Yesterday, Pigford report co-author Peter Schweizer spoke to a specific USDA inside job wherein a federal employee was getting paid by Pigford lawyers to illegally sign up fraudulent claimants. Today, former Secretary of the Department of Agriculture Mike Espy, who now represents thousands of Pigford II claimants, says there is “no doubt” that he has heard those reports, and furthermore says there are FBI investigations that have looked into these troubling allegations. This comports with the Big Government witness report from a retired FBI agent who is willing to testify that he has evidence of widespread fraud involving Pigford claimants in Arkansas and a USDA employee, who still is on the job.

This is not tying Mike Espy into any fraud. This is just showing that what Big Government has been reporting is common knowledge amongst many Pigford insiders.

This video preview concludes the pre-Christmas roll-out of the Big Government Pigford report and ongoing documentary production. There are many more blockbuster interviews to come. More Pigileaks, as well. Even though the media continues conspicuously to ignore our revelations, we know that behind the scenes, Pigford principals are scrambling for cover and investigative bodies have been jump-started into action.

Much, much more to come in the New Year. (more…)

As we have been chronicling in our Pigford coverage this week, the amount of evidence suggesting massive fraud is staggering and will continue to build and build.

Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack came out last week to say there have only been three cases of fraud out of the 20,000 claims.

Well Mr. Vilsack, why don’t you try this on for size?  And by the way, we will be bringing more crime rings your way very soon.

All excerpts from the Mississippi Clarion Ledger in Jackson, Mississippi:

Suspect admits she OK’d slaying

Date:  Jan 13, 2006

By Jimmie Gates

Two days after she denied knowing that federal witness Clovis Reed would be killed, Levon Edmond admitted Thursday that she agreed to the slaying and alleged one of her accomplices had killed another woman earlier.

The second woman’s body is buried in the same area where Reed’s headless and handless corpse was found in Simpson County in 2003, Edmond told U.S. District Judge Henry T. Wingate.

(more…)

WASHINGTON (AP) – American Indians and black farmers will be paid $4.6 billion to address claims of government mistreatment over many decades under landmark legislation President Barack Obama signed Wednesday.

The legislation “closes a long and unfortunate chapter in our history,” Obama said. “It’s finally time to make things right.”

At a signing ceremony at the White House the president declared that approval of the long-delayed legislation “isn’t simply a matter of making amends, it’s about reaffirming our values on which this nation was founded: the principles of fairness and equality and opportunity.”

Obama promised during his campaign to work toward resolving disputes over the government’s past discrimination against minorities. The measure he signed settles a pair of long-standing class-action lawsuits. The measure also settles four long-standing disputes over Native American water rights in Arizona, New Mexico and Montana. (more…)

One key to understanding the Pigford travesty is realizing how Barack Obama came to the point where today he is giving away billions in taxpayer dollars for potentially fraudulent Pigford-related claims. What may have begun as a legitimate 100 million dollar effort to repair genuine damages caused by alleged USDA discrimination evolved into what amounted to a pay-for-play scam with two linked goals – to defeat Hillary Clinton in the Democrat primary, then get Barack Obama elected president. The Hill, not Big Government, let that cat out of the bag back in April of 2009:

Supporters of Obama’s presidential campaign argued the then-Illinois senator’s move to resolve late Pigford claims would endear him to Southern black voters during the tough Democratic primary race against former Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.). At the time of the bill’s introduction in 2007, Obama was finding his footing as a candidate and polls suggested he was struggling to attract black voters. He later won almost unanimously among this group against Clinton and then in the general election against Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).

Now Obama may have to face off with several of his own campaign supporters over how best to compensate discrimination claims by black farmers. Clay, Davis and Thompson endorsed Obama during the presidential primaries.

Just as Obama is today caving to Republicans on a a tax deal, instead of standing up for American taxpayers regarding potential Pigford-related fraud, Obama is also opting to write a check for billions American taxpayers can ill afford – all to satisfy what can rightfully be called a campaign debt. (more…)

From a USDA employee with close to 30 years experience:

Pigford was a nightmare. There was lots of money to be made—most of it by the trial lawyers. There were legitimate claims. It happens that people do sometimes discriminate and those people should be compensated. But really everyone was put in the crosshairs. They were indicting the entire USDA.

Lawyers were churning applications. My name starts turning up on documents as someone who denied someone services. Trouble was those people were hundreds of miles away. I think there was something like 700 forms filed with my name on them—it was outrageous. I had never heard of any of them. I discovered that my name had been put on leaflets, which charges that I was a racist, and people just put my name on Pigford applications. I finally had to get black farmers to vouch for me. They all said I treated everyone fairly, which is what I tried to do. (more…)

In our report, we document two organizations, the Black Farmers and Agriculturists Association and the National Black Farmers Association.  These two groups round up tens of thousands of Pigford litigants and then lobby politicians with promises of votes and campaign cash in exchange for championing and funding their causes such as Pigford.

These two groups, and the Pigfored issue, hold huge sway over the rural black vote, and as you can see from this letter from the President of the BFAA John Boyd, Boyd is eager to get rewarded for helping to put President Obama into office.

Boyd’s reward comes today as President Obama signs Pigford II funding into law, and the circle of quid pro quo is complete.

The Dept. of Agriculture has claimed that there were only three cases of fraudulent claims filed for Pigford settlement money. Jimmy Dismuke, one of the original farmers who brought suit against the USDA, told Big Government that he was personally aware of many more cases that the FBI investigated and documented in Arkansas, but for political purposes they have not been made public.

As Barack Obama prepares to sign an alleged landmark settlement to right previous wrongs dealt black farmers by the USDA, it’s important to realize that this is less a story about race, or discrimination, than it is a textbook case of big government run amok with greed and a usual cast of characters only too happy to cash in at the expense of the American taxpayer.

Indeed, as Big Government has already pointed out, the legitimate concerns of many honest, hard working black farmers continue to go ignored, while high power law firms, in some cases linked to the Democrat Party, stand to cash in big. Only in the world of big money and high power politics can an individual like Mike Espy, a former head of the very same USDA he is now suing, now claim to speak for over 15,000 clients alleging discrimination by the same USDA Espy headed up. The mere thought of that is absurd and should function as a red flag for any good government watchdog.

As Big Government will continue to show over the next few weeks, Pigford is a universe of its own filled with crooked politicians, cover-ups, greedy attorneys, and crime rings. And one of the brightest stars in the Pigford universe is Mike Espy:

How many actual farmers with potentially legitimate complaints against the USDA will actually be compensated remains to be seen. But one thing seems abundantly clear, Espy will very likely profit to a degree that far exceeds any potential aggrieved party. That isn’t justice, it is corruption and cronyism writ large to be paraded about in what amounts to an outrageous signing ceremony at the White House today. (more…)

From an anonymous source in the capitol:

These are redacted Pigford applications that are all done by the same lawyer.  All of the claimants come from Arkansas (two are related) and the stories they write on the application are clearly boilerplate, probably done by the same paralegal.  Some of the words are even misspelled consistently through the documents.

We don’t know the outcome of these apps but if they were successful claims it shows how little the claimants actually had to provide to get $50K.  This is the kind of information that we can’t wait to subpoena.

*** (more…)

Although the Pigford settlement story is a complex one that has major political implications, at the heart of it is a very simple question: does the settlement contain a significant amount of fraud?

If the Obama administration is telling the truth and there are only three cases of fraud out of 15,000 settled claims, then there’s no story here. If the fraud does exists, the attempt to silence people like Rep. Steve King or Andrew Breitbart aren’t just wrong but are a clear sign that some people will say anything to keep the truth about Pigford from coming out.

But you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.  Eventhough the mainstream media has been silent on this story, there are witnesses. One brave whistleblower is Arkansas farmer Jimmy Dismuke, who recently sat down for an extensive, exclusive interview about Pigford. That entire interview will be made available on BigGovernment in the near future but today’s clip is powerful testimony about how simple it was for people — and by extension, their lawyers — to collect those $50,000 Pigford payments.

The following is based on an interview with a current employee at the U.S. Department of Agriculture:

I’ve worked with the USDA for more than 25 years.  The situation with Pigford has been horrible.  There were cases of discrimination.  Perhaps 100 cases in the whole state of [redacted].  But the federal government paid out thousands of claims, a lot of them churned by attorneys who made a lot of money.

Attorneys caught on to the fact that the federal government doesn’t keep records.  They either don’t keep them well in terms of who they are meeting with or they are destroyed after a couple of years.  Attorneys recognized this and exploited it in Pigford.

My name started to appear on Pigford claims as someone who had discriminated against applicants.  I had to develop a chronology listing where I worked when, because almost all of the claims just didn’t make sense because I didn’t even work in those areas.  Names got out that you were a USDA employee and lawyers would just have people put them on an application. (more…)

In the pantheon of civic behavior, ex-politicians leaving DC to become lobbyists to advocate on behalf of private interests against taxpayer interests is right up there among the most undesirable.

What’s even worse?  When a former Secretary of Agriculture – who is African-American – leaves his post and now spends his time trolling for and representing litigants suing the USDA citing discrimination against African-Americans during the time he was in charge of the agency.

Why isn’t he suing himself, and paying the claims out of his own pocket? Instead, the USDA has admitted “no wrongdoing” (i.e. no one has been fired for the wholesale discrimination) and the taxpayer is completely and exclusively on the hook.

As Big Government will continue to show over the next few weeks, Pigford is a universe of its own filled with crooked politicians, cover-ups, greedy attorneys, and crime rings. And one of the brightest stars in the Pigford universe is Mike Espy:

MIKE ESPY (Alphonso Michael Espy) is the former Secretary of the United States Department of Agriculture, and a former U.S. Representative from the 2nd District of Mississippi. He currently works as a private sector attorney, counselor, and agricultural advisor, having his own law and consulting firms: Mike Espy, PLLC, and AE Agritrade, Inc.

Prior to his appointment as USDA Secretary, Mike Espy served for seven years as a Member of Congress. While there, he served his bi-racial district as a member of the Budget and Agriculture Committees.

Before his election to Congress, Mike worked as a trial lawyer and served as Assistant Attorney General.

In 1997, Espy was indicted on 30 criminal charges of receiving gifts from food companies. Tyson Foods, the largest poultry producer in the U.S., was found guilty of paying Espy more than $12,000 in illegal gifts and was fined $6 million for the transgression. In another case, Sun Diamond was fined $1.5 million for giving Espy $6,000 in illegal gifts. (more…)