The Patriot Post® · The Left's DOJ 'Slush Fund' Gets Buried

An egregious Department of Justice operation got a welcome overhaul this week courtesy of Attorney General Jeff Sessions. The DOJ, particularly under Barack Obama and his criminal co-conspirator, then-Attorney General Eric Holder, made a practice out of robbing corporate settlement funds to fill a plethora of leftist coffers. In short, The Wall Street Journal explains, “After the GOP took the House and tried to cut spending for liberal interest groups, the Obama Justice Department began to force corporate defendants to allocate a chunk of their financial penalties to those same groups.”

In other words, Obama exploited another channel through which the government was picking winners and losers and propping up pet projects — a blatantly unconstitutional scheme, as Congress (which has monetary authority) was essentially shunned. And we all know which political party benefits when it comes to government subsidies. Hint: Some of the beneficiaries include groups like La Raza and the National Urban League. But no more.

In a memorandum dated June 5, Attorney General Jeff Sessions stated, “The goals of any settlement are, first and foremost, to compensate victims, redress harm, or punish and deter unlawful conduct. It has come to my attention that previous certain settlement agreements involving the Department included payments to various non-governmental, third-party organizations as a condition of settlement with the United States. These third-party organizations were neither victims nor parties to the lawsuits.”

As such, Sessions issued a new directive: “Effective immediately, Department attorneys may not enter into any agreement on behalf of the United States in settlement of federal claims or charges … that directs or provides for a payment or loan to any non-governmental person or entity that is not a party to the dispute.” Sessions should be commended for this initiative. The only problem is that this memorandum is guaranteed only until the next presidential election. Republicans in Congress should follow through on their endeavor to permanently outlaw this leftist “slush fund.”