Extortion: Radical Democrat activist groups stand to collect millions from Attorney General Eric Holder's record $17 billion deal to settle alleged mortgage abuse charges against Bank of America.
Besides requiring billions in debt forgiveness payments to delinquent borrowers in Cleveland, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Oakland, Detroit, Chicago and other Democrat strongholds — and up to $500 million to cover personal taxes owed on those checks — the deal requires BofA to make billions in new loans, while also building affordable low-income rental housing in those areas.
If there are leftover funds in four years, the settlement stipulates the money will go to Interest on Lawyers' Trust Account (IOLTA), which provides legal aid for the poor and supports left-wing causes, and NeighborWorks of America, which provides affordable housing and funds a national network of left-wing community organizers operating in the mold of Acorn.
In fact, in 2008 and 2009, NeighborWorks awarded a whopping $25 million to Acorn Housing.
In 2011 alone, NeighborWorks shelled out $35 million in "affordable housing grants" to 115 such groups, according to its website. Recipients included the radical Affordable Housing Alliance, which pressures banks to make high-risk loans in low-income neighborhoods and which happens to be the former employer of HUD's chief "fair housing" enforcer.
BofA gets extra credit if it makes at least $100 million in direct donations to IOLTA and housing activist groups approved by HUD.
According to the list provided by Justice, those groups include come of the most radical bank shakedown organizations in the country, including:
• La Raza, which pressures banks to expand their credit box to qualify more low-income Latino immigrants for home loans;
• National Community Reinvestment Coalition, Washington's most aggressive lobbyist for the disastrous Community Reinvestment Act;
• Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America, whose director calls himself a "bank terrorist;"
• Operation Hope, a South Central Los Angeles group that's pressuring banks to make "dignity mortgages" for deadbeats.
Worse, one group eligible for BofA slush funds is a spin-off of Acorn Housing's branch in New York.
It's now rebranded as Mutual Housing Association of New York, or MHANY. HUD lists MHANY's contact as Ismene Speliotis, who previously served as New York director of Acorn Housing.
The recession has dried up funding for such groups. But Holder's massive bank shakedown could rebuild their war chests in a hurry.
He's written back-door funding for Democrat groups into other major bank deals he's brokered, including the $13 billion JPMorgan Chase settlement and the $7 billion Citibank deal. They stand to reap millions more from those deals.
All told, Holder has shaken down the nation's largest banks for a whopping $128 billion, more than a 10th of a trillion dollars, and counting. Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo are reportedly in talks with Justice to settle additional mortgage cases.
In effect, lenders are bankrolling the same parasites that bled them for the risky loans that caused the mortgage crisis. With new cash, they can ramp back up their shakedown campaign, repeating the cycle of dangerous political lending that wrecked the economy.
These settlements have little, if anything, to do with "justice" or restitution for innocent victims. In its 30-page "statement of facts," Justice couldn't provide a single shred of evidence of fraud against BofA. Nor could it ID a single "victim" by name.
The attorney general is actually perverting justice by extorting billions of dollars from the largest banks in the country and giving it away to the president's political friends and favorite political causes.
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I hope the Government Accounting Office audits the organizations who are receiving these monies to ensure there is no fraud and, if there is fraud, to lay the groundwork for a government lawsuit by the next Administration. Normally, one of the government's Inspectors General would do this, but Gerry Walberg's firing when he found fraud in Americorp (headed by one of Obama's friends at the time), Walberg was fired.
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