Jay Sekulow Expose`

Tony Mauro has written a pretty devestating expose` on Jay Sekulow, director of Pat Robertson's American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ). It's pretty much what has come to be expected from people who build their career around TV evangelism. I'll post some long excerpts below the fold.

But there is another side to Jay Sekulow, one that, until now, has been obscured from the public. It is the Jay Sekulow who, through the ACLJ and a string of interconnected nonprofit and for-profit entities, has built a financial empire that generates millions of dollars a year and supports a lavish lifestyle -- complete with multiple homes, chauffeur-driven cars, and a private jet that he once used to ferry Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.

That less-known side of Sekulow was revealed in several interviews with former associates of his and in hundreds of pages of court and tax documents reviewed by Legal Times. Critics say Sekulow's lifestyle is at odds with his role as the head of a charitable organization that solicits small donations for legal work in God's name.

For example, in 2001 one of Sekulow's nonprofit organizations paid a total of $2,374,833 to purchase two homes used primarily by Sekulow and his wife. The same nonprofit also subsidized a third home he uses in North Carolina...

According to documents filed with the Internal Revenue Service, funds from his nonprofits have also been used to lease a private jet from companies under his family's control. And two years ago, Sekulow outsourced his own legal services from the ACLJ, shifting from a position with a publicly disclosed salary to that of a private contractor that requires no public disclosure. He acknowledged to Legal Times that his salary from that arrangement is "above $600,000" a year.

Sekulow's financial dealings deeply trouble some of the people who have worked for him, leading several to speak with Legal Times during the past six months about their concerns -- before Sekulow assumed his high-profile role promoting President George W. Bush's Supreme Court nominees.

"Some of us truly believed God told us to serve Jay," says one former employee, who requested anonymity out of fear of reprisal. "But not to help him live like Louis XIV. We are coming forward because we need to believe there is fairness in this world."

Another says: "Jay sends so many discordant signals. He talks about doing God's work for his donors, and then he flies off in his plane to play golf."

Still another told Legal Times, "The cause was so good and so valid, but at some point you can't sacrifice what is right for the sake of the cause."

In particular, there is a curious little trick going on with the way they do business. Sekulow is the director and chief counsel for both the ACLJ and Christian Advocates Serving Evangelism (CASE), a non-profit that Sekulow began before taking over as head of the ACLJ. Donations that are sent to the ACLJ are often rerouted to CASE:

When donors respond to solicitations and write out checks to the ACLJ, some of the money never makes it into ACLJ coffers but instead winds up with CASE, Sekulow's separate entity. Certain solicitations mention CASE in fine print as an entity "doing business as" the ACLJ. Sekulow confirms that checks resulting from these mailings are routed to CASE.

Internal critics say that the lesser-known CASE is where Sekulow reports most family-related transactions and other financial information that would be unflattering if revealed on the IRS forms filed by the more visible ACLJ.

And here's where it gets really interesting. CASE pays Sekulow almost half a million dollars a year in salary and benefits (his brother Gary is chief financial officer for both groups, and receives almost $350,000 a year between them). The ACLJ pays Sekulow no salary since 2003. Why? Because he has outsourced himself. He's on the board of the ACLJ. He's the executive director of the ACLJ. He's chief counsel of the ACLJ. But he bills the organization for his services as a subcontractor, which helps hide how much he makes:

The disappearing-salary mystery is perhaps solved in another section of the ACLJ's 2003 disclosure. There, on a list of independent contractors that the ACLJ paid that year, a new entity shows up for the first time, the "Center for Law and Justice," without the word "American" at the beginning. This new entity received $733,389 from the ACLJ for "legal services." The ACLJ form offers no details about the center.

But CASE's tax form for 2003 is more revealing. CASE paid the Center for Law and Justice $625,599 that year, also for legal services. In a supplementary statement explaining transactions the organization has had with trustees and directors, CASE states that the Center for Law and Justice is "a law firm partially owned by the president and chief counsel" of CASE -- in other words, Jay Sekulow. Together, the ACLJ and CASE paid the center $1,358,988 in 2003.

Other sources state that the firm was formed by Sekulow and two others: longtime business partner Stuart Roth, listed that year as vice president for litigation at the ACLJ with a salary of $109,250, and Monaghan, a member of the ACLJ's board of directors. Sekulow's salary from the newly created law firm is no longer ascertainable from the Form 990, but late last week, Sekulow confirmed it was "above $600,000."

The bottom line: Sekulow performs legal services as before, but now he is paid as an outside contractor, blurring the exact compensation he personally receives from the groups. One former employee quotes Sekulow as saying, before the law firm was created, "We've got to get the salaries off the 990s." Sekulow denies making that statement.

There is much more in the article as well. And there have been interesting reactions to it. Mike Cernovich writes at Crime and Federalism:

I know the price of Sekulow's life. I grew up in poverty. Yet my mother, duped by these snake oil salesmen, would send money to the 700 Club and ACLJ. As a child I wondered: "What kind of person would accept money from people as poor as my mother, and then spend that money on fancy cars and mansions?" As an adult I learned the answer - scoundrels.

I too have seen what Mike refers to. I've seen many, many people who send money to the Pat Robertsons of the world that they cannot afford to send. Their children would go without school clothes that fit them because they had been conned by these hucksters and their talk of "planting your seed of faith" so God could reward them with "tenfold blessings".

Jay Sekulow is a top notch appellate lawyer. As such, he deserves to be paid well for what he does. I do not begrudge him that. But how much is too much? Private jets, chauffered limousines and million dollar homes spread around the country? All of this is financed on the backs of millions of well-meaning people, many of them who don't have a pot to piss in, who send in their hard earned money thinking that they are helping do God's work. It makes one wonder whether Sekulow is serving God or mammon.