Successfully demonizing Washington insiders on the campaign trail, President Obama needed to find a way to meet with lobbyists without appearing hypocritical. The administration’s advice to lobbyists? De-register.

For an administration that promised to renounce interest groups, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) certainly has the president’s ear and is sure to be a major player in the December jobs summit. In 2008, SEIU donated nearly $28 million to the Obama campaign setting the stage for SEIU President Andy Stern to become the White House’s most frequent visitor in 2009, according to White House visitor logs. Anna Burger, Treasure of the SEIU and Chairwoman of their Change to Win campaign was even appointed to Obama’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board earlier this year and will represent SEIU at the December jobs summit held by the White House.

To the objective observer, it is clear that Andy Stern and Anna Burger are meeting with members of the White House to advance goals of the SEIU, they are lobbying. However, in 2008 both Stern and Burger de-registered as lobbyists providing the Obama administration cover to meet with them while avoiding cries of duplicity. Yet, neither Stern nor Burger changed positions or job responsibilities, they just stopped registering as lobbyists.

So who has to register?

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President Obama has always made a pretty big deal about not working with “lobbyists”. Registered lobbyists can’t get stimulus money, can’t be White House advisors and are not allowed access to meetings and summits. So how does one get around that? It’s simple; you just don’t register as a lobbyist. That’s what Andy Stern did and it may come back to bite him.

Grover Norquist, President of Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) and me, as Executive Director of the Alliance for Worker Freedom (AWF) formally requested an investigation by the acting United States Attorney Channing D. Phillips, Esq., into the potentially illegal lobbying activities of the Service Employee International Union (SEIU) President Andy Stern.

In a letter hand delivered today to Mr. Phillips, Senate Secretary Erickson and House Clerk Miller, we wrote:

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