigators after Kimberlin’s conviction. It reads like a fictional made for TV movie, complete with a hit list of “six to be killed, two or three to be roughed up and one or two to be robbed,” according to the article.

Mug shot 1

Mug shot 2

Kimberlin posing in his Barney Fife outfit.

2009 photo

Police theorized that Kimberlin engaged in the serial bombing to throw off the authorities in the Scypher murder.

After another stint in prison for parole violations, Kimberlin decided to utilize his talents as a “political activist”.

…… Kimberlin also co-founded Velvet Revolution with Brad Friedman of BradBlog. This organization is funded by, among others, the notable Tides Foundation.

The George Soros-funded Tides Foundation boasts Wade Rathke as its board chairman. Rathke is the former founder and chief organizer of Obama’s voter fraud and ‘community organizing’ group ACORN.

By 2007, Kimberlin had received notoriety as an “election and campaign reform activist,” monitoring voting processes and raising electronic tabulation issues. He runs the very organization that today is demanding the prosecution of Andrew Breitbart, Karl Rove, and many others who happen to oppose progressive policy, while often basing accusations on little else than opinion.

Between the time he was released from prison and today, Kimberlin has been involved in a number of progressive causes through his organizations. Among these are election and campaign finance reform, electronic voting investigation, immigration rights, anti-war activism, and a variety of other civil rights causes.

His main source of income is  grants he receives for “non profit charities”, which is utilized for his campaign of malicious litigation. One of those non-profit organizations is Kimberlin’sJustice Through Music Project. Babs Streisand and John Kerry donated thousands of dollars to it.  He’s  garnered praise for his peace efforts  and his anti-war songs.  How quaint.

Hat Tip to Patrick at Thoughts and Rantings, who has provided information about Kimberlin’s whereabouts in Bethesda, Maryland, complete with street address and Google Street View.  I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if it’s his Mom’s house and he lives in the basement.

Kimberlin is a vile, filthy excuse for a human being who needs to be virtually and electronically slapped back into his hole.  We need to bring the cyber-hammer down on this clown. Count me in.

Today is your day, Kimberlin.  Enjoy.

Crowdfunding a Reality TV Travel Show

BREAKING NEWS!!!

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Please CLICK the link above and check out how to become a Backer of this great new Reality TV Travel Show on KICKSTARTER.  We have the opportunity to help raise the money needed to shoot the pilot episode, so please go register on KICKSTARTER, like the project...back them for $1 and help them build momentum!!!  They need our support and this is a great project!!!

Journey of a Lifetime is a Reality TV Travel Adventure show and THEY WANT TO TELL YOUR STORY! They're looking for young adults to tell them about their desired Journey of a Lifetime. If money were no object, and you were given a week long, all-expense paid journey...where would your story take you? When you close your eyes and dream about a place...where are you? This is a reality TV travel entertainment show, more about the people who are taking their journey of a lifetime and the relationship aspects, all set against whatever geographic backdrop they're thrown into. This show is about impacting lives...one journey at a time.

Healthy Economy equals SMALL government

I used to be able to describe the United States this way, but not today unfortunately.  Where in the world can you find a strong, vibrant economy where optimism and opportunity dominate the scene-- not chaos and negativity. 


There are a lot of places around the world that fit this mold-- their economies are healthy and people are legitimately confident about the future. From Estonia to Hong Kong to Andorra to Singapore, there are common elements in these countries that have greatly contributed to their success: 


1) They're small. 
2) They have governments that generally stay out of the way. 


An obscure 20th century economist named Leopold Kohr wrote extensively about these factors; and his 1957 book The Breakdown of Nations has proven quite prophetic. 


In the book, Kohr extols the virtues of 'smallness' and indicates that most of the political challenges in the world-- military over-extension, debt, poverty, bureaucratic stodginess, etc.-- are caused by the unsustainable expansion of nations. 


For Kohr, it is simply a matter of scale. Once a country becomes too large, any system of government will become oppressive. 


Small countries, conversely, don't have the resources to wage wars or build huge bureaucracies. They're forced by circumstance to allow the market to work and the private sector to flourish. 


Singapore and Hong Kong are great examples. They're not waging wars, dropping bombs, or establishing far flung military bases. Both countries are devoid of any natural resources, and their only means of survival and success have been to step out of the way and let the market take over. 


In a matter of decades, they have become two of the most prosperous nations on the planet, and remain among the healthiest today. 


Conversely, the 'big' countries of today have assembled massive states which have spawned massive governments that require massive resources to administer... and quite oppressively I might add. 


Democracy may look great on paper, but in modern practice of today's 'big countries', it is a terrible perversion of the principles of liberty. Like Rome and the Ottoman Empire before, the individual now exists to support the state, not the other way around. 


This is exactly what Kohr warned would become the 'crisis of bigness'. Faced with economic challenges and a debilitating cost structure, big governments and bloated bureaucracies will only beget more bigness, more bloat... until the only possible outcome is collapse. 


It reads like a playbook of exactly what's happening today in the west. Already suffocating from too much debt, governments are going deeper and deeper into debt, and hiring more and more workers to administer 'stimulus programs' and an ever-expanding tax code. 


To politicians, the solution is to expand the state and expand their authority. This is the exact opposite of what they should be doing... and as has happened numerous times throughout history, it may very well lead to an entire system reset. 

Political Hit-Job in the Windy City: Barack Obama

Chicago, 1996. State Senator Alice Palmer (D-Ill.) never saw it coming...

The popular activist, running for re-election (she'd won the previous election with a landslide 82% of the vote), was a sure thing to keep her seat.

But on the day after New Year's 1996, a small army of lawyers filed into the hearing room of the Chicago Board of Elections. In a blink, Alice Palmer's name had been struck from the ballot.

So, too, were the names of three other candidates on the Democratic primary ballot — all eliminated on the basis of minor "violations," most of them as picayune as not crossing a "t" or failure to dot an "i."

When the dust settled only a single name remained on the ballot: Barack Hussein Obama. He "swept" to victory... unopposed.


Here is the documented history of that series of events, including quotes from Obama:

Alice J. Palmer (born June 20, 1939) is an American educator and former Democratic member of the Illinois Senate.^[1] Known as a longtime progressive activist, Palmer represented the state's 13th senate district from June 6, 1991 until January 8, 1997.^[2][3] At the time, the district spanned an economically diverse area and included the Chicago communities of Hyde Park, South Shoreand Englewood.^[3]

First appointed to fill the vacant seat of retired state senator Richard J. Newhouse, Jr., Palmer successfully ran for election in 1992 and served a four-year term that ended on January 8, 1997.^[4][5]She ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. House of Representatives in 1995.

Palmer began her teaching career in Indianapolis then moved to Chicago to teach at Malcolm X College, one of the City Colleges of Chicago.^[2] She earned an M.A. in urban studies from Roosevelt University, and a Ph.D. in educational administration from Northwestern University.^[2][1] While working on her degree at Northwestern, Palmer co-authored two books and tutored. She then took a position at Northwestern as Associate Dean and Director of African American Student Affairs for five years.^[2]

She became involved in a national voter education movement then founded the Chicago YMCA Youth and Government Program in 1986.^[2] In addition, she was executive director of Chicago Cities in Schools.^[2] In the late 1980s she was on the board of the Chicago Committee in Solidarity with Southern Africa, an anti-apartheid group.^[6]

Palmer was appointed to the Illinois state senate in June 1991 to fill the remainder of the term of longtime state senator, Richard J. Newhouse, Jr., who had retired.^[4] She successfully ran for election in 1992 and served a four-year term that ended on January 8, 1997.^[4][5]

While in the state senate, Palmer initially served on the committees for Appropriations, Commerce and Economic Development, Elementary and Secondary Education and Higher Education,^[1] rising to vice chairperson of Commerce and Economic Development.^[5] Later in her tenure, she served on the State Government Operations and the Economic and Fiscal commissions, and was a member of the Legislative Bureau and the Legislative Information Systems committee.^[7]

In July 1995, seven months after launching an exploratory fundraising committee for a U.S. congressional run, Palmer announced she would run to replace U.S. Representative Mel Reynolds who was then under indictment for sex crimes. She also said that she would not seek reelection to the Illinois state senate in 1996.^[8][9][10] Shortly afterward, Barack Obama, who had never held political office to-date, launched his campaign committee for Palmer's Illinois state senate seat.^[10]

Following Reynolds' conviction and resignation from the U.S. House in August 1995, a special election primary was set for November 1995 to replace Reynolds. In September 1995, Palmer supporters held a press conference asking other announced and rumored candidates to drop out to allow Palmer to run in the special primary without opposition.^[11]

On September 19, 1995 Barack Obama formally announced his candidacy for the state senate, with Palmer introducing and endorsing Obama as her successor, according to multiple accounts.^[12][3] According to The New Yorker, Palmer's endorsement "brought with it two organizational assets: local operators and local activists".^[13]

On November 28, 1995, after finishing a distant third behind Jesse Jackson, Jr. in the primary to replace Reynolds, a disappointed Palmer remarked that she still would not seek re-election to the state senate.^[14] However, Palmer changed her mind and filed nominating petitions with 1,580 signatures on December 18, 1995—the last day for filing.^[15] That day Obama told the Chicago Tribune, "I am disappointed that she's decided to go back on her word to me".^[3]

In early January 1996, Obama challenged Palmer's hastily gathered petitions and those of the three other prospective Democratic candidates.^[13] Nearly two-thirds of the signatures on Palmer's petitions were found to be invalid, leaving her almost 200 signatures short of the required 757 signatures of registered voters residing in the Illinois senate district. None of the other three prospective candidates had the required number of valid signatures—which left Obama, who had filed nominating petitions with over 3,000 signatures on the first filing day—as the only candidate to earn a place on the March 1996 Democratic primary ballot for the 13th district Illinois state senate.^[16][3] In a 2007 interview with the Chicago Tribune, Obama said that the challenges were justified by obvious flaws in the signature sheets.^[3]

The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) was a collection of community-based organizations in the United States that advocated for low- and moderate-income families by working on neighborhood safety, voter registration, health care, affordable housing, and other social issues. At its peak ACORN had over 500,000 members and more than 1,200 neighborhood chapters^[3] in over 100 cities across the U.S.,^[4] as well as in Argentina, Canada, Mexico, and Peru.^[5] ACORN was founded in 1970 by Wade Rathke and Gary Delgado.^[6] It filed forChapter 7 liquidation on November 2, 2010, effectively closing the organization,^[7] although many chapters and state-wide organizations continued work under different name(s).^[8]

ACORN was shut down in the wake of the September 2009 release of selectively edited videos by two conservative activists including James O'Keefe using a hidden camera to elicit damaging responses from low-level ACORN employees that appeared to advise them how to hide prostitution activities and avoid taxes.^[9] A nationwide controversy immediately ensued resulting in a loss of funding from government and private donors,^[10][11][12] including a "defund ACORN" act passed by Congress. Following the publication of the videos, four different independent investigations by various state and city Attorneys General and the GAO released in 2009 and 2010 cleared ACORN, finding its employees had not engaged in criminal activities and that the organization had managed its federal funding appropriately, and calling the videos deceptively and selectively edited to present the workers in the worst possible light. Despite this, by March 2010, 15 of ACORN's 30 state chapters had already closed^[10] and the group announced it was closing its remaining state chapters and disbanding.^[13]

Voter registration

ACORN has conducted large-scale voter registration drives since at least the 1980s,^[23] focusing primarily on registering poor and minority citizens.^[24][25] During the 2008 election season, ACORN gathered over 1.3 million voter registration forms in 21 states. Some of these registration forms were flagged by ACORN's internal auditors for review by election officials. It was estimated by Project Vote that 400,000 registrations collected by ACORN were ultimately rejected, the vast majority for being duplicate registrations submitted by citizens (which is also common at government voter registration services according to reports on the National Voter Registration Act by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission). An unknown number of registrations were fraudulent, but Project Vote estimated that only a few percent were, based on past years and samples from some drives in 2008.^[26] No official in states where voter registration drives were conducted have come forward with substantial numbers of fraudulent registrations. It was estimated by Project Vote that 450,000 of the registrations collected by ACORN represented first-time voters, while the remainder were address changes submitted by citizens updating their addresses.^[26]

As required by law in most states, ACORN must submit all registration forms collected by its workers, including those flagged by ACORN as incomplete or suspicious. Fraudulent voter registrations are investigated at local, state, and federal levels, and have sometimes resulted in criminal convictions for ACORN employees. ACORN has fired employees for fraudulent registration practices and turned them over to authorities. As of 2006, ACORN was improving its fraud detection and reporting procedures, and cooperating with authorities in efforts to prosecute violators.^{[27][28][29][30]} Jeff Ordower, ACORN's Midwest Director, observed, "There is no scenario where those people on problematic cards would show up at the polls."^[31][32] Of 26,513 registrations submitted by ACORN over a nine-month period in San Diego County, California, 4,655 were initially flagged, but 2,806 of those were later validated - a 7% error rate - compared to usually less than 5% for voter drives by other organizations, according to county officials.^[33]

In a case in Washington state where seven temporary employees of ACORN were charged with submitting fraudulent voter registrations, ACORN agreed to pay King County $25,000 for its investigative costs and acknowledged that the national organization could be subject to criminal prosecution if fraud occurs again. According to the prosecutor, the misconduct was done "as an easy way to get paid [by ACORN], not as an attempt to influence the outcome of elections."^[28][34] In August 2008, ACORN caught, fired and reported employees Maria Miles and Kevin Clancy, who later pled guilty to repeatedly registering the names of the same registered voters.^[35][36][37] In May 2009, six ACORN employees in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania pled guilty to charges of a combined total of 51 counts of forgery and other violations while registering voters during the 2008 election cycle.^[38]

In plea deals in a 2009 Las Vegas case, former ACORN field director Amy Busefink and ACORN official Christopher Edwards pled guilty to "conspiracy to commit the crime of compensation for registration of voters" in connection with a quota system for paid registration staff.^[39] Edwards was sentenced to a year's probation and agreed to testify for prosecutors in charges against ACORN and against Busefink, while Busefink appealed to the Nevada Supreme Court and challenged the constitutionality of the statute.^[40][41] In April, 2011, ACORN entered a guilty plea to one count of felony compensation for registration of voters, for which they were fined $5000,^[42] but did not concede that the law was constitutional.^[41]

In addition to registering voters directly, ACORN has worked to remove systemic obstacles to voter registration. In 2006, it brought a lawsuit in federal court in Ohio against the Ohio Secretary of State, at that time Ken Blackwell, and the Director of the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services. ACORN alleged that, during the period that included the 2004 United States election voting controversies, the defendants had committed multiple violations of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993. The district court dismissed the case, but that decision was reversed in 2008 by the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.^[43] After extensive fact discovery in 2009, the parties agreed to a settlement, under which the defendants agreed to implement several measures to facilitate registration of low-income voters.^[44][45][46] The Dayton Daily Newscharacterized the settlement as "accepting the thrust of [ACORN's] complaint."^[47]

On March 19, 2010, The New York Times reported that ACORN was on the verge of filing for bankruptcy; 15 of the group's 30 state chapters had disbanded over the past six months, and other chapters (including the largest, in New York and California) renamed themselves and severed all ties to the national organization.^[10] Two unnamed ACORN officials told the Times that the following weekend, a teleconference was planned to discuss a bankruptcy filing; "private donations from foundations to Acorn [had] all but evaporated," and the federal government had distanced itself from the group.^[10] "[L]ong before the activist videos delivered what may become the final blow, the organization was dogged for years by financial problems and accusations of fraud."^[10] "That 20-minute video ruined 40 years of good work," said Sonja Merchant-Jones, former co-chairwoman of ACORN's recently closed Maryland chapter. "But if the organization had confronted its own internal problems, it might not have been taken down so easily."^[10]

On March 22, 2010, National ACORN spokesman Kevin Whelan says the organization's board decided to close remaining state affiliates and field offices by April 1 because of falling revenues.^[62] Some other national operations will continue operating for at least several weeks before shutting for good.^[63] On April 20, ACORN CEO Bertha Lewis reported that ACORN was "still alive. We're limping along. We're on life support."^[64]Lewis said that ACORN's annual budget had been reduced from $25 million to $4 million, and that its staff of 350 to 600 people had been reduced to four.^[64] Lewis explained the controversies had left a stain on ACORN, "sort of like a scarlet letter," forcing the group to spend money defending itself against "one investigation after another."^[64]

ACORN was a nonpartisan organization, but its legally separate political action arm frequently endorsed causes and candidates, including the 2008 Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama.^{[4][65][66][67]} ACORN lobbied every Democratic National Convention since 1980^[68] and had members elected as delegates to those conventions;^[68] ACORN also lobbied at Republican conventions.^[68] ACORN was criticized by Republicans for its support of Democratic candidates and for its general support of political positions that are more often favored by Democrats.^[65]

In a report released in October 2008, the U.S. Department of Justice Inspector General concluded that U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales fired U.S. Attorney David Iglesias for political reasons after Iglesias failed to prosecute a New Mexico ACORN chapter. The report said claims Iglesias was fired for poor performance were not credible, and the "real reason for Iglesias's removal was the complaints from New Mexico Republican politicians and party activists about how Iglesias handled voter fraud [cases]."^[69]

During the debate on the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, some commentators claimed that a draft provision (omitted in the adopted bill) to give money to funds run by the US Department of the Treasurycould potentially lead to money flowing to groups like ACORN.^[65][70] When asked how much money ACORN or other community groups would get, a spokesman for Financial Services Committee chairman Barney Frank, said, "Absolutely none. All funds would go to state and local governments."^[12] Critics also claimed that ACORN's complex organizational structure allowed it to escape public scrutiny.^[71]

[edit]2008

ACORN was a political issue in the 2008 United States Presidential Election over allegations of conflict of interest and voter registration fraud. During the 2008 Democratic Presidential Primary ACORN's national political action committee, ACORN Votes, endorsed Barack Obama.^[72] Obama, with several other attorneys, had served as local counsel for ACORN in a 1995 voting rights lawsuit joined by the Justice Department and theLeague of Women Voters.^[73][74] Obama's campaign hired an ACORN affiliate for $800,000 to conduct a get-out-the-vote effort during that primary,^[75][76] but did not retain ACORN for the general presidential election.^[75][76]

Throughout the election season, supporters of Republican candidates portrayed ACORN's submission of invalid voter registration applications as widespread vote fraud. In October 2008, the campaign for Republican presidential candidate John McCain released a Web-based advertisement claiming ACORN was responsible for "massive voter fraud," a point that Sen. McCain repeated in the final presidential debate. Factcheck.orgcalled this claim "breathtakingly inaccurate," but acknowledged that ACORN had problems with phony registrations.^[77] The ads also claimed that home loan programs ACORN promoted were partly responsible for the sub-prime mortgage crisis. Newsweek and Factcheck.org also found these claims to be exaggerated and inaccurate.^[78]

A poll released in November 2009 by the Public Policy Polling organization found that 52% of Republican Party members it surveyed, and 26% of respondents overall, believed in a conspiracy theory that ACORN "stole" the election for Barack Obama. The Democratic polling organization commented that this was somewhat higher than belief in the birther conspiracy theories.^[79]

[edit]2008-2009

The New York Times reported on July 9, 2008, that Dale Rathke, the brother of ACORN's founder Wade Rathke, was found to have embezzled $948,607.50 from the group and affiliated charitable organizations back in 1999 and 2000.^[80] ACORN executives decided to handle it as an internal matter, and did not inform most of the board members or law enforcement, and instead signed an enforceable restitution agreement with the Rathke family to repay the amount of the embezzlement. $210,000 has already been repaid, and a donor, Drummond Pike, has offered to pay the remaining debt.^[81] The Times reported that, according to Wade Rathke, "the decision to keep the matter secret was not made to protect his brother but because word of the embezzlement would have put a 'weapon' into the hands of enemies of ACORN, a liberal group that is a frequent target of conservatives who object to ACORN's often strident advocacy on behalf of low- and moderate-income families and workers." A whistleblower revealed the embezzlement in 2008. On June 2, 2008, Dale Rathke was dismissed, and Wade stepped down as ACORN's chief organizer, but he remains chief organizer for Acorn International L.L.C.^[80]

In September 2008, following revelations of Dale Rathke's embezzlement, two members of ACORN's national board of directors filed a lawsuit seeking to obtain financial documents and to force the organization to sever ties with Wade Rathke.^[82] ACORN's executive committee voted unanimously to remove the two, "because their actions—such as releasing a confidential legal memo to the press—were damaging the organization."^[83]

In October 2009, Louisiana Attorney General Buddy Caldwell claimed in a subpoena that ACORN's board of directors found that a larger amount—$5 million—had been embezzled from the organization. Bertha Lewis, ACORN's CEO, said the allegation is false.^[84] On November 6, following up on the subpoena, Caldwell served a search warrant at the ACORN headquarters in New Orleans.^[85] Caldwell stated, "This is an investigation of everything—Acorn, the national organization, the local organization and all of its affiliated entities."^[86]

[edit]2009

Main article: ACORN 2009 undercover videos controversy

The ACORN 2009 undercover videos controversy started in September 2009 when conservative activists Hannah Giles and James O'Keefe publicized selectively edited^[87][88][89] hidden camera recordings throughFox News and Andrew Breitbart's website BigGovernment.com.^[9] In the videos, Giles posed as a prostitute and O'Keefe posed as her boyfriend in order to elicit damaging responses from employees of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN).^[9] The videos were recorded over the summer of 2009 while visiting ACORN offices in eight^[90] cities and purported to show low-level ACORN employees in several cities providing advice to Giles and O'Keefe on how to avoid taxes and detection by the authorities with regard to their plans to engage in tax evasion, human smuggling, and child prostitution.^[91] After the videos were made public, the U.S. Congress voted to eliminate federal funding to ACORN. Although the resolutions were later nullified in a federal court ruling that the measure was an unconstitutional bill of attainder, on August 13, 2010, a federal appeals court upheld the congressional act that cut off federal funding for ACORN.^{[92][93][94][95]} In March 2010, ACORN announced it would be closing its offices and disbanding due to loss of funding from government and private donors.^[96]

On December 7, 2009, the former Massachusetts Attorney General, after an independent internal investigation of ACORN, found the videos that had been released appeared to have been edited, "in some cases substantially". He found no evidence of criminal conduct by ACORN employees, but concluded that ACORN had poor management practices that contributed to unprofessional actions by a number of its low-level employees.^{[97][98][99][100]} On March 1, 2010, the District Attorney's office for Brooklyn determined that the videos were "heavily edited"^[101] and concluded that there was no criminal wrongdoing by the ACORN staff in the videos from the Brooklyn ACORN office.^[102][103] On April, 1, 2010, an investigation by the California Attorney General found the videos from Los Angeles, San Diego and San Bernardino to be "heavily edited,"^[9]and the investigation did not find evidence of criminal conduct on the part of ACORN employees.^[9][89] On June 14, 2010, the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) released its findings which showed that ACORN evidenced no sign that it, or any of its related organizations, mishandled any federal money they had received.^[104][105]

As part of the effort by some chapters to stay afloat by severing ties with the national organization, California ACORN changed its name to Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment,^{[8][not in citation given]} New York ACORN renamed itself New York Communities for Change,^[10] and an offshoot of the ACORN organization called Acorn Housing changed its name to Affordable Housing Centers of America^[114] yet has retained the same tax and employee identification numbers that it held under its former name.^[115]