Obama NLRB Appointee Indicted on Racketeering Charges
More indicaiton the Obama National Labor Relations Board exists to serve union bosses: Lachan Mackay has the story in Free Beacon.com.
A recent lawsuit filed in a federal court in California alleges that National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) member Richard Griffin was complicit in a scheme to cover up embezzlement at a major labor union by terminating employees who attempted to expose the effort.
The allegations appear in a
lengthy complaint filed against the International Union of Operating Engineers (IUOE). The lawsuit alleges numerous violations of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, and names Griffin, IUOE’s former general counsel, as a defendant.
President Barack Obama controversially appointed Griffin to the NLRB in January 2012 in a move some observers described as illegal. He never faced confirmation hearings or standard background checks.
The complaint states that in 2009, James McLaughlin, then the business manager of Local 501, began investigating suspicious expenditures by Dennis Lundy, a Local 501 member who was in charge of the union’s apprenticeship fund. McLaughlin suspected Lundy was embezzling money from the fund.
McLaughlin demanded that Lundy repay about $4,000 to the fund after an independent audit, which Lundy refused to do. The investigation caught the attention of IUOE’s general president, Vince Giblin, reportedly a friend of Lundy’s.
Griffin served as Giblin’s point man during much of the back-and-forth with McLaughlin, according to the complaint, earning him a spot on the lawsuit’s list of defendants. The court filing repeatedly refers to IUOE’s demands as coming directly from Griffin and cites “threats, communicated from Giblin through†Griffin.
lengthy complaint filed against the International Union of Operating Engineers (IUOE). The lawsuit alleges numerous violations of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, and names Griffin, IUOE’s former general counsel, as a defendant.