Back in 2009 I mentioned a story [1] which has, to-date, still received virtually no coverage over here. The story of left-wing organisation ACORN’s activities which led to irregularities in the voter registration process, which in turn helped with the election of Barack Obama.
The good news this week is that the increasingly discredited and broke ACORN has pleaded guilty [2], as Francis McCabe from the Las Vegas Review-Journal reports.
The grass-roots community organizing group ACORN once drew the ire of conservative groups and the attention of national media.
And when ACORN faced charges in Las Vegas of voter registration malfeasance in 2008, a flock of political spin doctors and lawyers rushed to its defense.
But three years later, with ACORN’s two co-defendants already having taken plea deals and the organization essentially defunct and in Chapter 7 bankruptcy, the case received little attention as a lawyer on behalf of ACORN pleaded guilty Wednesday.
After months of negotiations and some legal wrangling, mostly because of a federal court-appointed bankruptcy trustee not wanting to deal with the criminal case, ACORN entered a guilty plea to one count of felony compensation for registration of voters. Its criminal defense attorney, Lisa Rasmussen, entered the plea.
In negotiations with the Nevada attorney general’s office 12 other felony counts were dropped against the organization and prosecutors will not argue at the Aug. 10 sentencing hearing.
ACORN faces a maximum $5,000 fine. According to court records, when the national organization closed it’s doors in April 2010, the organization had real assets totaling less than $4,000 and “liabilities of more than $4 million.”
Prosecutor Patrick Ferguson said he was satisfied with the outcome of the case and said the reason he agreed not to speak at the sentencing hearing was “we’re not looking to take money away from other creditors, but a message had to be sent.”
[..]
Another defendant in the case, Amy Busefink, who in November pleaded no contest to two counts of conspiracy to commit the crime of compensation for registration of voters, a gross misdemeanor, is appealing to the Nevada Supreme Court challenging the constitutionality of the statute.
[..]
The field operative who created and ran the incentive program, Christopher Edwards, is serving three years of probation after pleading guilty to two gross misdemeanors.Busefink is a longtime employee of Project Vote, a national grass-roots organization that registers voters and which worked in partnership with ACORN in 2008. Busefink oversaw Edwards, who was sentenced to a year of probation in January.
ACORN officials had maintained Edwards was ordered not to run the incentive program.
The program, called Blackjack or 21-Plus, rewarded employees with $5 extra per shift if they brought in 21 or more completed voter registration cards.
The 40-year-old organization, which once counted President Barack Obama among its ranks in Chicago, came under fire in recent years for its voter registration tactics.
This vile and deceptive organisation has received its just desserts for failing to play by the rules. This Amy Busefink woman can jump up and down all she likes, but I think she’ll find that she’s clutching at straws after a while, considering that everyone else involved has found themselves in plenty of trouble, and it’s just a matter until she does too.
Samuel