by Ben Shapiro
That is akin to Don Corleone claiming that he had an interest in murder laws. It’s true, but it’s not the whole story. President Obama and his administration have shown a peculiar addiction to gathering information on Americans. That addiction endangers Americans’ most basic protections against government intrusion. It also violates the law. Nothing in the Patriot Act authorizes the sort of blanket surveillance utilized by the Bush administration and exponentially multiplied by the Obama administration.64
That’s exactly what a federal judge found in December 2013. In Klayman v. Obama, U.S. District Court judge Richard Leon ruled that the Obama administration’s collection of metadata on millions of Americans could not be justified under law or public policy. In the ruling, Leon wrote, “I cannot imagine a more ‘indiscriminate’ and ‘arbitrary invasion’ than this systematic and high tech collection and retention of personal data on virtually every single citizen for purposes of querying and analyzing it without prior judicial record.” He added, “Surely, such a program infringes on ‘that degree of privacy that the founders enshrined in the Fourth Amendment.’ ”65
Even more stunning: Leon found that the government could not provide one shred of evidence that its surveillance had actually effectuated terror prevention. “[T]he government,” Leon wrote, “does not cite a single instance in which analysis of the NSA’s bulk metadata collection actually stopped an imminent attack, or otherwise aided the government in achieving any objective that was time-sensitive in nature.”66
Leon’s ruling has already been contradicted by other judicial bodies. The outcome of the NSA surveillance program remains up in the air. Nonetheless, Leon is correct. The Obama administration has violated the civil rights of millions of Americans. And those responsible must pay the price.
COUNT 6
BRIBERY
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Whoever being a public official or person selected to be a public official, directly or indirectly, corruptly demands, seeks, receives, accepts, or agrees to receive or accept anything of value personally or for any other person or entity, in return for: being influenced in the performance of any official act; being influenced to commit or aid in committing, or to collude in, or allow, any fraud, or make opportunity for the commission of any fraud, on the United States; or being induced to do or omit to do any act in violation of the official duty of such official or person . . . shall be fined under this title or not more than three times the monetary equivalent of the thing of value, whichever is greater, or imprisoned for not more than fifteen years, or both, and may be disqualified from holding any office of honor, trust, or profit under the United States.
—18 U.S. CODE § 201
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OPENING ARGUMENT
Barack Obama campaigned as an outsider to Washington, D.C., politics. On October 1, 2008, Obama told a massive crowd in Wisconsin, “Make no mistake: We need to end an era in Washington where accountability has been absent, oversight has been overlooked, your tax dollars have been turned over to wealthy CEOs and the well-connected corporations.” He continued, “You need leadership you can trust to work for you, not for the special interests who have had their thumb on the scale. And together, we will tell Washington, and their lobbyists, that their days of setting the agenda are over. They have not funded my campaign. You have. They will not run my White House. You’ll help me run my White House.”
On his first day in office, Obama signed an executive order purportedly attempting to quash the connection between his administration and those who would seek to corrupt it. The executive order mandated that every appointee in every federal agency sign a pledge: “I will not accept gifts from registered lobbyists or lobbying organizations for the duration of my service as an appointee.” The pledge also included provisions requiring an end to the revolving door between lobbying and the executive branch.1
That promise lasted a grand total of one day.
The day after signing the executive order, Obama appointed William J. Lynn III to deputy secretary of defense. Lynn made his fame and fortune as a lobbyist for defense contractor Raytheon. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said that the rules had to go out the window for Lynn: “In the case of Mr. Lynn, he’s somebody who obviously is superbly qualified. His experience going back to his Pentagon jobs during the Clinton administration make him uniquely qualified to do this.” Defense secretary Robert Gates said he requested a waiver because “he came with the highest recommendations of a number of people that I respect a lot.”2 A few days after that, Obama named former Goldman Sachs lobbyist Mark Patterson chief of staff to the Treasury Department.3 And a few weeks later, the White House tapped former National Partnership for Women & Families lobbyist Jocelyn Frye to direct policy and projects for Michelle Obama, as well as Cecilia Muñoz, lobbyist for National Council of La Raza, to head up Obama’s Hispanic outreach. The White House eventually settled on the position that lobbyists could hold any position they wanted in the administration, so long as they “recused” themselves from conflict of interest.4
Not a comforting thought from an administration riddled with corruption and abuse of power.
Sadly, the Obama administration has been the largest purveyor of governmental corruption in American history. The malfeasance of Obama officials makes the Teapot Dome scandal of Warren G. Harding look minor-league. Over and over again, President Obama’s minions have used the tools of executive power to extract concessions from those at his political mercy, and to help those who do his political bidding. It helps to be a friend to the Obama regime. And it hurts to be an enemy.
THE CHARGES
There are two main provisions governing bribery and kickbacks under federal law. The first, specifically aimed at bribery, establishes that something of value was “given, offered, or promised to a public official,” according to the Supreme Court. Alternatively, the prosecution can establish that something of value was “corruptly demanded, sought, received, accepted, or agreed to be received or accepted by a public official” with intent to influence an official act. This crime requires the intent to influence or be influenced.
The second crime is the acceptance of an “illegal gratuity.” That crime, according to the United States Office of Government Ethics, requires only that the thing of value “be given or accepted ‘for or because of’ an official act.” Bribery requires intent; illegal gratuity is a lesser burden of proof.
In the case of the Obama administration, both bribery and acceptance of illegal gratuities are in the mix. Proving bribery is obviously far more difficult than showing acceptance or demanding of illegal gratuities. But in many cases, there is a clear quid pro quo implemented by members of the Obama administration with the direct intent of influencing public acts.
THE BRIBEMASTER
Barack Obama has a long personal history with financial corruption. It began in his adopted hometown of Chicago, shortly after he was elected to the United States Senate. Obama desperately wanted to buy a home that was simply too expensive for him. So he went to a local fixer known as Antoin “Tony” Rezko for “advice.” The advice ended with Obama buying the home for $300,000 below asking price, even as Rezko’s wife bought the land on which the home was located for more than market value. The Obamas bought the house for $1.65 million. Obama then turned around and bought a part of the Rezko land for $104,500, below market value. During the 2004 campaign, Rezko and his friends gave Obama $120,000. At the time, the FBI was investigating Rezko.5 Later, Rezko would be sentenced to ten years in jail for corruption; one of his closest political associates, Governor Rod Blagojevich, would head to prison, too.6 Blagojevich, of course, went to jail because he attempted to sell Obama’s vacant Senate seat.
Right around the same time as the Rezko affair, the Obamas became embroiled in another Chicagoland financial snafu. From 2004 to 2007, Michelle Obama worked for the University of Chicago Medical Center. Shortly after her husband became a U.S. senator, Michelle received a
massive pay raise, skyrocketing from $121,910 in 2004 to $316,962 in 2005.7 Her colleagues on the board at the University of Chicago Medical Center included Valerie Jarrett. In 2006, Senator Obama directed a $1 million earmark to the University of Chicago Hospitals.8
Michael Riordan, the president of the University of Chicago Medical Center, insisted that Michelle was hired thanks to her own job skills. “She is worth her weight in gold, and she is just terrific,” he told the Chicago Tribune. That was almost literally true. As to the contention, made by Riordan, that Michelle’s position was designed to “evolve into a vice president’s post as a way of showing the organization’s commitment to community outreach,”9 the medical center quickly eliminated Michelle’s post entirely.10 Obama did, however, announce that the woman who recruited Michelle to the medical center, Susan Sher, would join the administration to give Michelle legal advice.11
The ties between the Obamas and the University of Chicago Medical Center didn’t end there. In 2012, President Obama’s controversial racist and anti-Semitic former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, decided to spill the beans to author Edward Klein about his less-than-cordial parting with the Obama clan. “Man,” he told Klein, “the media ate me alive. After the media went ballistic on me, I received an e-mail offering me money not to preach at all until the November presidential election.” According to Wright, the email originated with “one of Barack’s closest friends,” who sent an offer to another church member, who forwarded it to Wright. When asked how much the Obama associate had offered Wright to shut up, Wright promptly answered, “One hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”
That offer was just the first step in an Obama attempt to quiet Wright. Obama met with Wright personally, and said to him, according to Wright, “I really wish you wouldn’t do any more public speaking until after the November election. . . . I wish you wouldn’t speak. It’s gonna hurt the campaign if you do that.” Here’s how the rest of that conversation went, according to Wright: “Barack said, ‘I’m sorry you don’t see it the way I do. Do you know what your problem is?’ And I said, ‘No, what’s my problem?’ And he said, ‘You have to tell the truth.’ I said, ‘That’s a good problem to have. That’s a good problem for all preachers to have. That’s why I could never be a politician.’ ”12
The man who attempted to bribe Wright, he said, was one Eric Whitaker—one of Obama’s closest friends, a man who plays basketball and vacations with the president, and who, according to Wright, “made it comfortable” for Obama to become Christian without discarding his “Islamic background.” Whitaker was also a higher-up at the University of Chicago Medical Center when Michelle worked there.13 Governor Blagojevich appointed Whitaker to his position. In 2012, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services decided to kick $5.9 million to Whitaker’s University of Chicago Medical Center Urban Health Initiative.14
“BOSS TWEED ON STEROIDS”
During the 2008 election cycle, unions spent in excess of $200 million to elect Barack Obama president. That included $68 million in direct campaign contributions from unions and union members, $52 million via 527 organizations, and tens of millions more in on-the-ground get-out-the-vote efforts.15 As Mallory Factor, author of Shadowbosses: Government Unions Control America and Rob Taxpayers Blind, describes, that effort continued into the 2012 election cycle. “AFL-CIO volunteers,” Factor says, “knocked on almost 14 million doors nationwide.” The unions put 400,000 pairs of boots on the ground to work the pavement for their man. In Ohio alone, unions handed over 1,800 offices to Democrats for campaign use. AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka rightly stated of Ohio and Wisconsin, “We did deliver those states. None of those would have been in the president’s column.” Overall, the unions spent at least $500 million on the 2012 election cycle.16
One of the biggest donors to President Obama was the United Auto Workers. Between 2000 and 2008, the UAW handed almost $24 million to Democrats.17 It also handed $1.14 million to its congressional allies—representatives who would vote UAW cash.18 The UAW spent $11 million on the 2008 election alone.19
For good reason.
In November 2007, Obama spoke at the United Auto Workers Conference in Dubuque, Iowa. There he blasted the Bush administration: “I’m tired of playing defense. I know the UAW is tired of playing defense. We’re ready to play some offense.” He added, “There are few more important unions in this country than the UAW. You created the auto industry. You secured good-paying jobs for generations of workers. And you built the American middle class—the backbone of our economy. So I know someone once said what’s good for GM is good for America. But it’s time we also recognized that what’s good for the UAW is good for America.” He called for making “the UAW’s agenda America’s agenda.”20
This was one promise Obama would keep.
On June 1, 2009, General Motors declared bankruptcy. Once America’s largest corporation, GM had sunk into the red thanks to rich union contracts guaranteeing massive benefits to retired workers. Union costs per car for GM measured up to $1,500.21 The 2007 contract between GM and the UAW forced GM to hand up to $140,000 in severance to fired workers.22 UAW workers earned up to $73 per hour, compared to $44 at competitors like Toyota and Honda; workers who had their jobs outsourced were not fired, but instead picked up 95 percent of their paycheck to do nothing until another job could be found; thirty-year employees could retire with full pensions, up to $37,500 per year. By the end of its long decline, GM signed checks to 4.6 retirees for every worker.23 In 2007, GM lost $40 billion. In 2008, its sales plummeted 45 percent.24
Instead of GM going bankrupt, however, the Obama administration got directly involved, cramming down a managed bankruptcy deal to pay off the UAW.25 The actual deal worked out great for the UAW: bondholders got 10 percent of the new GM, but couldn’t sell their stock, meaning that they ended up with ten cents on the dollar. Those bondholders included retired teachers, investors, and victims of GM who had won lawsuits against the company. Chris Crowe, for example, described himself thus: “I’m a retired electrician from Denver, Colorado. I’m not rich and I’m not a Wall Street bank. These bonds finance my son’s college tuition and my retirement. I’m actually very concerned about not getting a check on May 15 from my bonds because I need this money to pay my property taxes. When the Administration refuses to meet with the bondholders or chooses to wipe them out, they’re wiping me out, and lots of others like me. We are Main Street, not Wall Street. Who is looking out for us and our interests? Mr. President, please protect us.”
Crowe had one problem: he hadn’t given millions to the Obama election fund.26 The union, however, received 100 percent of its pensions. The union’s health-care trust also received 17.5 percent of the equity in the new company, and an additional $9 billion in preferred stock (the highest level of stock). Altogether, the unions received 93 percent of what they were owed.27 The taxpayers footed the bill to the tune of $19.1 billion.28 “Priority one was serving the interests of the UAW,” said CreditSights analyst Glenn Reynolds, who likened the deal to “the Putin political asset reallocation and reward system . . . Boss Tweed on steroids.”29
Chrysler, too, went bankrupt—and again, the Obama administration crammed down a bankruptcy bargain on behalf of the UAW. The UAW emerged with 55 percent ownership of the company. Investors got 10 percent. Creditors with secured loans—those who should have been paid back first from bankruptcy proceeds—were placed behind unsecured debtors like the UAW. Bondholders got 29 cents on the dollar. The UAW’s pension fund got 40 cents on the dollar. Why did the bondholders accept such a rotten deal? Professor Todd Zywicki of George Mason University School of Law explains that many bondholders had picked up cash from the feds through the Troubled Assets Relief Program already, and notes that institutions that hadn’t taken federal cash fought back unsuccessfully.30 President Obama took the opportunity to rip such bondholders as selfish, calling them a “small group of speculators” who “were hoping that everybody else would make sacrifices and they would have to m
ake none.” He said, “I don’t stand with them. I stand with Chrysler’s employees and their families and communities. I stand with Chrysler’s management, its dealers and its suppliers. I stand with the millions of Americans who own and want to buy Chrysler cars.”31 One of those “speculators” was Jeremy K. Warriner, who lost his legs in a Jeep Wrangler accident.32
In the GM bankruptcy, the unionized employees of Delphi Corporation, which handles auto parts supply, walked away with a sweet deal, too: GM would pick up the full checks. As for nonunionized salaried employees of Delphi? They lost up to 70 percent of their pensions, life insurance, and health insurance. During the bankruptcy, the Obama administration Treasury Department Auto Task Force promised that “all stakeholders [would be] treated fairly and [receive] neither more nor less than they would have simply because the government was involved.” The insanity of the deal even prompted former UAW president Ron Gettelfinger to call the bargain a “grave injustice.”33
The bribery for Democrat allies via GM didn’t end there. GM had a deal to buy mineral palladium from Montana; during its bankruptcy, GM tried to shift such purchases to Russia and South Africa. Montana senators Max Baucus and Jon Tester killed the deal so as to keep GM spending taxpayer cash in their state. When GM tried to create cars in India, Capitol Hill killed that as well.34
For the Obama administration, the auto bailout bribery was a win-win: the unions got their cash, the taxpayer got the bill, and President Obama got reelected on the platform that bin Laden was dead and Detroit was alive. This was a textbook case of illegal gratuities, with the unions donating money to Obama’s election coffers in exchange for a future promise that Obama would save them from their own bad contracts when the time came.