The IRS scandal may have reached its legal conclusion, but another Obama-era scandal concerning favoritism to liberal groups is just now surfacing. Kevin Mooney reports:
President Barack Obama’s Justice Department created a “slush fund” of nearly $1 billion using legal settlements with banks and steered those funds to political allies on the left while excluding conservative groups, internal documents show.
Tony West, an associate attorney general during the Obama administration who is now a top official at PepsiCo Inc., figures prominently in a chain of email messages involving his staff members, the records show.
The financial institutions, which made legal settlements with the Obama administration regarding mortgage securities that imploded during the 2008 financial crisis, include Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc., Goldman Sachs Group Inc., and JPMorgan Chase.
Public records of the settlement agreements with the Justice Department show that when cash donations to liberal groups are combined with other donations in the form of loans and a separate settlement with Volkswagen of America Inc., the slush fund may have topped $3 billion.
As Mooney goes on to note, the House of Representatives has just this week passed a bill that, if passed by the Senate and signed into law, will “bar the Justice Department and all other federal agencies from ‘requiring defendants to donate money to outside groups as part of settlement agreements.’”
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