Progressive state attorneys general under their umbrella group the Democratic Attorneys General Association (DAGA) have been aggressively spamming recently about the Trump agenda. In doing so, they have also violated standards of fraud they themselves have set in their positions as charity regulators for their respective states.
A recent DAGA email asks for donors “to become a Founding Member of the Democratic Justice Fund.” It appears from an Internet search, however, there is no special “Justice Fund” at all. In fact, when one clicks to the donation landing page, money goes to DAGA’s political action committee.
One charity I know has been investigated by a DAGA member for using the term “fund” in its solicitations. The word was not within the context of the actual appeal, unlike the way DAGA uses the term, but was employed outside the actual appeal as a common fundraising technique used by many charities to “localize” their mailings. DAGA’s use of “Justice Fund” is more of a material fact used to induce contributions to its PAC, giving the impression that DAGA has actually created a separate fund rather than contributions going to its PAC’s general treasury.
The email goes on: “As a Founding Member of the Democratic Justice Fund, you’ll jump-start four years of powerful resistance as we work to overturn Trump’s unconstitutional orders in the courts and to oppose any effort to violate our rights and liberties.”
This, too, is a factually incorrect way to induce contributions. Being more precise, Democrat AGs never have and never will oppose “any effort” to violate rights. While that’s puffery on their part, these regulator-prosecutor politicians would likely nit-pick at something of similar exaggeration if found in a solicitation from a conservative nonprofit organization they wanted to target for a costly investigation.
Yet it is these Democrat lawyers with power who have actually worked against rights and liberties, yet raise money on the backs of those magnificent terms and themes.
Consider, for example, how the group of Democrat AGs called the “Green 20” sought to silence opposing views on climate change in their 2016 investigation of Exxon and various conservative think tanks. So much for liberty of speech. Then these lawless AGs fought FOIA requests about their little conspiracy to silence their critics and ideological opponents. So much for transparency and the rule of law.
Or, consider how two DAGA members Xavier Becerra of California and Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania have brought the issue of the Little Sisters of the Poor back to court after a Trump administration decision that resulted in the order of Catholic nuns having a religious exemption from the Obamacare requirement to finance the purchase of birth control. So much for rights of conscience and religion, even if celibate nuns must pay for birth control against the tenets of their faith.
And it has been Democrat AGs like Eric Schneiderman of New York and now-Senator Kamala Harris of California who have demanded names of donors to nonprofit organizations, like their segregationist, Ku Klux Klan-supported predecessor John Patterson, who in 1958 was told by the U.S. Supreme Court in NAACP v Alabama that such a demand violated the freedom of private association.
DAGA brags in its email that it is the “first line of defense against [the Trump] administration’s extreme agenda,” which is a statist a rip-off of the marvelous 2013 book, “The Last Line of Defense: The New Fight for American Liberty,” by former Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli. That’s not only an unimaginative rip-off, it’s an insult to the book’s constitutional conservative, limited government themes, which the Democrat AGs violate as second nature.
The fundraising solicitation celebrates DAGA’s efforts at “blocking Trump’s discriminatory Muslim travel ban.” Think about that fake news characterization this Christmas with all the threats of terrorist acts by ISIS.
One deceptive email from Democrats AGs is not as troubling as their lawless behavior even before their Trump Derangement Syndrome. Now, however, they are more unhinged and see their niche as a band of litigators to uproot the rule of law and American tradition in favor of their progressive base.
Prior to receiving the deceptive Justice Fund fundraising appeal from DAGA, the organization sent me an email on Thanksgiving.
These leftwing lawyers didn’t even bother to wish a Happy Thanksgiving in their spam. That would have been too religious — too traditionally American for these terrible, lawless, progressive lawyers.
Mark J. Fitzgibbons is co-author with Richard Viguerie of ‘The Law That Governs Government.’
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of The Daily Caller.
