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Published January 14, 2015
This is a rush transcript from "Glenn Beck," May 7, 2009. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
GLENN BECK, HOST: Well, what happened here? Why are [ACORN] now a national partner of the U.S. Census Bureau to help recruit workers to count every person in the United States. That doesn't seem like a good idea.
Why is that happening? Because this is all a game to a lot of people in Washington and there's a lot of your money that is changing hands. And considering that the team we are playing against can change the rules and have been changing the rules whenever they like, some will tell you there's no way to win.
But don't worry, doll face, I'm sweet on you, so I think you're a real ring a ding broad. So, this hour, I'm going to bring you some solutions. It will be a blast.
• Video: Watch Beck's interview
With me now is Washington Examiner reporter, Kevin Mooney. Hey, doll face, how are you doing?
KEVIN MOONEY, THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER: How are you?
BECK: I'm well.
Kevin, I'm really actually quite excited because — as I'm going to lay out later on in the hour, there are some things happening in this country that all of a sudden I see — I see the resistance starting to come to the table. But before we do that, talk to me just a little bit here about, you know, the great people at ACORN.
Can you bring me up to speed on who these people are?
MOONEY: Well, it's a very elaborate organization that's put together in a sort of a loosely confederated way.
As you pointed out, they are under investigation for vote fraud in 14 different states now. The national organization of — as their spokesman pointed out yesterday — identifies rogue elements as being involved. But if you look at the charges across the country, especially the charges that came out today, this is more systemic and institutional than they would like to acknowledge.
BECK: Right.
MOONEY: And they now have congressional testimony that's also calling their tax status into question. I mean, they are supposed to be a non- profit organization that's not politically partisan, they claimed to be non-partisan. But the evidence suggests otherwise. And you have people testifying under oath that this organization should be investigated for that.
BECK: You know, I have to tell you something, you know, ACORN — we all think we know what ACORN is. But there is so much more to this story.
Tomorrow, America, we're going to introduce you to a couple of people that I don't think anybody has really introduced to you to before. They're part of the "ACORN 8." We tried to get all eight in, but because of scheduling and everything else we couldn't — well, we got a couple of them in.
They're going to lay out the story for you. They were — they were on the board at ACORN. They are all African-Americans and they say this is corrupt all the way start to finish. Wait until you hear the people who were there and are part — they want nothing to do with ACORN, but are speaking out.
Can you tell me this? Here is something, Kevin, that I don't see anybody really talking about is the link between ACORN and SEIU. This is the service union.
These are the people — these are the people that ACORN was protesting, driving people out to the AIG people. These are the "brown shirts." Then the service workers union — or the SEIU — these are the people that were protesting in front of AIG. They're henchmen.
Are they tied together?
MOONEY: They are absolutely linked. You can find this through disclosure forms that labor unions have to report, the LM-2 disclosure forms. The Service Employees International Union and ACORN have exchanged funds back and forth. And as you may know, the SEI Union has been leading the charge for the card check bill, the Employee Free Choice Act, which has been — was reintroduced just earlier this year.
So, they are very much linked in with labor unions. In fact, the day after we published our story linking in ACORN with the Service Employees International Union, they actually took down from their Web site the member affiliation portion that identified SEIU.
BECK: Hold on just a second. Wasn't — what's his name, Wade Rathke, right?
MOONEY: That's the founder of ACORN.
BECK: Founder of ACORN. He is now tied into the unions because — didn't he leave ACORN because his brother embezzled $1 million as the CFO? And Wade, was he involved? Did he know about it or what happened?
MOONEY: His brother Dale Rathke was the chief financial officer at the time, and he was being accused of embezzling close to a million dollars. ACORN was going to bring suit, but they dropped it, instead now, some restitution and he's permitted to pay some of that back in the form of a loan.
Wade Rathke, apparently, did not report that to the police and was removed from ACORN, at least according to their board minutes. But Wade Rathke is still active with the Service Employees International Union as their chief organizer.
BECK: Right.
MOONEY: So, he's not really separated.
BECK: Right. Yes. So, he's not with ACORN, but he's with the — he's with the union.
OK, thank you very much. We'll talk again.
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