ACORN is no stranger to shady lobbying practices.

Months before GOP  investigators on the House Oversight and Government Committee revealed that ACORN appears to be lobbying illegally in Delaware, a former ACORN employee alleged ACORN violated federal lobbying laws.

The ex-ACORN employee, Ron Sykes, said that Citizens Consulting Inc. (CCI), the shadowy financial nerve center of the ACORN network, filed false lobbying disclosure reports with Congress.

This is important because, as former ACORN national board member Charles Turner said earlier this year on “The Glenn Beck Program,” CCI “is where the shell game begins.”

“ACORN has over 200 different entities that the money gets moved around to – for this purpose to that purpose, this organization to that organization,” said Turner. “We believe the way the money has been moved around, they’ve been laundering money.”

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I participated in listen-only mode in the teleconference call Monday in which ACORN’s allegedly independent “audit” was released.

I regret it was difficult to make out what the players were saying.

That’s because as the left ferociously circled the wagons, all the creaking wheel noises in the background drowned out much of what was said.

Scott Harshbarger, ACORN ally and former attorney general of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts

One the main points that ACORN ally and former Massachusetts Attorney General Scott Harshbarger and ACORN CEO/chief organizer Bertha Lewis were trying to make was that ACORN, i.e. the lead entity that controls the ACORN network, and ACORN Housing, are separate entities.

Because ACORN Housing and ACORN are different organizations neither is responsible for the other, they argued. In other words, ACORN is not responsible for ACORN Housing employees caught on video encouraging illegal behavior, and vice versa, they reasoned.

Harshbarger said on the conference call

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Imagine: In the days following the public revelations of the accounting scandal at Enron, then-CEO Ken Lay convened a news conference. He forcefully expressed his disgust with the actions of his subordinates and vowed to begin “cleaning house” at the company. Taking a few turns to slam the company’s critics and the reporters who had uncovered the scandal, he stressed that, this time, there would be a thorough revamp of the company. He even said that people would be fired! Reassured, reporters, lawmakers and regulators shrugged and went back to their daily lives.

ACORN CEO Bertha Lewis and Former Enron CEO Ken Lay

Substitute Bertha Lewis for Ken Lay and ACORN for Enron, in this hypothetical situation, and you’ll have a pretty good idea of what was asked of us at Lewis’ tour-de-force theatrical performance at the National Press Club earlier this week. She alternated between attacking her critics, expressing disgust with the actions of her employees caught on tape by James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles and vowing to pursue a lawsuit against the filmmakers for capturing on film her employees’ misdeeds. Oh, and by the way, she really, really—she means it this time—intends to “clean house” at ACORN.

Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank captured the surreal tableau best:

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“But whether you try to implement some or all of these recommendations, there must be someone committed to follow-up. There must be a review mechanism, and a means of holding people accountable after any final decisions are made. If you do not make some hard choices now and ensure they are carried out, they almost certainly will be made for you.”

–Elizabeth Kingsley of Harmon, Curran, Spielberg Eisenberg LLP, in a prophetic legal memo to ACORN dated June 19, 2008, the day before ACORN’s national board ousted ACORN founder organizer Wade Rathke

ACORN’s lawyer warned ACORN 15 months ago to begin fixing its massive internal problems or face certain catastrophe. It chose to do nothing.

The advice from Elizabeth Kingsley of Harmon, Curran, Spielberg Eisenberg LLP came in the form of an eerily prophetic legal memo to ACORN dated June 19, 2008, the day before ACORN’s national board fired disgraced founder Wade Rathke.

Vadum_TheKingsleyMemo_CapitalResearchCenter –

The memo is a kind of Holy Grail for ACORN researchers. One source of mine keeps a copy in a safety deposit box. I’ve lost track of how many people have asked me over the last year if I knew how to get ahold of it. One source told me that there are many people who would “kill” to gain possession of it. This is a bit of an exaggeration perhaps, but not much. (more…)

The activities of the radical, corrupt to the core, left-wing Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, which has tangled itself up in an infinitely complex web of deceit, thuggery, and questionable financial dealings, are long overdue for a RICO probe.

Recent well-publicized events that I need not recount here show ACORN’s criminal propensities. In a moment I’ll explain how ACORN’s financial affairs ought to raise a red flag for investigators at the U.S. Department of Justice, but first some background.

The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, which was created to prosecute organized crime, allows the federal government to go after individuals who commit any two RICO-related crimes over a decade. The law allows courts to convict persons if it can be shown that they committed those crimes as part of an illegal enterprise and can order disgorgement of their ill-gotten gains from the enterprise.

RICO is the right tool for the job.

Perhaps it’s the only tool for the job because the ACORN network is deliberately structured to deter scrutiny. Its nebulous legal status and opaque corporate structure allow it to keep its activities largely hidden from public view.

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In a front page story today, the Washington Post digs into many of the troubles and scandals that have plagued ACORN in recent years. Here’s a key graph on the last ‘independent review’ ACORN conducted:

In a June 2008 report to ACORN, Washington lawyer Elizabeth Kingsley, who conducted an independent review of the group’s finances, expressed concern that inadequate documentation of money transfers between ACORN and an allied organization, Project Vote, would make it difficult for either group to respond effectively to questions about whether tax-deductible charitable contributions were used for political purposes. She also noted conflicts created when decision-makers at the tax-exempt entity had roles in political activities carried out by other groups.

Read the whole story here. Check out this for Big Government’s take on ACORN’s latest ‘independent review’ proposal.