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.

CREW Clearly Violated 501(c)(3) Mandate

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington violated their 501(c)3 mandate when they set out on a politically motivated smear campaign against former Delaware U.S. Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell. The IRS has laid out criteria for organizations who receive special tax exemptions and rates and one of those criteria has to do with political activism. Section 501(c) of the Internal Revenue Code (26 U.S.C. § 501(c)) distinguishes that 28 different types of nonprofit groups are exempt from some federal income taxes. For the purposes on this discussion, we will focus only on organizations listed under the 501(c)3 designation but you can find a more complete list of these groups by clicking here.

 In short, a non-profit group that takes money from donors is required to register with the IRS and along the way they may choose to register as a non-profit group under Section 501(c) of the IRS code. 501(c)3 organizations are described as: Religious, Educational, Charitable, Scientific, Literary, Testing for Public Safety, to Foster National or International Amateur Sports Competition, to promote the Arts or Prevention of Cruelty to Children or Animals Organizations. The corporation, fund, organization or foundation applying for the 501(c)3 tax exemption MUST be organized operated exclusively for the above activities and none other. In addition to this, most 501(c)3 organizations also apply for a “170 waiver” which makes the donations to a 501(c)3 organization tax deductible for many donors. Many times, these deductions are key to a non-profit organizations survival and loss of a 501(c)3 status can be hard to overcome since most other organizations and corporations do not give to groups without that deduction status. There are two classifications of exempt 501(c)3 groups:

Public Charity – receives a substantial part of its income from the general public or the government and public support should be broad, not limited to a few individuals or families.

Private Foundation – receives most of its income from investments and endowments which are used to make grants to other organizations rather than being dispersed directly for charitable activities.

In order to obtain 501(c)3 status from the IRS, a group has to file Form 1023 and accompany that form with a filing fee ($850 if gross receipts are $10,000 or more/$400 if gross receipts are under $10,000). This certifies that the group fits the mold of 501(c)3 organizations and that the group understands the restriction placed on groups that receive the 501(c)3 deduction. One such restriction is on political activities. 501(c)3 organizations are absolutely prohibited from conducting political activities that intervene in election to public office. Specifically, the IRS website states:

Under the Internal Revenue Code, all section 501(c)(3) organizations are absolutely prohibited from directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office. Contributions to political campaign funds or public statements of position (verbal or written) made on behalf of the organization in favor of or in opposition to any candidate for public office clearly violate the prohibition against political campaign activity. Violating this prohibition may result in denial or revocation of tax-exempt status and the imposition of certain excise taxes.

Certain activities or expenditures may not be prohibited depending on the facts and circumstances. For example, certain voter education activities (including presenting public forums and publishing voter education guides) conducted in a non-partisan manner do not constitute prohibited political campaign activity. In addition, other activities intended to encourage people to participate in the electoral process, such as voter registration and get-out-the-vote drives, would not be prohibited political campaign activity if conducted in a non-partisan manner.

On the other hand, voter education or registration activities with evidence of bias that (a) would favor one candidate over another; (b) oppose a candidate in some manner; or (c) have the effect of favoring a candidate or group of candidates, will constitute prohibited participation or intervention.

The Internal Revenue Service provides resources to exempt organizations and the public to help them understand the prohibition. As part of its examination program, the IRS also monitors whether organizations are complying with the prohibition.

There is a clear and obvious violation of the 501(c)3 charter by CREW in the first line of the IRS link above. CREW filed a very public FEC complaint against Christine O’Donnell in an attempt to derail her political campaign. Here’s video of CREW Executive Director Melanie Sloan very publicly attacking Christine O’Donnell just 5 days after she won her primary and had begun her General Election run:
Click Here for the video

We’ll get back to the fact that Melanie Sloan knew that the accusations she was making against Ms. O’Donnell were completely false. First, I’d like to show yet another video, only 3 days later in which Melanie Sloan calls O’Donnell a crook and accuses her of stealing.

Now it should be pointed out that Christine has been cleared of all charges by the U.S. Attorney in Delaware and also that the FEC has yet to find an anomaly with her campaign funds. Also, the “former campaign manager” was with the campaign for two weeks and was let go (as she had been by a number of campaigns previously) for being ineffective in her job.  Finally, the complaint from CREW relies on knowingly false statements made by David Keegan. In the following audio clips, Keegan admits that what he said was “political”, “worthless” and “heresay”.

• David Keegan calls his own motives “political”
• David Keegan says he did not want O'Donnell to win
• David Keegan says he wanted to make sure Christine O'Donnell doesn't run again
• David Keegan admits what he is saying is all 'hearsay' -- he learned of it, did not witness it, and does not know if his complaints are true.
• David Keegan admits he does not know if his accusations are true. He does not know if Christine O'Donnell used any campaign funds to pay her rent. Keegan admits it could be something completely different than what he thinks.

Clearly, from the audio clips above, CREW was engaged in a partisan attack (not to mention a criminal misuse of taxpayer dollars) against Christine O’Donnell that was based on knowingly false statements made by David Keegan. This clearly contradicts the statement made by CREW on their IRS Form 990 where they state that the engaged in no “direct or indirect political campaign activities on behalf of or in opposition to candidates for public office”.

Below, Anderson Cooper gets Melanie Sloan to flat out admit that this attack is political in nature and an attempt to influence the election. She also doesn’t dispute the fact that all of CREW’s leadership is made up of Democrats and Democrat supporters.

CREW continues to attack an exonerated O'Donnell

So, Melanie Sloan, the Soros attack animal who leads CREW, still hasn’t gotten the message.  Very well then.  Enough is enough.  America is sick and tired of these kinds of unfounded, wasteful accusations based on politics and not evidence.  It’s time we had a new dialogue in America.  It’s time that we talked about the issues and really discussed facts and not fear mongering.  We’ve got to get away from the President erroneously claiming that “I cannot guarantee that Social Security checks will be sent out on Aug. 3 if a debt ceiling agreement isn’t reached.”  This is complete hogwash, the facts are that there are two kinds of spending in Washington, Mandatory spending, like Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid and Defense; and the second is Discretionary spending which encompasses everything else the government spends money on, like shrimp fitness, Jell-O wrestling and curbing the drinking of Chinese prostitutes.  While Obama and the Democrats are pressing the idea that simply increasing our spending limit is the answer, Republicans are looking to make the cuts to sustain our nation.  Ask yourself this, if you made $20,000 per year, owed your credit card company $140,000 and your debt limit is $150,000 which has already been increased a dozen times, is the answer to curbing your debt limit another increase?  Any rational thinking person knows the answer is no, it’s cutting your debt, paying off that credit card and understanding your limits.

The reality is that simply cutting discretionary spending, even if you cut all of it, wouldn’t fix our debt situation.  The real beef when it comes to our federal budget is in the Mandatory spending.  In 2011 (as of 9AM on July 22), our largest budget items are Medicare/Medicaid ($822.5 Billion), Social Security ($715.4 Billion) and Defense ($701.8).  They are followed by Income Security/Welfare ($421.8 Billion), Interest on the Debt ($212.6 Billion) and Federal Pensions ($212 Billion).  We have a national debt over $14.5 Trillion that works out to $46,577 of debt for every man, woman and child in the United States.  Think about that for a moment when you hear “fair share”, if you’re pregnant or just had a baby, your child automatically owes $46,577.  As soon as he/she is born, they start life with more than $46,000 of debt.  Do you think it’s fair to start your son or daughter out owing money before they can even crawl?  We have to start addressing the largest items in the budget instead of ignoring them.  The Democrats would have you believe that income tax revenue is the answer, taking as much as you can from the richest Americans is the answer and attacking corporations is the answer.  You can explore that here, where you will see what happens if you go ahead and “soak the rich”.  The current federal tax revenue is almost $2.2 Trillion while our budget is more than $3.5 Trillion (the Big 6 budget items above, total $3.086 Trillion alone) and the top 50% of wage earners (over $33,048) pay more than 97% of the taxes.  With that said, the top 1%, those earning more than $380,354, pay more than 38% of the federal personal income tax.  What’s fair?  Should they pay 40%, 50%, 60% of the federal income tax?

I’ve laid out facts above and I’ve asked questions of you, as a person.  What’s the right answer?  Is there any way to get to even without cutting spending on the Big 6 budget items?  After watching the Eat the Rich video, seeing the facts about taxes and our debt, can you see any way to get around some cuts to our largest budget items?  So why are the Democrats stalling with a discussion about raising our debt limit?  Because they can use the line, “Well, ok, the Republicans can play chicken with America’s credit rating if they want to but we can’t guarantee that Social Security checks will go out on time.”  They know that you, the average American, the senior, the soon to be retired, the bleeding heart will panic and demand that we continue to be irresponsible with our money.  It’s totally ridiculous.  The Big 6 get paid before the shrimp treadmills, before starving artists and before Jell-O wrestling.  It’s time to stop believing it just because it scares us.  Look it up, find it be true yourself, do your own homework and don’t take my word for it.  Look up the facts I cite and decide for YOURSELF what is true.  I ask you to do the same thing for Melanie Sloan and Christine O’Donnell.  Sloan’s attacks are purely politically based and they are not rooted in any facts.  The few so-called facts she has cited turned out to be outright lies by a man who had no knowledge of any of the events of which he spoke.  We’ve got to question everything she says and take her words with a grain of salt.  Every charge thrown at O’Donnell has ended up being totally false and yet how can we continue to levy a stigma against her?  Imagine if someone accused you of molesting their child who you had never even met and those charges were found to be completely false.  Would you want that accusation to remain on your record regardless of the outcome?  Is that “fair”?

Christine O'Donnell under fire again

Pick a "news source" (are there any real ones left?  I'm not sure there are any locally in Delaware anymore...maybe The Blaze nationally) this week and you'll see stories about Christine O'Donnell being investigated by the FBI, the FEC and perhaps even MI:6.  There are two things that I gather from this:

1.) The so-called media is OBSESSED with anything that can make conservative women look kooky, insane or fringe. 
2.) The last week of the year is a VERY slow news time.

The "investigation" is nothing more than following up on the FEC filing by CREW.  CREW is a Soros funded left wing "ethics group" who has levied charges against Maxine Waters and Charlie Rangel (two obvious Democrat "crooks") to prove it's non-partisan roots.  However, roots are often found in funding sources and group leadership so let's look at those two pieces.

Funding
CREW was started in 2003 by Melanie Sloan (we'll cover her later).  In 2006, when George Soros' "Democracy Alliance" was coming under fire by the Washington Post, an article spotlighting the funding sources for left wing groups was published.

Likewise, a Democracy Alliance blessing effectively jump-started Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW). It bills itself as a nonpartisan watchdog group committed to targeting "government officials who sacrifice the common good to special interests." Alliance officials see CREW as a possible counterweight to conservative-leaning Judicial Watch, which filed numerous lawsuits against Clinton administration officials in the 1990s. A CREW spokesman declined to comment.

Shocking!  While CREW has denied Soros links in the past, intrepid bloggers gathered information about CREW sourcing when the leftist group filed ethics charges against who else but....Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin.


Although CREW denies any ties to George Soros, they indeed receive funds from the Democracy Alliance, the Tides Foundation, as well as the Open Society Institute – all Soros front groups.

So, CREW has received money from almost every Soros front group on the map including the Democracy Alliance which takes money from rich Progressives and spreads it around to deserving progressive groups.

From their website:

We are a first-of-its-kind partnership of changemakers who are committed to a stronger democracy and a more progressive America.

Launched in 2005, the Democracy Alliance (DA) was created to build progressive infrastructure that could help counter the well-funded and sophisticated conservative apparatus in the areas of civic engagement, leadership, media, and ideas.

Today the DA provides an innovative opportunity for individuals to leverage their progressive philanthropy by connecting their own efforts with those of other investors/donors, high-impact organizations, and visionary political strategists and leaders.

We play a leadership role in building the movement infrastructure needed to execute and advance a progressive agenda. Our network helps form a more integrated and cohesive progressive community creating greater impact as a result of our collaborative giving strategy.

Leadership

As we talked about above, the second indicator of the ideals of an organization (funding being the first) is the leadership of the group.  *While doing research for this post, I found the following website which tells you EVERYTHING you need to know about CREW and their crew.  I have added some pictures to the bottom of this post.*

So let's look at the CREW leadership starting at the top with Executive Director Melanie Sloan. Sloan is a former federal prosecutor who made news representing Valerie Plame and Joseph C. Wilson in a civil suit against the Bush Administration (which the Obama Administration threw out on it's face).  She was publicly admonished by a judge int he Scooter Libby trial for attempting to try the case in the media (playing on public opinion is a tactic many liberal lawyers like to use).

Melanie has another hiccup when it comes to bringing this complaint against O'Donnell.  Sloan also worked for Joe Biden whose former seat was being contested by O'Donnell and Coons.  In fact, the CREW suit came after Vice President Biden had called and spoken with Congressman Castle after the September primary.  Congressman Castle and the DEGOP had filed complaints with the FEC to look into slanderous allegations of the misuse of campaign funds in a last ditch effort to entangle O'Donnell in a scandal and steal the Republican Primary election.  Fortunately the Republican voters in Delaware are not the stupid sheep that Castle and the DEGOP leadership must have believed they were.  (In fairness to the Delaware GOP, Chairman Tom Ross has stated that the FEC complaint lodged by attorney Michael Toner was on behalf of the national Republican Party and that he was FORCED to sign the document by party insiders.)  The DEGOP tried to pull back their complaint when they found the claims unsubstantiated and when O'Donnell became the GOP nominee but were told that ALL FEC complaints are investigated. 

O'Donnell won the primary on September 15th, Biden spoke with Castle on September 16th and CREW filed their complaint on September 20th.  The complaint was practically identical to that of the DEGOP complaint and contained testimony from two questionable sources. 

The first source was a disgruntled former campaign volunteer (a family member of O'Donnell's former boyfriend) with a grudge and a chip on his shoulder (apparently his complaint was over a reimbursement of $150 for which no paperwork was ever filed).  The other source is another disgruntled former campaign staffer who was replaced after just a week and a half due to incompetence. 

Next, let's look at how the CREW leadership defines itself:

U.S. Senator Conrad Burns of Montana charged that CREW was "maliciously false" and "partisan hacks" in calling him corrupt in 2005. The Billings Gazette reported that CREW defended itself:^[8]

"We are progressive," said Naomi Seligman, the group's deputy director... "We do work within a larger progressive infrastructure." Seligman suggested her group is the progressive counterweight to Judicial Watch, a group from the right that calls itself "a non-profit, public interest law firm dedicated to fighting government corruption"... "We've gone after a fair number of Democrats, even in this study," Seligman said, [and Burns] "should be answering the charges, not slinging charges."

In reality, CREW has "called out" some of the more obviously criminal Democrats (Maxine Waters and Charlie Rangel) but they have not sunk their teeth into them the way they have Republicans.  Apparently “a fair number of Democrats” is subjective….in 2005 the numbers were 10 R’s and 3 D’s although the GOP WAS in control then and so were more likely to be corrupt.  In 2010, with a Democrat leadership in place, 16 R’s and 10 D’s were targeted.  The self described "Progressive" group has also targeted Sarah Palin and just about every candidate that Palin endorses. 

*added content*