Sharyl Attkisson

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Census Bureau hiring of sex offender shows improvements needed

The hiring of a registered sexual offender in the Charlotte regional office highlighted deficiencies in the Census' hiring processes, according to an article written by Eric Katz for govexec.com.

Katz reported that earlier this year, a registered sex offender was arrested for sexual misconduct two months after being hired by the Census Bureau.

According to Katz, the sex offender passed the Census' pre-employment suitability review, even though the criminal conviction was noted during the review.

An Inspector General (IG) for the Commerce Department found that the Census did not follow existing policies and guidelines during the sex offender's background investigation.

The IG made recommendations for improvements to the Census' hiring process, including the implementation of "quality assurance reviews" of the Census' suitability determinations.

Read the full article here:

https://www.govexec.com/management/2019/12/census-still-has-more-steps-take-ensure-it-doesnt-hire-more-child-sex-offenders-ig-says/161869/

Read more about Attkisson v. DOJ and FBI here.

READ: The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court Spanks the FBI

The secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) has finally weighed in on FBI misconduct and abuses.

The court issued an order today titled: "Accuracy concerns regarding FBI matters submitted to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court."

It gives the FBI until January 10 to explain how it will rectify the sorts of errors committed in wiretapping a U.S. citizen linked to the Trump campaign.

"When FBI personnel mislead NSD in the ways described above, they equally mislead the FISC."

Rosemary Collyer, Presiding Judge, Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court

Presiding judge Rosemary Collyer wrote: "The frequency with which representations made by FBI personnel turned out to be unsupported or contradicted by information in their possession, and with which they withheld information detrimental to their case, calls into question whether information contained in other FBI applications is reliable."

The FBI has not issued an apology to the harmed citizen, Carter Page, whom the FBI wiretapped four times using badly flawed applications and, in one case, a doctored document. The FBI had claimed Page was the nexus between Trump and Russian President Putin. That theory fell apart and Page was never charged with any crime.

The Department of Justice Inspector General last week found three handpicked FBI teams committed critical errors, and there was a failure leadership under FBI Director James Comey.

The Justice Department previously set aside a recommendation by the Inspector General to file charges against Comey for mishandling classified documents and for leaking, in an effort to harm Trump.

The Justice Department said it did not think Comey intended to do harm or knew that he was breaking rules.

Read the Collyer order by clicking the link below:

https://www.fisc.uscourts.gov/sites/default/files/MIsc%2019%2002%20191217.pdf

Fight improper government surveillance. Support Attkisson v. DOJ and FBI over the government computer intrusions of Attkisson's work while she was a CBS News investigative correspondent. Visit the Attkisson Fourth Amendment Litigation Fund. Click here.

Were "suspicious" payments to Hunter Biden flagged by Latvian government in 2016?

The following is an excerpt from an article at JohnSolomonReports.com. You can read the full article by clicking the link at the end of the page.

The Latvian embassy to the United States confirmed a memo stating that a Latvian prosecutorial agency responsible for investigating money laundering was investigating payments to Hunter Biden (and others associated with Burisma Holdings) in weeks leading up to Joe Biden forcing the firing of the Ukraine prosecutor in 2016.

A Latvian law enforcement memo indicated that Hunter Biden received part of about $16.6 million that was transferred from several other countries to Burisma between 2012 and 2015.

The fired Ukraine prosecutor, Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin, has said that he was planning to interview Hunter Biden in connection with the Burisma investigation when he was fired by Ukraine's president in 2016. (Continued...)

Read the entire article by clicking the link below.

Latvian government says it flagged ‘suspicious’ Hunter Biden payments in 2016

Fight improper government surveillance. Support Attkisson v. DOJ and FBI over the government computer intrusions of Attkisson's work while she was a CBS News investigative correspondent. Visit the Attkisson Fourth Amendment Litigation Fund. Click here.

How FBI (or Congress) can use warrant surveilling one American... to spy on many more

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) is led House impeachment hearings against President Trump

If you've watched the current impeachment proceedings with something beyond a passing interest, you might have heard the controversy over Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) secretly obtaining and then releasing phone records of political rival Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) and journalist John Solomon.

Critics say such an alleged invasion of citizens' privacy and rights for political purposes is beyond the pale.

But Democrats argue that Schiff didn't really target Nunes or Solomon in his information dragnet. He says their calls were merely picked up incidentally because they spoke to two people who are targets: the president's lawyer Rudy Giuliani or Lev Parnas, a figure charged with violating campaign finance violations.

However, Schiff's controversial release of information naming Nunes and Solomon provides a window into how the FBI secretly operates to obtain information on Americans for whom they have no explicit permission to wiretap or monitor.

Believe it or now, intelligence agencies can use one legal wiretap to monitor as many as 25,000 people for which there was no wiretap justification.

The following is an excerpt from my reporting in February 2019 on Full Measure with Sharyl Attkisson that explains this phenomenon.

Through a single warrant, government agents can capture phone calls, texts, emails and bank records from people “two hops" away. That means all of the suspected spy’s direct contacts— “one hop” —and everybody who contacts those people or even visits their Facebook pages or websites—two hops. 

In this way, one analysis found intel agencies can use one legal wiretap to access to 25,000 people’s phones. Consider at least a half dozen Trump officials were caught in the FBI surveillance dragnet, according to news reports: campaign chair Manafort, multiple “transition officials” including Lt. General Michael Flynn and Jared Kushner, and adviser Carter Page— who was wiretapped over and over though never charged with anything.

Sidney Powell (former prosecutor and Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn's attorney): And what most people don't understand is, they don't just get everything they want against Carter Page, they get everything they want against every person who communicated with Carter Page, and against every person who communicated with that person. So it goes out what's called two hops. 

Sharyl: And that would allow them to find intelligence from someone nowhere near the original center that they went to the FISA Court about? 

Sidney Powell: Exactly. They could have all kinds of banking records and personal information on tens of thousands of people by virtue of those FISA applications. 

Sharyl: —including Trump who was known to be one or two hops away from surveilled targets. 

On top of that, at least four key anti-Trump figures have admitted in testimony and interviews accessing sensitive, protected intelligence of US citizens—including Trump associates—under the Obama administration. All say they were guarding national security, had no political motives, and didn’t leak the information. As the 2016 campaign peaked, Obama official Samantha Power’s name was on hundreds of attempts to reveal the identities of Americans caught up in secretly-gathered intelligence. Obama adviser Susan Rice also took part. And Obama officials Sally Yates and James Clapper admit having reviewed intel gathered on US political figures. 

Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) : Did either of you ever review classified documents in which Mr. Trump, his associates or members of Congress had been unmasked? 

Clapper: Well, yes. 

Sharyl: Do you think Democrats and Republicans alike have, in your view, abdicated responsibility when it comes to oversight of our intelligence community? 

Liz Hempowicz: Yeah, yeah, I think so. I don't think this is a problem with one party. 

Liz Hempowicz is director of public policy at the watchdog Project on Government Oversight. She blames Congress for doing a poor job watching over the work of the government’s spies. 

Liz Hempowicz: I think as a body, Congress has kind of been very comfortable giving the intelligence community a wide deference, and I don't think the intelligence community has earned that.

Sharyl: In short, why do you think it is that Congress, members of both parties, wouldn't be taking a harder look at the alleged surveillance abuses? 

Liz Hempowicz: Well I think it's a difficult issue to conduct oversight over, and I think once you get pushback from the intelligence communities and they wave around words like "national security" and "security threat," I think it becomes a more difficult area for members of Congress to kind of use some of their political capital. 

Hempowicz adds that alleged surveillance abuses aren’t new. Long before the Trump era, with special counsel Mueller heading up the FBI, US political figures were swept up in wiretaps, the contents improperly leaked to the media California Congresswoman Jane Harman in 2009and Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich in 2011. 

In 2013, Director of National Intelligence Clapper denied mass spying on Americans. 

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon): Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?

Clapper: No sir. 

But when NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed the opposite, Clapper apologized and said he’d been confused by the question. In 2014, the CIA got caught spying on Senate staffers, though CIA Director John Brennan had explicitly denied it. He—too— then apologized. 

And the government has spied on journalists: James Rosen, then of Fox News—now with Sinclair, The Associated Press, and, as I allege in a federal lawsuit, on my work as an investigative correspondent at CBS News. 

Finally, in 2016, there was a striking election year uptick in government agents combing through a sensitive NSA database of intel on innocent US citizens.

In 2013, there were 9,500 searches involving 198 Americans. By 2016, that number escalated to 30,355 searches of 5,288 Americans. 

Which brings us back to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court or FISA admonishment in October 2016. Judge Collyer also slammed the FBI for a major violation: giving raw intelligence about Americans to unnamed third party contractors. 

Sharyl: And the names of these three contractors are blacked out?

Sidney Powell: They're blacked out. You cannot tell from the decision who they are. But the American people need to be jumping up and down, demanding to know the answers to that.

Sharyl: Because it would tell us what? 

Sidney Powell: Well it's going to tell us who was given special privileges by James Comey to go in and get all this information. It will tell us who's behind the unmaskings. 

The court said the FBI’s failures had been “the focus ofconcerns since 2014.” All of that contradicts assurances from FBI Director Comey “Nobody gets to see FISA information of any kind unless they've had the appropriate training and have the appropriate oversight.”

Former FBI Director Comey’s successor Christopher Wray has made similar claims. 

Wray: No evidence of any kind of abuse. 

In the end, Powell argues that neither the FBI nor Special Counsel Mueller— as ex-FBI Director —can fairly investigate matters that intersect with allegations about their own agencies and colleagues. 

Sharyl: Assuming for the sake of argument that what you say is correct, I think people might say, "But maybe there was no premise for the Russia investigation. But so many people surrounding Trump, and so many people who've been looked at have either pled guilty or been found to have done something else in the past. Doesn't that validify the investigation that was done?" 

Sidney Powell: Absolutely not. Not unless we're going to revert to the practice of Russia itself, and the KGB agent who said, "Find me the man and I'll find the crime to pin on him." 

Hempowicz has a slightly different take— that Mueller’s probe is important and so far has proven fair. But she agrees that someone should also be unraveling any surveillance abuses.

Sharyl: How would you describe, in a nutshell, why this is important? 

Liz Hempowicz: I don't think the intelligence community has accurately shown that there are benefits of this pervasive surveillance of American citizens. I just haven't seen them kind of show their work like a fourth grader would have to do in math to prove that they've gotten the right answer.

After issuing her blistering comments in 2016, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court judge required the Justice Department to devise new rules to better protect Americans’ privacy rights. The court approved a proposal made by the Trump Justice Department in March 2017.

Watch the full Full Measure report by clicking the link below:

http://fullmeasure.news/news/politics/russia-probe-02-11-2019

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"When They Come for You"

Investigative reporter and author David Kirby
"When They Come for You"

The following is from "Full Measure with Sharyl Attkisson." Watch the video by clicking the link at the end of the page.

If you think you’re hearing more accounts than ever about improper government intrusion into our lives, you’re a lot like author and journalist David Kirby. He researched that for new book “When They Come For You: How Police and Government Are Trampling Our Liberties - and How to Take Them Back.”

Sharyl: When you say, "When They Come for You," who is the "They"?

Kirby: The "they" can be anything from a local social service's agent in your community, to the president of the United States. This goes on at the state, federal and local level. It goes on in red states and blue states, rich states, and poor states, big cities, and small towns. I found violations of the Fourth Amendment, the First Amendment, freedom of speech, people having their homes raided without a warrant. People having their cars taken away from them because they were suspected of a crime even though they didn't commit a crime. People in debtor's prison because they can't pay their court fees and fines, and of course child protective services that come in the middle of the night, and just yank your kid away.

Sharyl: Do you think there's been an escalation in events like this, or are we just able to find them, and notice them more?

Kirby: It’s a very good question. There's not a lot of hard data unfortunately. There is more monitoring. Social media, people have cameras with them everywhere so it's more noticeable. But I do think it is getting worse. I think particularly with surveillance, with the First Amendment, with freedom of the press, freedom of protestors. I think it started after 911, the PATRIOT Act. It got worse under Obama, as you well know, with surveillance of the media. Now I think it's getting even worse, particularly cracking down on protesters, spying on protestors, and doing things like threatening to sue media outlets for libel, or wanting to change the libel laws.

Sharyl: Many Americans say, "I obey the law. If the government wants to surveil me, look at my computer, I don't really care." Is there a counterpoint to that?

Kirby: I mean that's the Fourth Amendment. It's the most threatened amendment in our country, I think, after the First Amendment, which is a close second. But we need to protect those protections for everybody, and once you just acquiesce and say, "Well, it's okay if they're listening in on my phone call," then the door starts opening wider and wider.

Sharyl: Is it fair to say you consider yourself a liberal, or a liberal Democrat?

Kirby: I’m a lefty. Yes. Left of center.

Sharyl: Do you notice any division? Is one party or the other better or worse at any of this?

Kirby: They’re both bad to be honest. I can pick apart, and my book does, and I'm equally critical of the Obama Administration as the Trump Administration. A lot of my stories take place in blue states.

Sharyl: But what do you attribute that to, if there isn't even an ideological divide into where this happens?

Kirby: Well, I think when you talk about ideology, I think people on the far left and on the far right are actually a lot more united over these issues than they realize. People on the left don't like government intrusion any more than anybody else does. It is more of a libertarian point of view. I call myself a lefty libertarian, which sounds oxymoronic, but I figured it out. I would say people like Rand Paul is certainly bringing these things up once in a while. He has sponsored some bills in Congress. They go absolutely nowhere. He does get Democratic cosponsors. There are people, progressives, who are interested in reforming these issues, and reigning in the government. But like I said, it goes nowhere.

Sharyl: What would you say is the takeaway message you would like people to walk away from reading your book with?

Kirby: Know your Bill of Rights. Read them, study them, know what protections you are offered under them in case you ever need to use them, and if you are concerned about these things, it's up to us. These are our personal freedoms, and they are under attack.

A new report from Pew Research Center says a majority of Americans, 64%, are concerned about how much data is collected about them by the government online.

Watch the interview by clicking the link below:

http://fullmeasure.news/news/politics/when-they-come-for-you

Fight improper government surveillance. Support Attkisson v. DOJ and FBI over the government computer intrusions of Attkisson's work while she was a CBS News investigative correspondent. Visit the Attkisson Fourth Amendment Litigation Fund. Click here.

Taxpayers may foot $12 billion insurance bill for Obamacare failures

Supreme Court
Image by: David Dugan, Wikimedia Commons

The U.S. Supreme Court recently heard oral arguments in a case where insurers are seeking $12 billion for losses they suffered after taking part in the Obamacare insurance exchanges.

Temporary programs known as "risk corridors" were designed to help insurers recover from any early losses they suffered after the implementation of Obamacare in 2010, and to minimize their ongoing risk. The programs promised to compensate the insurers for losses they may suffer from insuring largely uninsurable, high risk patients between 2014 and 2016.

The premise of insurers participating in the risk corridors was that insurers would cover high risk, formerly uninsurable patients. If they lost money, federal taxpayers would compensate them for part of the losses. If they made money, the insurers would provide some of the profits to the government.

The problem came when insurers lost money, but Congress passed language preventing them from getting the promised benefits from 2015 to 2017.

The insurers reportedly argued that the government should not be able to back out of the promise made to cover their losses in order to induce them to take part in the Obamacare exchanges.

Most of the Supreme Court Justices appeared to side with the insurers in their questioning, according to Reuters and Vox, which means federal taxpayers could have a $12 billion bill to pay when the Supreme Court rules on the case this Spring.

Read more by clicking on the links below:

https://www.vox.com/2019/12/10/21004821/obamacare-supreme-court-risk-corridors-maine-community

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-court-obamacare/u-s-supreme-court-justices-lean-toward-insurers-on-12-billion-obamacare-claims-idUSKBN1YE23B

Fight improper government surveillance. Support Attkisson v. DOJ and FBI over the government computer intrusions of Attkisson's work while she was a CBS News investigative correspondent. Visit the Attkisson Fourth Amendment Litigation Fund. Click here.

Comey's big turnaround: "I was wrong"

Comey says he was wrong in numerous public statements about the FBI's surveillance of Trump campaign associate Carter Page, but says it's "nonsense" that the errors were committed in an FBI effort to unseat Trump.

Former FBI Director James Comey repeatedly stated, "I was wrong" when addressing the many inconsistencies between his public statements over the past three years and an Inspector General's findings.

The admissions came in an interview today with Fox News's Chris Wallace after the scathing report from Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz. It criticized the FBI's behavior regarding Trump-related secret surveillance in 2016 and 2017.

But Comey stuck by his insistence that he was correct on what really matters: there was no treasonous behavior on the part of the FBI. That, says Comey, was all "made up" by President Trump and his supporters.

In the interview with Wallace, Comey contradicted comments he made as recently as just a few days ago, in which he incorrectly called the Inspector General's report "vindication."

Wallace played a video clip of Comey making the remark, and then played a video clip of Inspector General Horowitz testifying before Congress last week asking if Comey was right.

"Does your report vindicate Comey?" a Republican Senator asked Horowitz.

"It doesn't vindicate anyone at the FBI who touched this, including the leadership," replied Horowitz.

Comey summed up Horowitz's criticism of FBI practices as "real sloppiness" and told Wallace "that's concerning..." and if he (Comey) were still FBI director, “I’d be very focused on it and dig into it.”

As for Comey originally claiming FBI officials under his oversight had acted in a "thoughtful and inappropriate way," he agreed that Horowitz's criticism to the contrary was right and "I was wrong... I was overconfident... he's right there was real sloppiness...it was not acceptable..he was right, I was wrong...I was wrong... I was overconfident."

But Comey would not give an inch on the apparent contradiction regarding his statements that the political opposition research funded by the Clinton campaign and provided to the FBI, the "Steele Dossier," was only a bit player in the FBI obtaining a wiretap against a Trump campaign associate. The Inspector General found, and FBI officials told him, the discredited research was actually the key "evidence" that led the FBI to seek the wiretap.

Wallace asked Comey repeatedly about the apparent contradiction between what he'd said and what Horowitz found. But Comey appeared to indicate he didn't understand what was contradictory.

"I’m not sure we are saying different things," Comey insisted. "The FBI thought [justification for a wiretap on a Trump-related official] was a close call until they got the Steele report and that tipped it over... [but the wiretap application itself ] includes Steele material and lots of other material."

Wallace pressed Comey saying that what Comey had told the public was entirely different than what Horowitz found.

"You’re saying [the Steele Dossier was] one element in a 'broader mosaic' but Horowitz said it was the centerpiece," Wallace said.

"I don’t understand him to be saying that," said Comey.

Wallace pointed out that Horowitz found the Steele Dossier played "a central and essential role" in the FBI's decision to seek the wiretap.

"I don’t see the disconnect between the two of us," insisted Comey. "I’m sorry that I’m missing it."

Wallace tried again.

"You said it was 'part of a broader mosaic' and Horowitz said it 'played an essential role."

"It was one of a bunch of different facts," said Comey. "It was the one that convinced the [FBI] layers they had enough, now."

Wallace tried yet again.

"It seems you are minimizing the role of Steele Dossier and [Horowitz is] saying it's a lot more important."

"Then I’m sorry that I did that," replied Comey. "But I meant it was one part of the presentation to the court, it wasn’t a huge part of the presentation to the court, but it was the fact that convinced the lawyers to go forward."

Wallace then noted that Comey had briefed President-elect Trump about the salacious and unverified political opposition research in the Steele Dossier on January 20, 2017. The material was then leaked to and published in the press. The FBI quickly learned that “Steele misstated or exaggerated" his main source's statement.

Wallace asked Comey why he failed to go back to President Trump and say the Steele Dossier was "bunk." Not only that, the FBI used it to get the wiretap renewed three more times.

"I think you’re mischaracterizing," Comey said to Wallace. "[The FBI] didn’t conclude the reporting from Steele was bunk. There were significant questions about the reliability of his sub source reporting. That should have bee included in the [wiretap court application] renewals."

Wallace pressed Comey on why he didn't go back to President Trump when the FBI realized the dossier contained weak, unverified and discredited material.

"When I briefed the president, I said I didn’t now if it was true and I didn’t care. I just wanted him to know about it," said Comey. "Steele misstated or exaggerated the sources’s statements in multiple sections...but that doesn’t drive the conclusion that Steele’s reporting is 'bunk.'

"Did you know all of this?" Wallace asked next.

"What?" said Comey.

"That the Steele report was the key for probable cause? That the FBI had talked to [Steele's] Russian [source of the salacious information] and he said not true?"

Comey said, "I don’t think FBI concluded Steele’s reporting was 'bunk,' but, no, I didn’t, as director, you’re not kept informed of details of an investigation...I didn’t know the particulars of the investigation."

Comey also said the most important takeaway is that it's "nonsense" that any of the FBI misbehavior was done "to unseat Trump."

Read more about Comey's interview with Chris Wallace on Fox News and watch the video by clicking the link below:

https://www.foxnews.com/transcript/james-comey-pam-bondi-and-rep-adam-schiff-talk-fisa-report-impeachment-on-fox-news-sunday

Fight improper government surveillance. Support Attkisson v. DOJ and FBI over the government computer intrusions of Attkisson's work while she was a CBS News investigative correspondent. Visit the Attkisson Fourth Amendment Litigation Fund. Click here.

Forced to Pay: a battle over forced membership in labor unions

The following is from "Full Measure with Sharyl Attkisson." You can watch the video by clicking the link at the bottom of the page.

A Supreme Court decision last year shook up decades of labor law and the effects are still being argued. The case is Janus vs. the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. The high court ruled that public employees of state or local governments can’t be forced to join or pay labor unions. Why? It’s a free speech violation — forcing workers to support political positions that unions advocate. More than a year later, we wanted to know how the ruling impacted union membership and were surprised by what we learned. Our cover story is: forced to pay.

Gary Mattos works for the state of Maryland prison system. 

Sharyl: One day you open up your paycheck and see what? 

Mattos: A union due fee. Even though I'm not in the union, I've never been to union meetings. I've never signed union papers. Never expressed that I wanted to join a union. And there it was, a union due. 

It was money the state of Maryland was taking, without his permission, and sending to the local Union that he’d never joined: the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees or “AFSCME Council 3.” 

Sharyl: How did you find out? 

Mattos: Well, there really wasn't a whole lot being told until after the fact. And then I realized that the State of Maryland had given the ASCME 3 the right to basically tax us, steal from us. I feel like it was stolen from me.

Kelsey: What they did was illegal. It was unconstitutional.

Today, Mattos is taking the lead in a recently-announced class-action suit. It demands the union return money taken from paychecks of non-union members before the Supreme Court’s “Janus” decision.

Mattos: I found out I was paying over $400 dollars a year just to have a state job. and I think that's wrong, and I want it back.

Brian Kelsey is an attorney with the nonprofit Liberty Justice Center public interest law firm The group leading the fight for the refunds.

Kelsey: We filed a lawsuit in Maryland and we filed other lawsuits in Pennsylvania and New York and Illinois saying that now that we know that these funds were illegally taken from government workers, it's time for the unions to pay those monies back.

You might think that union membership would have dropped drastically after the Supreme Court ruled public employees can’t be forced to join or pay. But a year and a half after the Janus decision, you might find the results unexpected. An analysis by the Manhattan Institute think tank found unions have lost some fees once paid by non-members. But union membership hasn’t gone way down some unions even report gaining members. Part of the reason, Kelsey argues, is that some workers are trapped with unions working hand in hand with states, politicians and courts to block the impact of the Janus decision.

Kelsey: We do know that they've made huge strides to try to sign up new members and to keep their members in and they're even going to the point of doing illegal acts to keep those union members in the union.

Sharyl: What are some of those allegedly illegal acts?

Kelsey: The main actions that the unions are taking is they're saying that you cannot resign from the union until a certain time period comes up within your contract. That time period oftentimes is a year from now or sometimes, in one case, it is up to four years later that these workers are trapped in the union.

Janus: We're also finding that there is now over 100 pieces of what's now known as anti-Janus legislation, where bills have been introduced at various states to try to circumvent the decision

Mark Janus is the name and face behind the famous Supreme Court decision. He was working for the state of Illinois in 2015 when he mounted his union challenge.

Sharyl: After the Supreme Court decision, what happened?

Janus: So I very quickly realized that the unions were pushing back on a lot of this. They did not want their monopoly to go away that they have, collecting all these millions of dollars from people. And so they're going to fight it. We're finding that if people want to resign from a union, once they've heard about the case and they realize they don't have to be a member, the unions are not allowing them out. They're saying “Well you only have a two week window, let's say two weeks out of 52 that you can resign and get out." We have people that are submitting resignation letters, and the unions just totally ignore them.

Janus now advocates full time with the Liberty Justice Center trying to stop unions from trapping workers.

But for all those who don’t want to join or pay a union others see things differently.

Cartright: When the Janus decision came out, it overturned 40 years of precedent that set up the idea that if you're benefiting from the collective bargaining negotiation in a public-sector union, you got to pay your fair share and not be a free rider.

Congressman Matthew Cartwright is on the other side. He represents a Pennsylvania district with a strong union history.

Cartwright: I live in Scranton. Scranton is the home of a very proud labor tradition. It started with the anthracite coal strike of 1902

He says the Janus decision is part of an organized attack on labor unions.

Sharyl: There are a lot of people who say, "I didn't like my money being spent on a union whose views I don't agree with, who contribute to certain political candidates and do things with the money that I don't agree with.” That was the free speech issue in some instances.

Cartwright: Oh, it's clearly that was the argument. Do you buy that? Or do you say that that's just pretext for wanting to clamp down on union rights overall? I happen to see it as the latter because what it does is it hurts union's ability to engage in negotiation and collective bargaining by cutting down on the money that they get.

Cartright is behind a pro-union bill designed to protect unions and expand membership.

Cartwright: Certainly it cannot overturn the Janus decision, nobody can overrule that except for another Supreme Court decision.

But your bill, if passed, would

Cartwright: My bill if passed would ameliorate at least some of the problems for that.

Mattos isn’t swayed. He says unions serve some workers well but insists nobody should be forced to support them.

Mattos: To me, that's more important than the money. Sure I could use the money, but it's to stand up against the bullying. Like I'd always tell my daughter, "You got to stand up. You got to be heard."

Sharyl: You're telling them what?

Mattos: What you did was wrong, and I'm going to hold you accountable to it.

Congressman Cartright’s pro-union bill has almost 200 co-sponsors mostly Democrats and two Republicans.

Watch the video of the report by clicking the link below:

http://fullmeasure.news/news/cover-story/forced-to-pay

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