Congress Hears About ACORN's Extortion Racket

By Matthew Vadum

In recent months demands for ACORN to be investigated under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) for repeated incidents of electoral fraud have been growing.

But voting-related fraud is just the tip of the iceberg.

ACORN runs a mob-style "protection" racket known within the radical direct-action group as the "muscle for the money" program, a lawyer told the House Judiciary Committee's subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties today.

Lawyer Heather Heidelbaugh filed an unsuccessful lawsuit last year against ACORN, specifically, a court injunction in Pennsylvania against ACORN's voter registration efforts in last year's presidential campaign. (A transcript of the Oct. 29 hearing in Moyer v. ACORN is available here.)

Heidelbaugh says that ACORN, which I profiled in the November issue of Capital Research Center's Foundation Watch, has provided protest-for-hire services and extracted donations from the targets of demonstrations by shaking down those targets mafia-style. (Heidelbaugh's written congressional testimony is available here.)

The taxpayer-subsidized ACORN network, which owes millions of dollars in back taxes, also played a major role in the subprime mortgage mess that has undermined Americans' support for free market problem-solving and set off a worldwide chain of financial troubles.

And then there's ACORN's eight-year-long coverup of the million-dollar embezzlement by founder Wade Rathke's brother. When ACORN board members Marcel Reid and Karen Inman demanded to see the financial documents, they were expelled from the group.

What else is ACORN hiding?