Lawsuit Accuses Obama NLRB Appointee of Helping Cover Up Union Embezzlement

The Washington (D.C.) Free Beacon reports that National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) member Richard Griffin was served last month at his home in our nation’s capital with a court summons relating to a lawsuit filed by 10 members of a Los Angeles-based local of the International Union of Operating Engineers (IUOE/AFL-CIO).  A link to the entire story is furnished at the end of this post.

The lawsuit alleges that Mr. Griffin, the former IUOE general counsel who holds his current position thanks to an unconstitutional “recess” appointment made by President Barack Obama in January 2012 without the U.S. Senate’s advice or consent, participated in a conspiracy to manipulate the operation of Local 501  “through a pattern of racketeering activity”:

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.

Giblin demanded that McLaughlin drop the investigation. The latter refused. According to the lawsuit, Giblin would later tell another Local 501 official, “I told [McLaughlin] to make that Lundy thing disappear and he never did. That lazy fat f*** has got to go!”

Giblin threatened to place Local 501 into the trusteeship of the IUOE unless McLaughlin two other Local 501 officials assisting the Lundy investigation resigned.

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.

Lawsuit accuses Obama appointee of embezzlement cover-up