News Room 

Press Releases

November 10, 2009

King: Dunn Departure A Coincidence?

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Congressman Steve King made the following statement and issued this release regarding the resignation of White House communications director Anita Dunn.

“Anita Dunn left the White House earlier than expected. Not only has Dunn lavished praises on Chairman Mao and compared him to Mother Teresa, Dunn’s husband has a public record of protecting ACORN and protecting President Obama’s relationship to ACORN.”

“ACORN’s national headquarters are now under a full attorney general investigation. Congress and Attorney General Holder need to launch their investigations and a special prosecutor needs to be named – sooner rather than later.”

Background:

- Four days after Louisiana Attorney General Buddy Caldwell raided ACORN's national office in New Orleans, seizing paper records and computer hard drives, White House communications director Anita Dunn - the wife of a leading ACORN defender - has resigned abruptly from her position. Dunn was the lead critic of Fox News for reporting on the ACORN prostitution scandal, which originally broke on September 10.   Dunn subsequently launched a public attack against Fox News on October 11, and she even stated “let's not pretend they're a news network” in reference to Fox. The White House press office, likely under Dunn’s direction, blocked Fox from a press pool event on October 22 that included all other networks in their classification. The White House has since given up on its effort to discredit Fox News

- Anita Dunn is married to Robert Bauer, who served as general counsel for Obama for America. In 2008, Bauer sent a letter to then-Attorney General Michael Mukasey arguing that Department of Justice should not investigate election-related fraud allegations against ACORN. The letter is available at http://rawstory.com/images/other/ObamaJusticeletter.pdf. Footnote five of Bauer’s letter complains that “In the last week, several members of Congress who are officially affiliated with the McCain-Palin campaign have written to the Attorney General and U.S. Attorneys pressuring them to investigate ACORN.” The letter also claims that Republican concerns regarding ACORN-related fraud were “manufactured.” Subsequent revelations have validated these Republican concerns and proven the existence of additional fraudulent activities. The clear message of Bauer’s letter was to tell the DOJ to back off from interfering with ACORN’s activities

- ACORN has admitted to over 400,000 fraudulent voter registrations in the 2008 election cycle.