Bulldog researcher Carl Horowitz, author of the muckraking exposé, Mainstreaming Demagoguery: Al Sharpton’s Rise to Respectability, has the story.

When Congress last November approved $1.15 billion to settle residual claims of racial discrimination by black farmers against the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), supporters lauded the vote and President Obama's signature the following month. This, they said, was justice belatedly done. Yet critics justifiably have argued that the class-action suit rests on an edifice of fraud. Now a member of Congress, Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, is stating as much. And he's lined up a pair of unnamed witnesses, one a black farmer and the other a longtime USDA employee, willing to tell all. Early this month, Rep. King announced these individuals indicated a willingness to reveal to Congress that plaintiffs' attorneys engaged in an unscrupulous campaign to sign up co-plaintiffs, many of whom never farmed in their lives. The issue now is whether he can persuade his colleagues to hold a hearing….

[Rep. Steve King Has Witnesses Ready to Testify about Pigford Fraud by Carl Horowitz, National Legal and Policy Center, January 18, 2011.]