King: ACORN ‘Bigger Than Watergate’

Rep. King: ACORN ‘Bigger Than Watergate’

Rep. Steve King says the ACORN saga is “the largest corruption crisis in the history of America” — yet he predicts Congress and the Obama administration won’t take action against the scandal-plagued community organizing group.

"It's thousands of times bigger than Watergate because Watergate was only a little break-in by a couple of guys," the Iowa Republican said in an interview with The American Spectator.

"By the time we pull ACORN out by its roots, America's going to understand just how big this is."

Hidden camera videos emerged in September showing ACORN (Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now) employees advising a couple posing as a pimp and prostitute how to establish a brothel and finance it with government grants.

But it also is accused of political corruption, election fraud, racketeering, money laundering, and countless other violations of the law, according to the American Spectator article written by Matthew Vadum, senior editor at Capital Research Center, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank.

Rep. King, a member of the House Judiciary Committee, said Committee Chairman John Conyers will not investigate ACORN and a probe of the group is “not going to come out of” Chairman Charles Rangel’s Ways and Means Committee or Chairman Barney Frank’s House Financial Services Committee “or from anybody in the Senate. They're going to protect ACORN.

“Congress is deliberately dragging its heels on ACORN,” and Democrats in Congress are “using everything to protect ACORN because that's the machine that keeps them in office,” said King.

The congressman is especially angry over U.S. District Judge Nina Gershon's ruling in favor of ACORN on Dec. 11.

Gershon issued a temporary injunction prohibiting Congress from cutting off funding for ACORN, ruling that the funding ban ordered by Congress was unconstitutional in that it singled out ACORN for punishment without trial. The Department of Justice has reluctantly filed an appeal.

Gershon's ruling is "sweeping and far-reaching, and she even opined that ACORN has some kind of an implicit right to future contracts because they've succeeded in bidding on contracts that were similarly competitive," King said in the interview.

He added that he doesn't hold out much hope that the Obama administration or Congress will decide to investigate ACORN, saying: "This is one-party gangster government and they know what they're doing.”