Grifters Gonna Grift

Check this out, from Reuters:

As President Donald Trump seeks to discredit last week’s election with baseless claims of voter fraud, his team has bombarded his supporters with requests for money to help pay for legal challenges to the results: “The Left will try to STEAL this election!” reads one text.

But any small-dollar donations from Trump’s grassroots donors won’t be going to legal expenses at all, according to a Reuters review of the legal language in the solicitations.

A donor would have to give more than $8,000 before any money goes to the “recount account” established to finance election challenges, including recounts and lawsuits over alleged improprieties, the fundraising disclosures show.

In other words: Trump is sending out emails urgently asking donors to donate to his legal fight against the (very legitimate) election, the fine print states that donations will actually go to paying down campaign debt, as well as to the RNC. Color me completely unsurprised.

It would be easy to simply file this away under “grifters gonna grift”—and it definitely is that—but my eye also latched on this bit:

Darrell Scott, an Ohio pastor who helped found the National Diversity Coalition for Trump and served on the president’s 2016 transition team, says he sees no problems with diverting the money to the leadership PAC or the RNC.

“I see this as two pockets on the same pair of pants. It doesn’t matter if it goes into the left or the right pocket,” Scott said. “In the end, the money will be used for a legitimate purpose that his supporters will get behind.”

What.

No.

Wait, let me try googling this guy’s name.

Here we go:

A Cleveland Heights pastor, with ties to President Donald Trump, is being sued for back rent on a home in Solon that was allegedly paid for by his church.

Darrell Scott, Pastor at New Spirit Revival Center at 3130 Mayfield Road, is named in a lawsuit filed in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court.

Well, sometimes people fall on hard times. Maybe there’s an explan—

In text messages … Scott conceded his “numbers are way down” at the church daycare and that he’s driving a 9-year-old car, adding “I don’t live lavishly.”

But [his landlord] said the expansive 14,000 square foot home, with sprawling walk-in closets, a 500-square-foot master bathroom and grand staircases is the definition of lavish.

WHAT.

But surely this is Scott’s only financial impropriety, ri—

Darrell Scott, the busy Ohio pastor who leads three different pro-Trump nonprofit organizations, saw the IRS revoke the tax-exempt status of one of his groups.

There’s no evidence Scott’s Urban Revitalization Coalition ever did any urban revitalization work during its first three years, and it never sent annual 990 forms to the IRS, as legally required, triggering the automatic revocation, which was posted on the IRS’s Automatic Revocation of Exemption List on Aug. 11.

I mean, I’m sure they were doing some good with that mon—

What little work URC actually did stirred controversy. Scott’s group received a $238,000 grant from America First Policies, the nonprofit arm of a pro-Trump super PAC, then turned around and handed out some of the cash to Black people attending URC events, which promoted Trump’s reelection, in violation of IRS regulations.

“This is how Black folks Pro-Trump events begin,” says Scott in a video of an earlier “Christmas Extravaganza” cash give-away.

What. No.

I’m sorry, but buying votes with cash handouts is insulting as all get-out. If you want to get a group’s votes, you work to make sure your candidate (in this case, Trump) takes positions that are in line with the ideals and needs of that group.

You don’t do this! 

I have a question. Why didn’t Reuters mention this??

Remember, here’s what Reuters said:

Darrell Scott, an Ohio pastor who helped found the National Diversity Coalition for Trump and served on the president’s 2016 transition team, says he sees no problems with diverting the money to the leadership PAC or the RNC.

“I see this as two pockets on the same pair of pants. It doesn’t matter if it goes into the left or the right pocket,” Scott said. “In the end, the money will be used for a legitimate purpose that his supporters will get behind.”

The fact that Scott recently had the IRS revoke the tax-exempt status of a nonprofit organization he ran would seem to be relevant, given that they are quoting Scott’s views on, well, financial propriety and financial ethics. Did they even google him?

I’m sorry, but these people are all grifters, and it’s gross! The sooner we get this rank corruption and duplicity out of the White House, the better. “Clean the swamp” my foot. It’s the exact opposite. Ugh!

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