Glenn Beck: Who's on the rolodex of ACORN CEO?
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September 23, 2009 - 13:30 ET

GLENN: All right, now we have Erick Erickson on. He is from Red State, and he has the story of Bertha Lewis who is the CEO of ACORN. He got her he got her Rolodex. Well, let me start with this. Eric, how did you get her Rolodex?

ERICKSON: You know, it kind of came to me by chance. A guy who has read Red State for a long time, been e mailing with me for years happens to work for a very large company in Washington that ACORN hates and he got it from a friend who works with Bertha Lewis.

GLENN: They are saying that you stole it.

ERICKSON: Oh, Good Lord. I don't even know how he got it.

GLENN: Okay.

ERICKSON: So no, I spent a week and a half vetting it to make sure it was legit and talked to lawyers for a week and they said go with it.

GLENN: All right. George Stephanopoulos was told by President Barack Obama, "frankly it's not something I followed closely on this ACORN deal. I didn't even know that ACORN was getting a whole lot of federal money." A lot of people say, well, that's ridiculous because I mean, he worked for ACORN for a while, he's been close with ACORN. But what does, what does Bertha Lewis, the CEO of ACORN here in New York, what does this tell us? Why is this important?

ERICKSON: Well, it's important because in her Rolodex, in fact, more filled out than pretty much anybody in the list is a guy named Patrick Gaspard. He used to be the executive vice president of the SEIU. He is now Barack Obama's political director. He sits in Karl Rove's office and performs the job Karl Rove performed for George Bush. He's also the guy in the news this week who put the horse head in David Paterson's bed, told him not to run for governor of New York again. Not just Patrick, though. His brother Michael according to Bertha Lewis' contacts worked for the Advance Group. The Advance Group is the lobbying arm of ACORN. So you've got the president's political director and his brother in her Rolodex. One works for ACORN, the other one works for the president.

GLENN: Well, but why is that I mean, so. She's got their numbers. I'm sure I could get their office number and

ERICKSON: Well, it's not just their office numbers, cellphone numbers, home phone numbers, private personal e mail address. I'll put it to you this way. There are 2,000 contacts in her contacts list. Only 31 of them have home and office and cellphone number listed, and only five of them have home, office, cellphone and private e mail address.

GLENN: Who the

ERICKSON: Patrick Gaspard is one of the five.

GLENN: Who are the five?

ERICKSON: There's Wade Rathke who is the founder of ACORN, there's Patrick Gaspard.

GLENN: Which is SEIU.

ERICKSON: Who was SEIU and is now the president's political director. And then there are three other ACORN officials.

GLENN: Is there any way to get a sense of the ties to the White House?

ERICKSON: I think so. First of all, the fact that she has this guy, so much personal information about him and his brother works for ACORN. There's also Karine Jean Pierre who is the president's liaison to the Department of Labor. Now, her information in this contact list has been outdated. She used to work for John Edwards and that's how this still lists her employment, but it does have her cellphone number and her e mail address. And there's also Shaun Donovan who is the secretary of Housing and Urban Development who used to be in charge of New York's version of that.

GLENN: The Advance Group, registered lobbyists with the Advance Group is Scott Levenson. Is that the same dirt bag that I threw out of the studio that

ERICKSON: Yes, it is. And he works with Michael Gaspard, Patrick Gaspard's brother. Although you would never know that Michael Gaspard works there. He is not on their website, he is not listed in any of their lobbyist filings. It just so happens that he appears in Lewis' contact list as working there.

GLENN: So what do we do with this information?

ERICKSON: Well, I continue to mine it and look for information. For example, I'm finding this morning that there are contacts with the Bolivian ambassador to the United States and people who work for the Venezuelan embassy in Washington, which I find deeply interesting.

GLENN: Wait. Hold it just a second. Say that again, please?

ERICKSON: She has the ambassador of Bolivia's contact information and

GLENN: Hang on. Bolivia, Bolivia.

ERICKSON: Yes.

GLENN: Why do I know Bolivia?

ERICKSON: Might be from your first hour?

GLENN: Why do I know Bolivia?

PAT: Morales, right, the head of Bolivia who yesterday said capitalism, I think, was the real problem in the world?

GLENN: Yeah, capitalism didn't he say capitalism is evil.

PAT: Is evil.

GLENN: Yeah, capitalism is a real problem. It's evil.

ERICKSON: Right.

GLENN: Okay. So she has that. Who else does she have?

ERICKSON: She's got a couple of people from the political division of the Venezuelan embassy.

GLENN: Why would, why would ACORN, who's caring about just housing and taking care of the poor have

PAT: Low income Americans.

GLENN: Why would they have anything to do with the Venezuelan?

ERICKSON: Well, she also has some ties to Citgo in there and if you remember Citgo is owned by Venezuela and ACORN was real happy to help undermine some of the previous administration's positions on foreign oil.

GLENN: Well, but that was just through the Kennedys. That was just a nice, you know, Hugo Chavez came and I think it was Patrick Kennedy that helped them just get heating oil for the poor in New York. That's all it is.

ERICKSON: A total coincidence. And also the Eskimos in Alaska. Total coincidence. The other interesting thing, though, is she has ties to the Working Families Party. She is the co chair Working Families Party. ACORN has a history in this country of establishing political parties to run people. Now, they are a corporation, keep in mind. So they can't do anything political themselves. So they established these political parties other than the Democratic Party, run people on that ballot, the Working Families Party, also run them on the Democratic ballot and it's a clear signal to people that, hey, this is the ACORN guy; we should vote for him. That's how Barack Obama won his Senate election in Illinois or I'm sorry, won his election to the state Senate in Illinois. He ran as a new party representative and a Democrat. New party is ACORN's political party in Chicago.

GLENN: All right. Well, you just, you just stay on it, will you, and just I tell you what I'm interested in is I'd like to know more about the Venezuela connections, the Bolivia connections. I'm interested in the SEIU. There's a picture here on the on Red State of her Rolodex. What is that picture all about?

ERICKSON: That is the word cloud. I went through and put in every organization that's mentioned and weighted them so the names that are mentioned the most appear the largest. And so SEIU next to ACORN is the most heavily mentioned name. In fact, there are a couple of people who are listed as working for the SEIU or are in charge of segments of SEIU who have ACORN addresses in her Rolodex.

GLENN: Can I get a copy of this? Can you bring a copy onto the so we can show it?

ERICKSON: Oh, sure.

GLENN: All right. Is there any difference between SEIU and ACORN?

ERICKSON: You know, this contacts list seems to me to pretty much show that they are the same entity. The most interesting thing, Glenn, though is that a lot of ACORN e mail addresses, they assigned them based on position, not based on the person's name. So instead of GlennBeck@ACORN.org, it would be radio guy. And you can pretty much map out the organization based on how they've assigned these e mail addresses.

GLENN: We'll talk to you again.

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