CREW Exposed

A new website out today delves into the realm of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW). You may remember CREW from previous posts on this blog as well as from the recently dismissed charges against Christine O’Donnell. Like most CREW complaints, the one against O’Donnell was dismissed by the U.S. Attorney because they were completely fabricated. As we broke here on this blog, CREW violated their IRS mandate to remain non-political when they attacked Christine O’Donnell during the campaign and they violated federal law when they filed a knowingly false affidavit signed by David Keegan whose entire smear campaign of lies was simply designed to keep Christine from running again.

The new website also delves into the partisanship of CREW. A quick look over the founders of CREW shows the partisan angle. Norm Eisen who was Deputy General Counsel to Obama’s transition team joined Daniel Berger, a massive donor to Democrat campaigns (including Christine O’Donnell’s opponent Chris Coons) and Clinton pollster Mark Penn to start CREW in 2003 as a way to compete with the conservative ethics groups that had questioned Bill Clinton’s philandering in the White House. They needed a face for the organization and so they tapped another ultra-liberal Democrat to head up CREW, Melanie Sloan. Sloan came with plenty of leftist credentials, she’d worked for Representative John “Read the bill” Conyers in the House, she then worked for Senator (now VP) Joe “Stand up Chuck” Biden and she also worked for NY Democrat Chuck “3 branches of government?” Schumer when he was in the House of Representatives. Sloan isn’t the only leftist in the mix, in fact, the website finds that “there isn't a single current or former CREW staffer with comparable experience working for a conservative organization or Republican politician.”

As if that weren’t enough, the new site exposes CREW’s record of attacks against Republicans over Democrats. The chart below clearly shows that CREW files more complaints against Republicans than Democrats and it clearly shows that the actions taken by the ethics committees lean more toward Democrats than Republicans. What does that mean? It means that CREW is either REALLY ineffective as a “watchdog” or it’s just out to be a Democrat Attackdog.

Let’s look at the Senate ethics complaints as an example. As you can see above CREW’s Senate ethics complaints are around 90% against Republicans. Meanwhile, the Senate ethics committee actions are 60% against Democrats 40% against Republicans. This is simply a perfect illustration of the reason why Christine O’Donnell’s complaints about CREW are entirely valid. They are a partisan group out to destroy Republicans, prop up Democrats and do the bidding of radical leftist donors like George Soros. Their list of donors reads like a Who’s Who of radical leftwing groups. The Open Society Institute, the Democracy Alliance, the Tides Foundation and the Silberstein Foundation to name just a few are all major donors to CREW. Interestingly, CREW was also a MAJOR advocate for the DISCLOSE Act (written by Delaware’s own Mike Castle) which would have required groups to disclose their donors if they engaged in any political activity. However, CREW refuses to disclose its own list of donors. 

In the end, the new site shows the bias and hypocrisy of CREW at a time when their legal status has come into question. With O’Donnell fighting back against their lies, this new website exposing CREW’s left wing motivations is yet more evidence that CREW is everything O’Donnell says they are. Mean, nasty, partisan hacks doing the bidding of left wing billionaire extremists like George Soros and left wing political machines like the Democrat Party. Kudo’s to The Center for Consumer Freedom for standing up to CREW and calling them out on their hypocrisy.