Catholic Charities, Parishes At Hub of Vote Fraud Schemes

By PAUL LIKOUDIS

May 8, 1997

LOS ANGELES - From its beginning more than 25 years ago, the Catholic  Church's Campaign for Human Development has been criticized for funding  left-wing Democratic Party-affiliated political action committees, but Church  officials consistently denied it.

Now, however, the U.S. Congress will have the chance to examine in detail  allegations made by defeated Cong. Bob Dornan: that Catholic parishes and  organizations, and Church-funded "community groups" participated in massive vote  fraud, resulting in a crooked election.

"I'm very concerned about what the Church is doing here," said Michael  Schroeder, chairman of the California Republican Party, an attorney for Cong.  Dornan, and a Catholic.

"It seems like the Church is becoming involved in partisan politics, and  [clerics] are giving the impression that their main interest is ideology. I'm  afraid the Church is getting involved in some very unsavory activities," he  said.

The role Catholic Charities and Catholic parishes in Orange County played in  facilitating illegal voting in the November, 1996 federal election is one aspect  of a broad investigation into the Clinton-Gore election strategy to replace  Catholic pro-life Cong. Dornan with a militant pro-abort Hispanic, Loretta  Sanchez Brixey.

The involvement of Church organizations is central to the ongoing  investigation of vote fraud in California's 46th Congressional District, Cong.  Dornan told The Wanderer. This is so because Catholic Charities  claims to have distributed 16,000 voter registration forms to groups throughout  Orange County, and some officials boasted "We know that teams hostile to  Christianity preyed on Latinos coming out of Sunday Mass at several parishes,  telling them they could vote even if they weren't citizens, " he said.

"We want to know who was in these citizenship classes," adds Schroeder. "We  want to know how many people they registered; how many people voted, and what  Catholic Charities did with all its registration forms: whom did it give them  to?"

Despite vigorous stonewalling by subpoenaed organizations - including the  Immigration and Naturalization Service, Catholic Charities of Orange County,  Church-funded affiliates of the Industrial Areas Foundation, and Loretta Sanchez  Brixey - Dornan has already found solid evidence of criminal wrongdoing in his  congressional race, including the registration of illegal alien felons as  voters.

In the past two weeks, since the investigation of vote fraud formally began  April 19th, lawyers working for Cong. Dornan have learned that in one Orange  County precinct 460 more ballots were cast than there were registered voters. In  another precinct of 1,160 ballots examined, 570 were cast by noncitizens, and  another 102 were cast by illegal aliens.

Dornan lost his race to Brixey by a mere 979 votes out of 93,000 cast.

The Proof

While Dornan and his lawyers continue their legal efforts to compel  compliance with Congress-ordered subpoenas, they have already produced massive  documentation uncovering an illegal scam to register noncitizens and illegal  aliens to vote in Catholic parishes and are focusing on the role of Catholic  Charities in the election of Loretta Sanchez Brixey.

Included in that evidence are: letters from Fr. Miguel Vega of the Southern  California IAF Network to White House officials; internal Immigration and  Naturalization Service documents; sworn depositions of vote fraud witnesses; and  White House memos linking California Industrial Areas Foundation affiliates to  the roll-out-the vote project of Clinton and Gore.

These documents also show that the vote fraud in the '96 election was not  unique to Orange County, but similar projects involving Church-funded  organizations occurred in San Francisco, Chicago, and New York, among other  cities. They picture a desperate White House forcing a compliant INS to forgo  its standard procedures in a rush to register more than 200,000 immigrants in  time for the '96 election, and the thoroughly corrupt manner in which immigrants  were hastily granted citizenship and enrolled as voters, often through area  churches.

Item: In a sworn deposition, James Humble-Sanchez, a ten-year criminal  investigator with the Los Angeles office of the INS, declares that both INS  Commissioner Doris Meissner and Deputy Commissioner Chris Sales made  "deliberate, false, and misleading statements" to cover the naturalization of an  estimated 75,000 perjurers, with arrest records; that INS's streamlined  citizenship process is an "honor system for criminals"; that Citizenship USA  (created by Chicago IAF boss Dan Solis and implemented by Al Gore) is worsening  the backlog of naturalization cases, rather than easing it.

Item: CLINIC - the Los Angeles-based Catholic Legal Immigration Network -  with a $500,000 grant from INS for "citizenship activities," was so busy feeding  immigrants into its citizenship rituals that it bypassed INS requirements that  citizens have a rudimentary understanding of English. The problem became so  extreme that INS agents would not attend Church-run citizenship rituals because  they would see that new citizens could not understand basic instructions - like  where to sit.

Item: In a sworn deposition, John Rodenbour a longtime volunteer vote  registrar at St. Boniface Church in Anaheim (parish base of the notoriously  pro-Sandinista pastor Fr. Wilbur Davis), described how teams from MEChA, a  leftwing Mexican- American group seeking the reunification of the American  southwest with Mexico, told prospective registrants to describe their  affiliation as "Bill Clinton- Democratic Party."

Item: In another deposition Joan Burke, also a member of St. Boniface,  testified that a MEChA team worker told her that it was not necessary to be a  U.S. citizen to register to vote or to vote, since identification was never  requested.

"I personally observed and heard," she said, "in my presence many persons  affiliated with MEChA telling prospective registrants to... indicate their  affiliation as 'Bill Clinton-Democratic Party'."

She also swore that MEChA teams gave registrants illegal absentee ballots,  and advised them to fill them out and return them to them and not mail them as  law requires.

Item: In his deposition, Nelson Molina testified that was told by Benney  Hernandez, a representative of the Loretta Sanchez campaign, that he could vote,  even though he was not a citizen, and that his wife could vote twice, once by  absentee ballot and again at the poll on election day.

Item: In another deposition, Carolyn J. Kopman testified that she had gone to  the Orange County Registrar's Office to pick up an absentee ballot, and she  witnessed a Latino man receiving two absentee ballots - one for him and one for  his girlfriend - and the clerk advised him to forge his girlfriend's signature  on the ballot application.

Item: In another deposition, Lance Powers, a waiter at the White House  Restaurant in Anaheim, testified that he overheard Sanchez telling five of her  campaign workers how to ask Latinos about how they were going to vote: "Who do  you want for president? Clinton or Clinton? Who do you want for Congress?  Sanchez or Sanchez?"

Her dinner companions, recalled the waiter, thought that was funny.

Item: Another waiter at the same event, James Becker, testified that midway  through the dinner, Sanchez and her workers were joined by a man of Mideastern  heritage. He walked in and announced loudly, "We have the Catholic churches  locked up. The churches are covered." The other five dinner attendees  cheered.

More Details

In 1994, concerned that mounting scandals would prevent a second term in the  White House, Clinton met with Chicago immigration activist Daniel Solis,  director of the IAF affiliate UNO (United Neighborhood Organization) who advised  him that registering Latinos to vote could guarantee his election.

Clinton, apparently, was so impressed with the advice that he told Solis to  discuss his plans in greater detail with Hillary Clinton and former chief of  staff Harold Ickes.

According to Cong. Dornan, it was also Solis who provided Al Gore with a  successful strategy to defeat the Republicans in key high-immigration states:  Portray Republicans as anti-poor people, threatening to cut off welfare and  health care benefits to illegal aliens and noncitizens.

For the Democrats, particularly in California, this was a step up the  evolutionary ladder of guaranteeing election victories.

Prior to the 1996 election, Latino districts generally produced a very low  percentage of voter turnout, allowing the Democratic Party bosses to pick  candidates; and with a small turnout, ensure their election without the expense  of rounding up voters.

But that changed after Clinton advisers began worrying that the 1996 election  might be won or lost over a few hundred thousand votes - thus their mad dash to  register more than 1.3 million new Latino voters nationwide before the  election.

"We have a letter from Solis to Gore telling him that the Latinos can provide  the swing vote in a lot of areas," Dornan told The Wanderer.

"And that's when they made me a target. City councilmen in Anaheim tell me  that Loretta was planning to run again for the council - she finished eighth in  1994. However, Xavier Becerra, with an unbroken pro-abortion record, convinced  Loretta to drop her married name and skip over city and state government levels  to run for Congress.

"In a multiple-candidate primary, he told her, a Hispanic surname would  prevail, and [he told her] that Dornan was vulnerable with Republican women  because of his pro-life votes, along with the increasing Hispanic demographics.  She lived then, and continues to live, in a wealthy area three districts away in  L.A. County, Palos Verdes Estates.

"We know from the documents that Becerra was working closely with Gore and  the INS to lower citizenship requirements, and increase Democratic  registrations, and Orange County was clearly a priority for them."

From the beginning of 1996, one of Al Gore's missions was to "reinvent  government," and a key component of that was streamlining the naturalization  process for new citizens, which included:

• cutting the interview time for prospective citizens with INS INS agents from  35 minutes to ten minutes;
• allowing immigrants to send in their fingerprints by mail;
• dropping FBI background checks;
• dropping. the "good moral character" requirement;
• outsourcing citizenship examinations to for-profit and political  organizations;
• dropping the English literacy and U.S. history requirement.

Throughout 1996, Gore worked closely with the IAF affiliates, who  consistently prodded him, while he kept pressuring the INS to meet the IAF's  registration quotas.

A memo sent to Gore from Active Citizenship Campaign, the IAF-run program to  make citizens and register voters, describes a Jan. 30th, 1996 meeting of top  IAF leaders from San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York, with INS  Commissioner Meissner and Cong. Becerra attending. There, the IAF described how  it will:

• register 26,000 voters;
• "identify and turnout 52,000 occasional voters";
• influence 300,000 voters;
• "target 960 underrepresented precincts, produce 5,000 precinct leaders, and  turn out 96,000 voters for the 1996 election"; and
• be "willing to fight alongside the Clinton administration in efforts to  maximize INS efficiency and effectiveness and to decrease massive backlogs,  while increasing the number of new Americans."

Quadruple Felonies

"You look at this election and you think, 'This is the perfect crime'," said  Dornan.

"We've found voters who not only committed one felony, we've got quadruple  felons: nonprimary relatives filling out absentee ballots; forging a voter's  name on registration forms; noncitizens and illegal aliens voting; intercepting  absentee ballots.

"And Sanchez is scoffing at this problem. She says it's not an issue. Her  attitude is, 'So what?'

"Not only is there illegal voting to keep left-wing politics going, there's  another serious problem: Innocent people are being duped into committing  felonies, by registering to vote before they become citizens.

"The Latinos are being exploited - and losing their chance for citizenship -  by this vote fraud."

Building Steam

Both Cong. Dornan and his lawyer, Mike Schroeder, agree that the Dornan case  is building.

On April 28th, the Wall StreetJournal's main editorial focused  on the INS's refusal to honor court-ordered subpoenas, asking, "Does the INS  have something to hide?

"Last year it allowed Vice President Gore's office to pressure it into  streamlining its procedures to allow more than 180,000 immigrants to vote before  the 1996 election without having their criminal records checked. Some 11,000 of  them had felony arrest records, but were made citizens anyway.

"Lawyers for [Cong.] Loretta Sanchez, who defeated Dornan, insist that only  77 noncitizens voted in her election. They are refusing to honor a subpoena for  documents issued by [Cong.] Vernon Ehlers' committee on the grounds that it is  unconstitutional. So, too, is Hermandad Mexicana Nacional, the group accused of  registering so many noncitizens. . . . Congress should be aware that Hermandad  has received $35 million in government grants over the past decade, mostly for  citizenship' classes...."

But while the evidence mounts that Dornan's congressional seat was stolen  from him through fraud, there's also the possibility that Congress - the only  court of jurisdiction in Dornan's election challenge - lacks the will to  challenge Sanchez's "victory" and seat "B-1 Bob."

Not only is there growing opposition in Congress, led by Dornan's former  colleague Vic Fazio of Sacramento, Califomia's ranking Democrat, and a militant  pro-abort, to end the inquiry, but there's some reticence about "breaking new  ground."

Congress has never compelled one of its own members to comply with a  subpoena, and forcing Sanchez to turn over documents may be considered an unwise  political risk.

Another problem, said Dornan, is that Congress would probably be unwilling to  investigate the leftwing political activities of the Catholic Church.

"The Church wields considerable power when it comes to the City of Man, but  on issues of the City of God, it's silent. It's clearly not in the Church's  interest for Congress to investigate this election, and I pray they're not  making their views known on the Hill."