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[Order Daniel Greenfield’s new book, Domestic Enemies: HERE.]
The Center for Gender & Refugee Studies has spent years battling on behalf of illegal alien invaders. Earlier, Freedom Center Investigates exposed how the lawfare group housed at a University of California law school provides full service open borders support.
“During Trump, my CGRS colleagues and I expended a tremendous amount of energy challenging the anti-immigrant policies that were issued on what seemed like an almost daily basis,” Karen Musalo, the CGRS founding director, boasted.
The Center also offers a database of “expert witnesses” willing to testify on behalf of the ‘refugee’ claims of border invaders. It urges licensed medical or mental health personnel to register to “support asylum seekers with forensic mental or physical evaluations.”
Who funds the CRGS open borders lawfare? Many of those who fund it don’t even know it.
CGRS is one of the radical leftist groups that benefits from interest seized from trust accounts controlled by lawyers and redistributed to some of the most extreme groups around.
Last year, the State Bar of California Board of Trustees handed out a stunning $95 million to groups that included not only CGRS, but the Asian Law Caucus, which among other pro-terrorist litigation fought a lawsuit by Jewish students complaining about antisemitism at California universities, as well as the California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice which in its own words, “fights for the liberation of immigrants in detention”, the Center for Immigrant Protection which advocates specifically for gay migrants, the Centro Legal de la Raza (Legal Center of the Race), which urges calling their “rapid response unit” if they see ICE.
Both the La Raza centers in Oakland and San Francisco received this looted ‘grant’ money.
The source of the money is the obscure Interest on Lawyer Trust Account (IOLTA) Program which was authorized by a Democrat Congress and by assorted state courts and legislatures who were either left-leaning or not paying very close attention. IOLTA turned funds being held in trust by lawyers for clients over short periods of time into a massive piggy bank to fund the Left.
The way it works is simple. The money held in trust by lawyers is pooled into interest bearing checking accounts and the interest is stolen to fund leftist groups. Everyone from accident victims to widows has been quietly robbed for the last 40 years in the name of social justice.
The theory behind IOLTA is that it would be ‘unethical’ for lawyers to profit from holding money for their clients, but it’s somehow ethical for law associations to take the money and hand it out to their political allies in order to advocate for their pet political causes. When IOLTAs were formed, they were supposed to underwrite legal aid for the poor. And some state IOLTA funds still generally do that, but as California’s example shows, much of the stolen interest money is going to single issue radical groups that offer legal aid to illegal aliens, terrorists and radical groups and that offer not only legal services, but advocacy for extreme political causes.
An estimated $4 billion has been stolen from clients by state bars through IOLTA but California offers a striking example of the scale of the looting and how it has become a growth industry.
Last year the California State Bar bragged of an “an 88 percent increase” in grants distributed.
Part of that may have been the move by the State Bar last year to impose the Client Trust Account Protection Program (CTAPP) that required lawyers to register IOLTA accounts annually for more efficient looting.
IOLTA accounts are part of a complex financial ‘social justice’ infrastructure. For example, Tom Steyer, the billionaire radical who ran for the Democrat presidential nomination co-founded the Beneficial State Bank which operates as a nonprofit and boasts of being an “activist” and “fossil free” bank. The bank seeks out IOLTA accounts and offers “higher IOLTA interest rates” which are then used to fund “access to justice” and “support for diversity in the legal profession.”
“Holding funds in an IOLTA saves me time since I don’t have to account for how to divide the interest earned among my clients. The fact the interest supports access to legal services also aligns with our firm’s values,” a law firm that banks with Beneficial explains.
Lawyers don’t have to reimburse clients, law firms get to virtue signal and leftist causes get funded. Everyone except the client wins. This is what state bars describe as “ethical”.
Banks across the country solicit IOLTA accounts from law firms with promises of higher interest rates allowing state bars to steal from clients and banks to profit from the stolen money, all the while financing leftist groups that are engaging in lawfare, advocacy and undermining America.
Beyond those already listed, open borders grantees in California included the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law, which has engaged in extensive litigation with the government over migration invaders, and the Southern California Immigration Project that focuses on helping migrants claim refugee status.
There is also the Immigrant Defenders Law Center “a next-generation social justice law firm that defends our immigrant communities against injustices in the immigration system.” Its mission is “creating systemic change to dismantle the systems that seek to deport our clients and separate our families” by which it means dismantling the immigration system.
It boasts of having “partaken in groundbreaking litigation such as the Innovation Law Lab V McAleenan case, a federal lawsuit that challenged the Trump administration’s policy forcing asylum seekers to return and remain in Mexico while their cases are considered.”
A number of grantees don’t just provide immigration or even litigation, but policy advocacy.
Immigrant Legal Defense, another grantee, also claims to provide legal services to migrants while “working toward systemic change” and “policy advocacy”. The Immigrant Legal Resource Center works to “shape effective and just immigration policy and law” and “with grassroots immigrant organizations to promote civic engagement and social change.”
Some grantees, like Berkeley’s Impact Fund, a leftist advocacy group that funds other leftist causes, also move money around to other leftist groups.
While California may be one of the worst examples of IOLTA abuses, they are a nationwide problem. IOLTAs are used to fund advocacy for illegal aliens and migrants in states across the country including Maine, New York and Texas. For example, IOLTA grantees in Texas include the South Texas Pro Bono Asylum Representation Project, the Catholic Charities Cabrini Center for Immigration Legal Assistance, Diocesan Migrant & Refugee Services, and the Texas Immigration Law Council. But California’s IOLTA is by far the most radical and conflicted.
IOLTA’s seizure of property had been challenged before the Supreme Court in Brown v. Legal Foundation of Washington and Thomas Phillips v. Washington Legal Foundation where, in the latter case, the court’s leftists claimed that the clients had no basis for demanding their money.
“The Court today concludes that the State of Washington may seize private property, without paying compensation, on the ground that the former owners suffered no ‘net loss’ because their confiscated property was created by the beneficence of a state regulatory program,” Justice Scalia scathingly wrote in a dissent. “A lawyer is not required to obtain his client’s consent, or even notify his client, regarding the use of client funds in IOLTA accounts.”
IOLTAs are one of the many ways that radicals have learned to seize money to fund their projects. States can reform IOLTAs by making them voluntary instead of mandatory. Radical bars in radical states seek to make IOLTAs mandatory in order to redistribute money from accident victims and insurance claims to their own causes. But there is no reason for them to be. Furthermore states may be able to set limits on what sorts of groups IOLTAs can fund.
The IOLTA money was supposed to provide legal aid for the indigent. It was not meant to fund single issue or advocacy groups. And that is exactly what California’s IOLTAs are doing. Even if the money is supposedly earmarked for legal aid, funds are fungible and should not be going to any organization that does political advocacy: especially for the state bar’s pet causes.
The Supreme Court’s decision in Thomas Phillips v. Washington Legal Foundation was fundamentally wrong and a violation of the fundamental rights of people whose income is being seized. It may also be time for state legal foundations and the Supreme Court to revisit it.
The Left has the right to fund its own causes using its own money. But instead of honestly funding those causes, it has found countless means to legally and illegally divert other people’s money to them. Beyond taxes, it has developed schemes employing the legal profession to directly siphon off money from settlements, hijack foundations and even steal from trust accounts to finance its causes. State bars claim that IOLTAs are a form of social justice.
IOLTAs sealing money from widows and accident victims isn’t social justice: it’s theft.
Thanks Daniel! They take money under false pretenses, and give it to their cronies.
I first noticed that with gas taxes, which were supposed to fix California roads. They diverted that to other purposes and never looked back.
They con the public by asking for money under one name, like building new dams and reservoirs. Then use it for something completely different.
One particular case I saw close up was a large court judgement in favor of my former city. But the money went to some completely different jurisdiction for completely unrelated purposes.
Another con is the lottery system to support schools. People think it’s extra money for schools, but no. The funds raised by lotteries replace (fungible) the funds allocated by budgets. There is never any excess because lotteries do not raise enough to cover the budget. It’s a massive PR fraud.
The lottery money for schools was a fraud from the start. The only way for it to be additional money is if it is added to what is appropriated for school every year. It works in the opposite way.
Belly up to the bat, Juan! ~
Make that baR ~
oops (my enthusiasm pulled my finger).
“How California’s Bar Stole $95M From Client Trust Accounts to Fund Open Borders”
Wow, Daniel. An insanely misleading headline, even by your standards.
The money was not “stolen.” It was not “looted.” It is interest from trust accounts that, by law, can and is used for multiple policy goals. See, when Congress passes something into law, and this is upheld by “assorted state courts and legislatures.” You do understand the difference, right? You’re just pretending not to, right?
AND… AND… $95M did NOT go to fund open borders. Among the groups that received from this money are some that support immigration reform or (gasp!) protecting the rights of immigrants and refugees.
Two lies in one headline. Your own stupid article shows that they are lies. Kudos, Daniel!
No one is going to hire you to write for them.
The “laws” are nothing more than a bastardized concept to legalize theft. If my money is in a trust, the interest earned is mine. It takes an immoral and corrupt mind to think it’s ok for lawyers or anyone else, to steal my earned interest.
Think again…
that miney held in trust belongs to someone who SHOULD be able to hold it himself and earn interest upin it intil it yst be paid, or if it ends up his, the interest is due that owner for the timeperiod the use was denied him by its being held “in trust”. One of Trump’s apeals demanded he place sme astounding amount of money into the handsof the state demanding it. It is not yet theirs, pending appeal. But Trump does not have use of it. It would appear, baasaed on this piece, that the interest on HIS millions is being used to fund activities he wouldsrngly opposed. By what RIGHT does that court hold HIS money pending appeal, then take the interest HE earns until it is legally nothis?
You say Daniel is ling… nope. That $Mn95 the ClState Bar Association takes is nit theirs.. it belongs to the clients who must surrender it in trust for various reasons.
Your Dad dies, the bouse gets sold, that mney goes into trust until the court figures out whose it is. Once that is determined, the rightful owner of the money should get the money PLUS the interst it earned. Instead, it appears he is FORCED to fund various schemes and programmes, not all of which he would choose to support, particularly since those interest moneys are righfull HIS, eventually.
Nope, the system IS a sick scam. Needs to be ended YESTERDAY. Beter yet, last YEAR>
Merely because the law says they “can” do it, does not make it “right.”
This is one of those instances where “legal” and “right” conflict.
Accident victims whose money MUST be held in an IOLTA – by law – should be entitled to the interest that is earned on THEIR MONEY, just the same as with any other bank account.
I am a small business and when I must hire an attorney, I pay him a “deposit” against which he will bill his work. Those funds are MINE until fees are earned and billed by my attorney, so I should be entitled to that interest, or perhaps my attorney should. But we are not. The California Bar, of which I am also a licensee, CONFISCATES the interest earned by MY FUNDS on deposit with my attorney.
California’s Bar is also one of the only State Bars that RUNS ITS OWN COURTS, and is increasing fees to attorneys to cover the rising costs of employing the hundreds (thousands?) of employees staffing this bureaucratic behemoth. There are over 220,000 licensed attorneys in California, at $500 each for the year, that is ONE BILLION dollars, before they confiscate the interest from these IOLTA accounts. ONE BILLION DOLLARS they are supposed to use to “protect the public” and advance the interests of justice. But apparently they have all they need, so they are using the confiscated funds to subvert “justice” across the nation, rather than to protect the public or advance the interest of Justice for Californians.
California is running over a cliff at full speed, and this is just ONE symptom of the ROT within the state government.
To paraphrase Stan Laurel: Well, here’s another nice mess that ‘social justice’ has gotten us into…..
And to tweak one of the ‘Ten Commandments’:
Thou shalt not steal [from whom?]
‘Ethics of the Fathers’ is a compilation of foundational wisdom from the rabbinic Sages who reference the whole of Hebrew liturgy in their teachings that discuss our moral essence and consequent ethical directive.
In chapter 5, verse 13, four types of character traits in people are discussed:
the self absorbed individual, the ignorant individual, the God fearing individual and the wicked person who says, “Let yours be mine, and mine be mine.”
I’m a simple man – chock full of COMMON SENSE and many shreds of DECENCY! This sounds like EMBEZZLEMENT! IF you are holding ANYONE’S FUNDS in a TRUST and those FUNDS are EARNING INTEREST then that INTEREST belongs to the ANYONES! It’s incredible and insane to think that YOUR money could be HELD and the paltry INTEREST is not YOURS to offset the devastation of DEMOcrat policies because DEMOcrats passed a LAW giving THEM ownership of YOUR INTEREST EARNED! I guess the DEMOcrats have a WEIRD concept of “TRUST”!!
Sounds like theft to me. My money, my interest. Period..
no their policy is not “trust” it is “TRUST US” And trust “us” in this instance are the last people on this planet I would trust with MY money.
Social justice comes from Judeo-Christianity.
“The meek shall inherit the earth”, “You are your brother’s keeper”.
“And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well. If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles. Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.” – Sermon on the Mount
If you want to have a fighting chance against social justice, altruism, and self-sacrifice then you better discover Ayn Rand’s moral code of rational selfishness and fight for it. It’s your only chance.
Blahbity Blah Blah Blah. Same old crap from you as always. But I see you have adopted the worn out progressive fear mongering tactic. Our only chance. Oooo I’m so scared if I don’t become Ayn Rand’s little tool. You are certainly her little bitch.
Well, as I predicted, you were too lazy to get on that plane, or you don’t have enough money to come to my state and be an irritant at my church. Maybe you can ask Goska for some money. If you behave as rudely as you do on this comment board, disrupting the service, you would get several “fingers laid on you”. In fact it would be more than fingers.
You would be thrown out and probably roughed up a bit, and handed over to the cops for trespassing. We have a very good relationship with them. And for added fun, this is a concealed carry state. Lotsa guns everywhere. It’s not NYC where you are sitting ducks.
Obviously you should keep that fat mouth of yours shut and not make threats you can’t keep.
Your biggest problem is you don’t know when to shut up. You aren’t clever or smart. You are simply a crashing Objectivist bore. Repeating the works of the ugly little woman and her chief suck-up doesn’t make them true.
Call me whatever you want, tough guy. Joe, Bob, Bobbyjoe. No one cares. You can always smirk to yourself in your walkup.
In the meantime I will just keep doing what I do. Because I know it irritates you…..all those downvotes. Did you call Lutheran Social Services? Probably not. I’m not surprised. They would think you are nuts as well if you introduced yourself as THX-1138. Maybe they would refer you to psychiatrist.
For a man that don’t go heeled, you run your mouth kinda reckless, don’t ya? No need to go heeled to get the bulge on a tub like you.
I wonder if Mr. Greenfield can tell us just how much stolen money from the Interest on Lawyer Trust Account (IOLTA) Program has gone to Lutheran Services, Catholic Charities, Methodist, Baptist, Episcopalian, groups sponsoring Muslim and illegal invader immigration into the USA?
It’s not selfish Objectivists that are taking stolen money to destroy this country through illegal immigration, but altruists of every stripe (Christian, Jew, and atheist) who are.
Gee, I don’t know. And I don’t care. But you can always ask him directly if you have the guts to do that. But we both know you don’t have the guts to do anything but bitch, whine, moan and complain. Especially about those “dastardly” religious charities.
As usual you are way off topic and into your collection of narcissistic sicknesses. Do you ever do anything for yourself or do you rely on others to do your dirty work.
Has it occurred to you that you are helping to destroy the country you refuse to lift a finger to save. *I don’t recognize any such absurdity as service to my country.” — THX-1138
The old saying is relevant here: “Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven”
You see moron, in heaven you don’t get to rule at all. That’s God’s preserve. But you may get your wish re: hell. Have fun. You will be satan’s eternal concubine.
“altruists of every stripe (Christian, Jew, and atheist)” You are a low rent scum sucking atheist. I always knew you are on Islam’s side in this. F.U. You will lose this fight on right and wrong.
The have been few more unaccountable trusts destroyed and not one agency or individual was ever held accountable “The Native American Trust 8 billion ” // “The Hetch Hetchy funds 6+++++? billion’// The SF Golden Gate Bridge District funds for replacement up-keep and Repairs” “Turn into a transit GGD district feeding Traugh” Billion exploited and created an Elitist Bureaucratic infrastructure for waste full speeding without accountability. All without exception controlled By an Elite Group from the DNC using every agenda Known to man for its controlling existence. ECO Fascism. / Green empowerment / DEI staffing base / LGBQ Radicalized agendas. Accountability! >Pelosi > How does the DNC past speaker of the House The “hate monger” maintain her hold when the community she was elected by, and controls that has become a toxic wasteland unfit for human habitation / open drug use / homeless / dirt a filth / massive business closures / a wasteland that use to be the Starlight destination of the America Tourist.
Corruption is endemic. even among the Law and Academic professions.
Bona Fide Patriotic Tax Paying Responsible American Citizens apparently
have very little value for the woke leftist democrat party.
Howcdo they get away with srealing the interest from trust funds? The whole point of trust funds is that they are supposed to collect interest.
Thieves belong in Prison not in the National Capital we all ready have one in the Whitehouse selling America out to China
Good report. The Bar may use some of this money to fund their activities. Instead the planned dues increase is based upon of their running out of money.