{"id":34762,"date":"2017-06-28T20:16:07","date_gmt":"2017-06-29T00:16:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/?p=34762"},"modified":"2017-06-28T20:16:07","modified_gmt":"2017-06-29T00:16:07","slug":"scary-story-racket-two-part-grift","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2017\/06\/28\/scary-story-racket-two-part-grift\/","title":{"rendered":"The Scary Story racket is a two-part grift"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

The private jet is the detail that really jumps out at everybody. As it should \u2014 it\u2019s such an extravagant example of the kind of crassly self-indulgent excess and exploitative corruption at the heart of this story:<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, a company run by Gary\u2019s wife, Kim Sekulow, has received $6.2m since 2000 in fees for media production services and for the lease of a private jet, which it owned jointly with Jay Sekulow\u2019s company Regency Productions. The jet was made available for the use of Jay and Pam Sekulow, according to corporate filings.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That\u2019s from Jon Swaine\u2019s brutally thorough investigation for the Guardian<\/em>: \u201cTrump lawyer\u2019s firm steered millions in donations to family members, files show.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

The Trump lawyer in question is Jay Sekulow, who is\u00a0a familiar face to longtime observers of the religious right and the direct-mail fundraising industry\u00a0that supports it. He was tapped by Pat Robertson in 1990 to launch the American Center for Law and Justice \u2014 an outfit\u00a0Robertson hoped would become something like a conservative white Christian version of the ACLU.<\/p>\n

\"Jay
Jay Sekulow (left) is a master of the Scary Story racket.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Robertson was coming off of his 1988 campaign for the Republican nomination for president \u2014 he won\u00a0primaries in Alaska, Hawaii and Washington \u2014 and was making the most of the national mailing lists he had compiled as a candidate. At the time, the Christian Coalition was the main new fundraising machine Robertson created to exploit that mailing list. ACLJ was another.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s your basic Scary Story racket \u2014 a time-honored way of getting very rich for anyone who is both: A) thoroughly unscrupulous; and B) rooted in a fearfully credulous subculture eager to hand over its money to anyone willing to protect them from imaginary monsters. All you need to get started in this business is a mailing list with a few thousand good leads, enough initial capital to pay for postage and letterhead, and the imagination\u00a0to exaggerate, invent, and amplify an endless cycle of bogeymen that only you<\/em> can stop from destroying America. Thanks to Pat Robertson, ACLJ had all of that, and Sekulow proved to be very, very good at it.<\/p>\n

What has the ACLJ actually done over the past almost-30 years? Not much. They\u2019ve managed to get their name in the paper a few times, but the organization\u2019s actual legal accomplishments are pretty thin.<\/p>\n

They would argue otherwise. After all, the black president\u2019s jackbooted secret police never did show up to padlock churches and cart real, true Christian pastors away to prison, right? So clearly the ACLJ has protected its supported from the very menace they long warned them about.<\/p>\n

In any case,\u00a0actual accomplishments are never the main point of a Scary Story direct-mail fundraising organization. The main point is making sure that the mailing list of supporters stays scared enough to keep writing those checks. That\u2019s where Sekulow and the ACLJ have really excelled. The Scary Story industry has made Jay Sekulow a very rich man.<\/p>\n

Crackerjack religion reporter Bob Smietana covered a lot of this years ago when he was at The Tennessean:<\/em> \u201cLawyer\u2019s family, firm collect millions from charities.\u201d<\/a> (The formatting for that 2011 USA Today<\/em> story is messed up because Smietana\u2019s former employer, Gannett, laid off its online copy editors that same year. Ahem<\/em>.) Smietana outlined how Sekulow\u2019s interconnected network of nonprofit agencies \u2014 owned and overseen by close relatives \u2014 allowed him to enrich himself and his family. Swaine picks up where he left off, and the numbers and details are appalling.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s Swaine reporting on the fundraising efforts of \u201cCase\u201d (Christian Advocates Serving Evangelism), one of the many nonprofit \u201ccharities\u201d in Sekulow\u2019s many-tentacled operation:<\/p>\n

In addition to using tens of millions of dollars in donations to pay Sekulow, his wife, his sons, his brother, his sister-in-law, his niece and nephew and their firms, Case has also been used to provide a series of unusual loans and property deals to the Sekulow family.<\/p>\n

\u2026 For years, the nonprofits have made a notable amount of payments to Sekulow and his family, which were first\u00a0reported by Law.com. Since 2000, a law firm co-owned by Sekulow, the Constitutional Litigation and Advocacy Group, has been paid more than $25m by the nonprofits for legal services. During the same period, Sekulow\u2019s company Regency Productions, which produces his talk radio show, was paid $11.3m for production services.<\/p>\n

Sekulow also personally received other compensation totalling $3.3m. Pam Sekulow, his wife, has been paid more than $1.2m in compensation for serving astreasurer and secretary of Case.<\/p>\n

Sekulow\u2019s brother, Gary, the chief operating officer of the nonprofits, has been paid $9.2m in salary and benefits by them since 2000. Gary Sekulow has stated in Internal Revenue Service (IRS) filings that he works 40 hours per week \u2013 the equivalent of a full-time job \u2013 for each of the nonprofits. Filers are told to specify if any of the hours were spent on work for \u201crelated organizations\u201d. He does not.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Gary there, you\u2019ll remember from up at the top of this post, is the brother whose wife Kim runs the company with that private jet. You need one of those RICO Task Force bulletin boards to keep all this sorted out.<\/p>\n

The truly disgusting\u00a0stuff in Swaine\u2019s report is where he details how Sekulow\u2019s \u201ccharities\u201d specifically target economically struggling people to collect these millions of dollars for his family businesses. And where he discusses the Scary Stories \u2014 what some might call\u00a0lies<\/em> \u2014 Sekulow promotes to trick them into giving him their money:<\/p>\n

Case raises tens of millions of dollars a year, much of it in small amounts from Christians who receive direct appeals for money over the telephone or in the mail. The telemarketing contracts obtained by the Guardian show how fundraisers were instructed by Sekulow to deliver bleak warnings about topics including abortion, Sharia law and Barack Obama.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s time to let the president know that his vision of America is obscured and represents a dangerous threat to the Judea-Christian [sic] values that have been the cornerstone of our republic,\u201d one script from 2015 said.<\/p>\n

A 2013 script warned listeners that Obama\u2019s signature healthcare law, the Affordable Care Act, promised to give Planned Parenthood federal funding to open abortion referral clinics \u201cin your child\u2019s or grandchild\u2019s middle school or high school.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Guardian<\/em> has posted the telemarketing scripts used by Case fundraisers, outlining strategies for squeezing whatever they could get from people on fixed incomes, or from the unemployed and the sick, or from those who would prefer to direct their charitable giving to their local church. It\u2019s really, really gross.<\/p>\n

The key thing to remember here is that this is only one way the Scary Story industry exploits their supporters. It\u2019s not just about inducing some frightened old church lady into giving $20 a month that she doesn\u2019t have. It\u2019s also about raising her taxes and cutting funding for anything she relies on so that Sekulow himself won\u2019t have to pay as much in taxes for\u00a0that private jet, or for all three of his houses.<\/p>\n

The direct-mail transactions are only half the game. And that half of the game isn\u2019t half of the money. The really big money is on the other end \u2014 the consequence of the political climate created and supported by the army of terrified supporters shaped by a yearslong steady diet of Scary Stories.<\/p>\n

They\u2019ll vote for politicians who want to repeal the estate tax. They\u2019ll vote for politicians who want to reduce the capital gains tax. They\u2019ll vote for politicians who want to gut Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, public education, consumer protection, and organized labor. They\u2019ll vote for politicians whose entire agenda is transferring wealth upwards, deregulating every form of rent-seeking, and appointing robber-baron friendly judges who can be relied on to ensure that anyone who opposes such an agenda won\u2019t be allowed to vote.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s where the real money comes in. Sure, Jay Sekulow has reaped some $60 million for himself and his family just by cashing all those checks from terrified little old church ladies. But the real payoff \u2014 the big payoff \u2014 is still being arranged. That comes once people like him cement their control of all three branches of government, ensuring that Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell can pass their wish-list of laws, President Trump can sign them, and Not-Gorsuch & Co. can retro-engineer some excuse for calling them constitutional.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The private jet is the detail that really jumps out at everybody. As it should \u2014 it\u2019s such an extravagant example of the kind of crassly self-indulgent excess and exploitative corruption at the heart of this story: Meanwhile, a company run by Gary\u2019s wife, Kim Sekulow, has received $6.2m since 2000 in fees for media […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":141,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[28,29,240],"class_list":["post-34762","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-class-warfare","category-evangelicals","tag-religious-right","tag-satanic-baby-killers","tag-trump"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Scary Story racket is a two-part grift<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The private jet is the detail that really jumps out at everybody. 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A former managing editor of Prism magazine, Fred worked in the parachurch nonprofit world for a decade and then for a decade in the newspaper biz. He began blogging in 2002. In 2003 he began writing a review of the best-selling Left Behind series. Eight years later he still hasn\u2019t finished reviewing the second book of that series and the experience has left him a broken shell of a man. Fred knows the difference between the possessive \u201cits\u201d and the contraction \u201cit\u2019s,\u201d and he is acutely bothered when others mistakenly confuse the two, yet he himself just kind of instinctively types the apostrophe whether or not it belongs there. Some feel this is his greatest hypocrisy, but those who know him better know better. He\u2019s guilty of much greater hypocrisies. Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. You can reach him via email at slacktivist at hotmail dot com.\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/author\/fredclark1\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"The Scary Story racket is a two-part grift","description":"The private jet is the detail that really jumps out at everybody. 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A former managing editor of Prism magazine, Fred worked in the parachurch nonprofit world for a decade and then for a decade in the newspaper biz. He began blogging in 2002. In 2003 he began writing a review of the best-selling Left Behind series. Eight years later he still hasn\u2019t finished reviewing the second book of that series and the experience has left him a broken shell of a man. Fred knows the difference between the possessive \u201cits\u201d and the contraction \u201cit\u2019s,\u201d and he is acutely bothered when others mistakenly confuse the two, yet he himself just kind of instinctively types the apostrophe whether or not it belongs there. Some feel this is his greatest hypocrisy, but those who know him better know better. He\u2019s guilty of much greater hypocrisies. Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. You can reach him via email at slacktivist at hotmail dot com.","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/author\/fredclark1\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34762","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/141"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34762"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34762\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}