Our good friend Grover Norquist, head of Americans for Tax Reform, filed a formal request for an investigation of Andy Stern’s lobbying activities with the U.S. Attorney’s office today, saying public evidence suggests the SEIU President may be in violation of lobbying rules. Here’s the press release which went out earlier today…
Washington, D.C. — Today, Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) and 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 delivered today and available on their websites, ATR President Grover Norquist and AWF Executive Director Brian Johnson wrote:
By this letter, we urge you to investigate the activities of Mr. Andy Stern, President of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), regarding meetings and other lobbying contacts with administration, White House and Congress during 2009. Specifically, it is important to determine whether those and related activities could constitute unregistered “lobbying” by Mr. Stern in violation of the Lobbying Disclosure Act (LDA), 2 U.S.C. 1601, et seq. In fact, Mr. Stern was a registered lobbyist for SEIU until January of 2007 when he terminated his registration. For the reasons discussed below it appears that Mr. Stern continued to lobby extensively after he terminated his registered status, and in 2009 devoted so much time on lobbying and related activities that he should have re-registered as a lobbyist under LDA.
The accompanying pages, of the total eight page request, detail Mr. Stern’s lobbying activities by his own admission (Twitter), press accounts, and the listings in the White House visitor’s log.
Norquist and Johnson claim, “Since only 13 days of lobbying activity in a calendar quarter would trigger the 20% threshold, it appears that Mr. Stern spent at least 11 such days lobbying in the first quarter and 9 days in the second quarter on visibly lobbying the White House in person.”
The full letter and accompanying documents can be viewed on www.atr.org.
