How California’s Bar Stole $95M From Client Trust Accounts to Fund Open Borders

By Daniel Greenfield @ Sultan Knish Blog 

 

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.

Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine. Click here to subscribe to my articles. And click here to support my work with a donation.Thank you for reading.

Dem Rep. Stevens: U.S.-Funded Aid Is ‘Being Stolen by Hamas’

By Ian Hanchett 16 Dec 2023

On Friday’s broadcast of Bloomberg’s “Balance of Power,” Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI) said that aid that has gone into Gaza that the United States helped fund is “being stolen by Hamas” and “is not being given to the civilians, the elderly, the pregnant women who are in Gaza, who I certainly pray for every single day.”

Stevens said that she isn’t calling for a ceasefire, but instead is calling for Hamas to surrender and stop using its civilians as shields and believes that the Biden administration will “guide” Israel through portions of the war with the lessons America has learned over its past 20 years of war................To Read More....

GOP Lawmaker Reintroduces Bill to Keep Sensitive US Technology Out of Chinese Military’s Hands

  By Eva Fu and Savannah Hulsey Pointer

Rep. Mark Green (R-Tenn.) has reintroduced his China Technology Transfer Regulation Act in a bid to prevent the Chinese military from acquiring sensitive U.S. technology and intellectual property through export controls. The bill, released on the eve of the 34th anniversary of the 1989 pro-democracy protests in the heart of Beijing, aims to control United States exports of certain technology and intellectual property important to national interests to keep it out of the hands of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The lawmaker underscored the potential harm that the United States and others could experience by pointing to what China’s regime has done in its own country to ignore egregious crimes against its people.........To Read More...

The Left Is Starting to Eat Their Own on Defund the Police

Matt Vespa Jul 19, 2021 

The American Left is feeling a little betrayed that moderate Democrats are backing away from their pro-crime agenda. Defund the police was going strong throughout 2020. And then, like clockwork, crime spiked. Democrat-run cities are hotbeds for violent crime. Over the weekend, there was a shooting outside Nationals Park in Washington, DC, which is located in now super gentrified Navy Yard. Carjackings are also through the roof in the city. New York City is seeing a crime spike so bad that a former police officer is set to become the next mayor. Is the crime spike as bad as the 1980s and early 1990s? No, but that's not really an argument. It only becomes an issue when there are 1,500 homicides? This is your mess, liberal America. Time to deal with it. 

It's funny how this whole mantra changed for Democrats when their own voters decided to place violent crime as a topic of national concern. Soft on crime is not really a winning election strategy, but the far Left, who reside in enclaves where this nonsense is still popular, are pushing for lawlessness and disorder, and they're not happy that Democrats, including Joe Biden, are running away from their Mad Max agenda (via NY Post): `............To Read More...

 

 

Why Islam is a Religion of War

Posted by Daniel Greenfield @ Sultan Knish Blog

"He it is who has sent His Messenger (Mohammed) with guidance and the religion of truth (Islam) to make it victorious over all religions even though the infidels may resist." Koran 61:9

Islamic violence is a religious problem.

Islam derives meaning from physical supremacy, so war becomes an act of faith. To believe in Islam, is to have faith that it will conquer the entire world. And to be a true Muslim, is to feel called to aid in that global conquest, whether by providing money to the Jihadists or to become a Jihadist.

The fulfillment of Islam depends on the subjugation of non-Muslims so that violence against non-Muslims become the essence of religion.

When Hamas states that, "Killing Jews is worship that draws us close to Allah" or the ISIS rapists tell Yazidi girls that rape "draws them closer to Allah", they really do mean it.

They are not perverting a great religion, as our politicians claim, they are living it.

Everything they do is based on the Koran, the body of Islamic law and the greater history of Islam.

What the Ten Commandments are for the Jew, or the resurrection of Jesus is for the Christian--  the physical dominance of Islam is to the Muslim. It is the basis and fulfillment of his faith.

Jihad is the force that gives Islam meaning. It is the deepest expression of faith.

To its followers the validity of Islam is directly connected to its physical supremacy. As followers of the purported "final revelation" to mankind, Muslims not only have the obligation to conquer and subjugate the rest of the world, their religion is meaningful to the extent that they can carry on the work begun by Mohammed. The Jihadis who massacre non-Muslims are missionaries of their faith.

Anything that suggests Islam is not absolutely superior becomes blasphemy. When Muslims explode into outbursts of violent rage over seemingly petty things like a cartoon or a video, it is because to them, any loss of face for Islam is the worst kind of blasphemy because it challenges its supremacy.

Truth and power in Islam are identical. It is not a religion of the oppressed, but of the oppressors.

Mohammed's prophecies are validated by his conquests. The truth of Islam is seen in the expansion of Islam. When Muslims succeed in killing non-Muslims, they disprove their religion.

That is why Muslim terrorists shout, "Allahu Akbar", "Allah is greater." The old Mohammedan taunt aimed at Jews was then directed at Christians, Hindus, Buddhists and all the world's religions. By killing their non-Muslim victims, the Muslims proved that Allah was greater than their gods. 

Islam is not only a tribal and materialistic religion, but it is closely linked to the honor-shame code of its Arab originators. Islam is not primarily an inward spiritual experience, but an outward expression of tribal honor. Its religious expression is the upholding of the honor of Islam and its expansion in the same exact ways as the honor and expansion of the tribe are upheld.

That is why Islam suffers from the classically tribal obsession of protecting "honor" by controlling women so that the blood of the tribe is not polluted by outsiders. That is why it is obsessed with any insult, real or imaginary to Mohammed, its theological tribal founder. And why it must continually expand its territory through conflict so that the tribe grows and so that the surplus sons don't stay behind to fight each other over tribal territory. This is true of Syria on a much larger scale.

Forcing non-Muslims into a submissive position affirms the truth and power of Islam. By causing infidels to "lose face", the Muslim fulfills the Koranic verse which promises that Allah had sent Mohammed to make Islam supreme over all religions. By contrast when Islam "loses face", an act of blasphemy has been committed, which can only be righted religiously by killing the non-Muslims, thereby forcing them to lose face and once again affirming the physical superiority of Islam.

This creates the cycle of violence, which is not the result of Christian or Jewish oppression, but of the need for Muslims to validate the truth of their faith by oppressing non-Muslims. To co-exist with non-Muslims is blasphemous for a Muslim, when his Koran proclaims "Do not take the Jews and the Christians for friends" (Koran 5:51). Mohammed's final command was to ethnically cleanse the Jews and Christians of the Arabian Peninsula. ISIS sees itself as competing the work that he began.

Islam does not co-exist, for its followers its truth can only be found in conquering non-Muslims.

Whereas most religions can accept being in the inferior position because their fundamental faith in spiritual, rather than material-- Islam has little to it but the material. Even its paradise exists in the form of the sort of physical pleasures that its followers crave, fancy robes, exquisite banquets, golden couches, and of course that famed appeal to the dedicated Jihadist, "curvaceous virgins... and an overflowing cup" (Koran 78:33-34). Islamic Heaven is a grossly exaggerated version of the kind of loot that Mohammed's followers expected to find by following him in the first place, gold, jewels, silk, spices and young girls.

The gang of throat slitters who accompanied Mohammed on his massacres across the region were given a religious incentive that would transcend death.

Even if they died in battle and would not live to enjoy all the jewels, overflowing cups and girls-- the Koran promised it to them in heaven anyway. The gang of robbers, escaped slaves and ambitious desert rats trailed after Mohammed across sand dunes, their minds filled with the promises of rich loot from the caravans they were raiding. And in the feverish heat, the idea that they would receive even better loot if they were to die in battle, making death preferable to life, would have seemed plausible.

Out of such such petty greed and lust did Islam initially expand. Its code was that of the tribesman, to lose face or engage in vendetta. Except Islam's face and vendetta did not involve a single man or a clan, it came to involve over a billion people, who found meaning in working toward the final conquest of Islam. The global triumph of a desert raider's clumsily hammered together mass of Jewish and Christian beliefs and tribal customs and legends, and his own biography, used as a tool of conquest, forging temporary unities out of quarreling tribes and clans.

And now Islam's vendetta is worldwide. Every insecurity translates into a provocation. Every jealous impulse never satisfied explodes into violent rage. Every conflict for thousands of years breeds a new vendetta. Did Muslims once live somewhere? They must reclaim it, for to fail to do so is blasphemous and a betrayal of Mohammed's mission. Did Muslims never live somewhere? Then they must go there now, and raise up minarets and proclaim the superiority of Islam, for to do otherwise is a failure to expand the borders of the Ummah, which is a betrayal of Allah's will.

The very existence of people living free from Islamic dominion, is blasphemy. Blasphemy that must be remedied by bringing them under the rule of Islamic law.

 

Meanwhile people who were once under Islamic dominion living free of Islam, is worse than blasphemy, it is an insult and an attack on Islam. That is what is behind the Muslim homicidal obsession with Israel, which had until recently been in Muslim hands under the Ottoman Empire. However even nations such as Spain, which had been lost to the Ummah long ago, still inspire rage. The liberation of the Jews from Islamic dominion is a particularly sore point, but not the only one.

The intersection of Islam and Terrorism is the inevitable result of Islamic theology which is supremacist and materialist, which when combined with the honor-shame code of a tribal culture, drives it compulsively toward war and conquest.

The actions of non-Muslim nations serve only as variables to create a context within which the supremacism of Islam expresses itself. These contexts may vary as often as the justifications used in a ISIS video. But the context itself is irrelevant in the larger history and theology of Islam. Because in the end, the problem of Islamic violence is the problem of Islam.

Daniel Greenfield is a New York City based writer and blogger and a Shillman Journalism Fellow of the David Horowitz Freedom Center.