Tipsheet

Next Target of O'Keefe Investigation: HUD

The latest reports out today suggest ACORN antagonist and conservative filmmaker James O'Keefe has another bombshell of an investigation to drop.  This time, however, his focus will be exposing corruption in the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).  Noah Shachtman of Wired.com writes:

Late last year, O’Keefe and fellow activist Joe Basel went into the Detroit and Chicago offices of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) with a hidden camera. They pretended to be scam artists, asking employees there to participate in a complex kickback scheme involving federal incentives for first-time home buyers. In the excerpted footage shown to me by O’Keefe, the staffers seemed only to happy to comply.

The law says that the tax credit maxes out at $8,000 for an $80,000 home. On the tape, O’Keefe asked a staffer, “What if I bought a place for $50,000, but the seller and I agreed to write down $80,000 as the purchase price?”

“Flip it any way you want,” the staffer replied.

What if the place is worth much less — like only $6,000?

“Yup, you can do that.”

Hmmm... sounds like another juicy corruption-exposing nugget coming our way in the near future.  In fact, Andrew Breitbart has recently exclaimed that in the next year there will be much more video of O'Keefe's investigations released.  "More than we all can handle," he says.