The new head of the U.S. pardon office, Deborah Leff, utilized her former position to steer money to the controversial Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, WND has learned.
An extensive review of the grants made by a major progressive foundation run by Leff also found financing to the Marxist-oriented Sojourners, an activist group that claims to espouse Christian social justice, and funding to a group run by radical Van Jones, President Obama’s former “green” jobs czar.
Also financed by Leff’s foundation is the Herndon Alliance, a marketing outfit that was the driving force in branding Obamacare. WND first reported Herndon recommended a series of phrases, some deceptive, that the White House and Democrats used to sell the health-care law to the public.
The Justice Department announced last week that Leff, currently a senior adviser to Attorney General Eric Holder, will take over the Office of the Pardon Attorney, where she will oversee vetting federal inmate applicants for presidential grants of clemency.
Last week, WND exclusively reported Leff is deeply tied to former Weather Underground leader Bill Ayers.
A follow-up article documented Leff’s previous relationship with Ayers’ wife, Bernardine Dohrn, a co-founder with him of the domestic terrorist group.
From 2006 until she came to the Justice Department in 2010, Leff served as president of the Public Welfare Foundation, a progressive funding group that describes itself as supporting “efforts to advance fundamental rights and opportunities for people in need.”
A WND review of the foundation’s grantees during Leff’s tenure as president finds support for a litany of radical organizations.
In 2009, the foundation gave $160,000 to the In These Times blog, where both Ayers and Dohrn served on the editorial board.
$15,000 that year went to Sojourners, an organization run by Jim Wallis, described as a spiritual adviser to Obama.
Wallis, once a member of the Obama White House “faith council,” is a socialist activist who has championed communist causes and once labeled the U.S. “the great captor and destroyer of human life,” as WND reported.
Wallis’ Sojourners publishes a magazine that actively lobbied for communist regimes that seized power in Latin America in the late 1970s, including the Sandinista dictatorship in Nicaragua. Sojourners in the 1980s was a fierce opponent of the U.S. nuclear buildup, claiming the policy was “an intolerable evil” irreconcilably at odds with Christianity.
Meanwhile, the Public Welfare Foundation under Leff donated $50,0000 in 2007 to the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, an anti-police outfit run by Van Jones.
Jones resigned as Obama’s advisor for “green” jobs after it was exposed he founded a communist revolutionary group and called for “resistance” against the police and the U.S. government.
Leff’s fund in 2007 also financed the Marxist-oriented Institute for Policy Studies.
WND counted at least $245,000 steered from Leff’s center to various ACORN offshoots, including Florida ACORN, Minnesota ACORN and the ACORN institute.
In 2008, the foundation gave $55,000 to the Herndon marketing firm, with 2009 seeing another $100,000 grant.
The little-known Herndon Alliance has been behind the marketing of Obamacare since the inception of the legislation. It was the group that crafted President Obama’s false claim that Americans can maintain their “choice” of doctors and insurance plans.
WND previously reported on Herndon’s radical ties, including its partnership with the George Soros-funded Center for American Progress. Van Jones works at the heavily influential group.
Other Herndon partners are the AFL-CIO, MoveOn, National Council of La Raza and the socialist-oriented SEIU union.
Yet another Herndon partner is Citizens Action of Wisconsin, an arm of the Midwest Academy. Midwest is dedicated to teaching the tactics of radical organizer Saul Alinsky
With additional research by Brenda J. Elliott.
