A virtual "slush fund" of taxpayer money the Obama administration deployed to support private groups that advanced his agenda has been shut down by Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
Sessions issued a memorandum June 7 to all U.S. attorneys and Justice Department leaders that put an end to the policy of requiring the department's settlements with defendants, particularly corporations, to include donations to non-governmental organizations, Breitbart News reported.
Among the recipients of the funds under Obama, was the radical National Council of La Raza, or “The Race,” which supports mass illegal immigration.
In 2015, WND published a four-part series exposing the massive shell game with taxpayer funds that, while not new, was perfected by the Obama administration as a means to deploy and reward nonprofit co-laborers in an effort to fulfill the president's stated aim of radically transforming America.
The federal government has been funding left-wing groups for at least a half-century, ever since the so-called "War on Poverty" was launched by President Lyndon Johnson.
But President Obama aggressively used taxpayer funds in a way that blurred the line between government functions and political activism, while at the same time fostering a steady increase in the overall size and scope of government.
Another example of the Obama administration's funding and deployment of left-wing groups in governmental functions to carry out its ideological agenda, reported exclusively by WND in 2014, was the IRS hiring of the avowedly progressive Urban Institute, supported by far-left billionaire activist George Soros, to process the Form 990s of nonprofit groups.
At the time, revelations of the IRS targeting of conservative groups that oppose Obama's agenda were continuing to emerge.
Together, the two stories presented a picture of an administration that rewarded its friends, punished its enemies and, in the process, fundamentally changed the character of government.
'Community organizations'
The practice of funding nonprofits began in the 1970s with the Community Reinvestment Act, which required banks and financial institutions that settled cases with the DOJ to give donations to “community organizations” to offset alleged wrongdoing, Breitbart noted. The practice exploded after the 2008 financial crisis when big banks agreed to massive settlements with Obama's DOJ over alleged unfair lending practices.
A group of congressional Republicans raised concern about the practice, and their campaign gained momentum under the Trump administration, Breitbart said.
“This is a tremendous victory people ought to be very encouraged by,” said Peter Schweizer, president of the Government Accountability Institute, in an interview with Breitbart News Daily SiriusXX host Raheem Kassam.
Schweizer explained that rather than going to a company's victims, the money ended up in the hands of activist groups such as La Raza that used the money for their own efforts, such as voter registration.
“These were politically active groups,” he said.
Blurring the lines
WND's series of articles in 2015 exposed the massive shell game with taxpayer funds, which went to "progressive" groups that share the ideology and political inclinations of a president who looks back warmly on his time as a community organizer in Chicago, including the notorious Media Matters for America, founded by Hillary Clinton ally and Fox News nemesis David Brock.
"Barack is not a politician first and foremost," first lady Michelle Obama has said. "He's a community activist exploring the viability of politics to make change."
Another charity that received federal funding was the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, a favorite philanthropy of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Based in Mountain View, California, it is already was awash in private funds.
On its website, the foundation acknowledged having $4.7 billion in assets under its management.
Zuckerberg pledged in December 2013 to give Facebook shares to the Silicon Valley Community Foundation shares worth $1 billion. He previously gave $500 million worth of Facebook shares to the foundation and another $100 million to the foundation earmarked for public schools in Newark, New Jersey.
WND's second story showed how taxpayers were funding one of the nation's largest health-insurance brokers, which had a significant role in passing Obamacare and became one of its chief cheerleaders.
The third in the series showed how the Obama administration was channeling millions of dollars of taxpayer funds through a "propaganda machine" that financed organizations such as an educational advocacy group named for President Obama's Marxist law-school mentor, known for his promotion of the radical "critical race theory."
The Obama administration had given $16.8 million since 2010 to its allies at a left-wing nonprofit known as the Local Initiatives Support Corp, or LISC.
LISC, in turn, provided grants to many radical groups, including a Chicago-based nonprofit founded by the late Marxist activist Saul Alinsky.
Alinsky is often referred to as the father of left-wing "community organizing." His work inspired President Obama and Hillary Clinton, who had a friendship with Alinsky and wrote her college thesis on him.
Alinsky was known for creating a blueprint for revolution, under the banner of "social change" and "organizing," that focused on penetrating existing institutions such as churches, unions and political parties.
In his 1946 handbook "Reveille for Radicals" he encouraged community organizers to "fan the latent hostilities" of the poor and "search out controversy and issues, rather than avoid them." In "Rules for Radicals," published in 1971, he advised revolutionaries regarding their adversaries: "Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it."