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You are here: Home / A Real Scoop

A Real Scoop

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Debbie Schlussel’s report that Sean Hannity’s charity is a scam — it donated less than 4% of its take to the wounded vets it purports to support — is being picked up by “reasonable” conservatives.  Frum, for example, wonders if other conservatives will even mention that Sean likes to fly to those events in private jets, and charters a fleet of luxury SUVs for transporting his entourage.   Sully calls that “a poignant question”.

I’ve got a touching question, one which may be a bit unreasonable, given the ruthless self-examination on display here:

Where the fuck were these guys when a Kos diarist outed Hannity’s charity, or when the Washington Post reported that most of these charities were scams, in 2007?

Update: The head of the foundation, Ollie North, issued a press release [pdf], denying everything.  The Post story is based on a 2007 report by the American Institute for Philanthropy.  They gave Freedom Alliance, the charity Hannity was pimping, an “F”.   AIP is a membership-only organization that charges for its guide, so I can’t see what it was rated more recently.

Reader Interactions

109Comments

  2. 2.

    Legalize

    Where the fuck were these guys when a Kos diarist outed Hannity’s charity, or when the Washington Post reported that most of these charities were scams, in 2007?

    (a) Lying about it

    (b) Ignoring it

    (c) Lying about something else

    (d) Ignoring something else

    (e) All of the above

  6. 6.

    Violet

    Better late than never. I really am going to have to tune into Hannity’s radio show today to see if he brings this up. Popcorn time!

  10. 10.

    MoeLarryAndJesus

    Sean Hannity spends some of that money getting his dogs’ balls waxed. Sean Hannity knows that the brave men and women who are defending this country don’t mind this at all. Sean Hannity never forgets them, even for a second, even while he’s having a teabag party with those patriotic pooches.

    So just stop it with these allegations right now.

  14. 14.

    canuckistani

    @ajr22:

    And yes Hannity Hates the troops.

    Hannity loves the troops, like I love BBQ Pork sandwiches. Something tasty to feed on.

  15. 15.

    SpotWeld

    Did Erik Erikson ever cover this?
    Maybe they were just waiting for his CNN grade reporting to weigh in on the topic?

  16. 16.

    Brick Oven Bill

    I believe that the marching orders are to target Glenn Beck mistermix. Hannity is harmless.

  17. 17.

    mantis

    Where the fuck were these guys when a Kos diarist outed Hannity’s charity, or when the Washington Post reported that most of these charities were scams, in 2007?

    Those are just deranged O-bots not worth reading, silly! Schlussel on the other hand, now there’s a source you can trust!

  18. 18.

    kay

    “The source says he heard that Oliver North pulled Hannity aside at one of the concerts and told him that this had to stop. ”

    I know she wanted to help the sainted Oliver North stay free of the taint of Hannity, but that’s not really helpful to him if he knew this was going on.

    Because….North is the founder and honorary chairman of Freedom Alliance.

  19. 19.

    Digital Amish

    Ollie North and Sean Hannity involved in something deceitful and dishonest? Who woulda’ thought!

  22. 22.

    LuciaMia

    Set your egg timers for Limbaugh’s attack on the party-unfaithful, Schlussel. He’ll probably tar her with the same bilge he threw at the new CBO report, “a sham, unreliable, lies..”

  23. 23.

    Camchuck

    Scoop or not, true or not, that post is more value from Debbie Schlussel than I would ever expect in a hundred lifetimes.

  24. 24.

    Bullsmith

    This is class A fraud and hypocrisy, it’s never too late to make up for lost time. Anyway I don’t blame Frum or Sully for not talking about it three years ago. It’s a completely legit scandal and should tarnish Hannity terribly. In other words it should be selling newspapers and upping cable news ratings to his rivals’ benefit. Why didn’t it? Why won’t it again this time? I honestly wish I knew.

  25. 25.

    MBunge

    Information doesn’t exist until it appears inside the conservative bubble.

    The fact that it’s Schlussel bringing it inside the bubble illustrates one of the fatal flaws of the crazification of the Right. Whack jobs tend not to consider or be intimidated by thoughts like what outing Hannity’s behavior might do to their own career prospects.

    Mike

  26. 26.

    Zifnab

    @Legalize: Don’t forget f) Getting a slice of the action

    But don’t worry. I’m sure his show will have a torrent of call-ins from “army” “veterans” that still love and support him.

    America is nothing if not home to a long history of feckless, teflon con artists dauntless courageous Capitalists.

  27. 27.

    ajr22

    @mistermix: Ya I never even heard of her, but it was linked on front page of reddit. And when i see something that says “Shawn Hannity, troops, fraud” in the same sentence I def give it a click.

  28. 28.

    LuciaMia

    Are charities required to make some kind of review, a break-down of where their donated dollars go to?

  30. 30.

    Mattminus

    Who is that woman whose picture is on the site’s banner? I’ve seen Schlussel on TV and that sure as hell isn’t her.

  31. 31.

    JGabriel

    Here’s a really poignant question: given that Freedom Alliance’s scam was exposed at DKos and in WaPo, both over 2 years ago, why the fuck is this fraudulent charity still operating, and why aren’t the people running it in jail or at least pending trial?

    .

  32. 32.

    The Grand Panjandrum

    @Zifnab:

    But don’t worry. I’m sure his show will have a torrent of call-ins from “army” “veterans” that still love and support him.

    And all of them will have been in Special Forces or a Ranger. Never ceases to amaze how many ex-Green Berets are out there. I think Cole and I are the only guys who weren’t.

  33. 33.

    ajr22

    @freelancer: Peggy Noonan seems like she has already hit the bottle, and morning Joe is on at like 6 a.m. I mean come on she is just spouting talking points, no way she could read the bill, cause that would take hours of sobriety.

  34. 34.

    JGabriel

    LuciaMia:

    Are charities required to make some kind of review, a break-down of where their donated dollars go to?

    Yep, annually. They’re called: tax returns.

    .

  37. 37.

    Mark S.

    @LuciaMia:

    They have to file tax returns, and that’s mostly what Schlussel is going by in her post.

    Apparently there are charity rating sites, but they may be as reliable as those guys who were giving AAA ratings to all that toxic shit:

    Even Charity Navigator notes in its strange, illogical, and mostly inaccurate Four Star rating that Freedom Alliance has a fund-raising “efficiency” of only nine cents on the dollar. And, in fact, Charity Navigator’s ridiculous rating formula robotically crunches numbers in a way that considers the money spent mostly on consultants, postage, and printing as having gone to the wounded soldiers and kids of fallen soldiers, when in fact that’s not where it went at all.

  39. 39.

    Joshua Norton

    Apparently, Hannity is not the man that Debbie Schlussel thought she internet married and had internet babies with

  42. 42.

    PurpleGirl

    @LuciaMia: Yes, they have to have an independent audit done every year and they file a Form 990 which is comparable to an income tax form. They have to detail the where their revenue came from and how it was used, they have to detail the salaries paid to the top 5 leaders of the organizations and any renumeration made to trustees/directors. The Better Business Bureau and groups like Charity Navigator consider any administrative expenses amounting to 20% or more of revenue to be too high.

    Mark S: For the record Charity Navigator goes soley by the last submitted Form 990, they do not do their own investigation as such. Yeah they are wonky in many ways. The Better Business Bureau requires a Form 990 and has their own extensive and detailed questionnaire.

  43. 43.

    slag

    @freelancer: That was beautiful. He got muddled there at the end when he was right but overstated the opposition’s case. It was unnecessary and eventually hurt him a bit. But overall, he definitely won the argument.

    Poor Peggy just couldn’t believe he was loud. If only he’d swaggered instead. She might have drooled all over him like she used to do with GW.

  44. 44.

    LT

    Oy, yet another smart good blog sending traffic to that horrible wretched person. Sigh.

    I get that the story is a big – if old – one, but still.

  46. 46.

    mistersnrub

    @freelancer:

    Why are GOP speech writers given such a platform to talk about things they know nothing about? Because she coined “a thousand points of light” Noonan knows something about domestic policy? Because Michael Gerson coined “axis of evil” he knows something about foreign policy? I mean, Noonan, Gerson and now pasty-faced, man-boobed Thiessen…these people glorified copywriters, they were paid to come up with catchy jingles and now they are routinely paraded around as “experts.” It just makes no sense to me.

  47. 47.

    TDE

    I recall that diary by davefromqueens… of course it took a right wing voice to out Scammity to the establishment.

  50. 50.

    geg6

    @cleek:

    My nephew (well, not really…he’s my ex-SL’s nephew but we don’t look at it that way) is a Ranger and he’s a liberal.

  51. 51.

    freelancer

    @mistersnrub:

    Why are GOP speech writers given such a platform to talk about things they know nothing about?

    Because GOP policy makers are as elusive as unicorns and leprechauns, i.e. they don’t exist because the GOP has no policy to speak of, they’re just against everything. The whole party is a negative argument.

  52. 52.

    NobodySpecial

    @geg6:

    Sadly, I know one from another board. Of course, at one point he asserted to me in a private conversation that when his MI buddies got over to Iraq, they’d find Saddam’s WMD (and pretty heavily implied that they’d be ‘found’ and not found, if you know what I mean.)

    Until the day he left those boards in a huff the second time, I gave him shit about those WMD.

  53. 53.

    geg6

    @NobodySpecial:

    As a part of my job, I am the veteran’s educational benefits certifying official. As such, I am in constant communication with our veterans on campus and I have a pretty good relationship with them. Of all the veterans here (we’re a small campus, but the new GI Bill upped our vet population), I only know of one who is a conservative.

  54. 54.

    licensed to kill time

    Jeez, I don’t want to click on any of those links. I always just assume that anything Hannity is associated with is a fraud since he himself is such a lying sack of crap-on-fire.

  55. 55.

    malraux

    @JGabriel: Running an inefficient charity isn’t illegal, just really really scummy. That said, with payouts as low as they are, it’s possible that one could legitimately claim that the primary purpose of the charity was to act as a tax free vacation outlet for hanity, which would be illegal.

  56. 56.

    Mark S.

    @Mark S.:

    Freedom Alliance has a fund-raising “efficiency” of only nine cents on the dollar.

    Actually, looking at the site, I don’t think that means what Debbie thinks it does:

    Fundraising Efficiency: The amount spent to raise $1 in charitable contributions. To calculate a charity’s fundraising efficiency, we divide its fundraising expenses by the total contributions it receives.

    So a low number is a good one. Of course, that doesn’t tell you anything about what the charity is spending the money on.

  57. 57.

    RSR

    a corollary to iokiyar: ioniarri – it’s only news if a republican reports it

    could be ioniacri (conservative…)
    could be ioniavri (villager…) though does Schlussel fit?

  58. 58.

    Felonious Wench

    @geg6:

    My nephew (well, not really…he’s my ex-SL’s nephew but we don’t look at it that way) is a Ranger and he’s a liberal.

    My boss was a Ranger Captain. He’s a rabid liberal, with guns and ammo.

  59. 59.

    asiangrrlMN

    @freelancer: And hot. I love that he calls the bullshit the bullshit, and I love his sly smile at the end when he says how outraged he is about the implication of people being bought off (and, La Noonan, it’s the Republicans, too, bitch. God, I hate her).

  60. 60.

    demo woman

    Fox News has Hannity, O’Reilly and Beck. All have questionable pasts and the MSM ignores them. Hannity’s been lining his pockets for years and MSM could care less.
    Massa coverage was greater than all the coverage of Ensign and diaper boy Vitter.

  61. 61.

    ajr22

    @mistersnrub: Theison sat in on briefings, was at the pentagon on 911, and has been to iraq. If you don’t see how this makes him an expert on torture, and how to protect this country I just don’t know what to tell you. The man is a beacon of light, In America’s struggle to stay exceptional. If you could only see the thank you letters he gets from turrist thanking him for torturing them, and keeping them locked in a hole for years on end you would change your tune.

  63. 63.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    I keep reading “Sean Hannity” as “Jane Hamsher”. This blog has conditioned me well.

    And why are we talking about something other than Jane? Did she finally die?

  64. 64.

    J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford

    @mistersnrub:

    …Because Michael Gerson coined “axis of evil” he knows something about foreign policy?…

    Wasn’t it Frum who wrote the “axis of evil” phrase?

  67. 67.

    Fergus Wooster

    @J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford: Yup – that was Frum, not Gerson.

    Frum got in trouble for taking public credit for the speech. Major faux pas in the Village.

    @Mistersnrub
    Correction noted – but seriously, “axis of hatred”? I love that these guys were being paid for writing this dreck.

  68. 68.

    SteveinSC

    Still waiting for Hannity to agree to be waterboarded. We have Gerson in our paper. Probably get it cheaper because, well he’s cheap, and a day or two late. His anti Democrat rant over how they have smuggled the HCR bill through, etc. was so “talking point,” shrill, and without serious content, that I felt sure he soiled himself when he finished typing it. He really is a gross, pasty shill.

  69. 69.

    J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford

    @mistersnrub:

    Thanks.

    I seem to remember one of their wives bragging to friends via email that the President used their husband’s line in his speech.

  76. 76.

    Redshift

    @jibeaux: Heh. So JSF has switched from only showing up to bitch at us in the Hamsher threads to showing up in the non-Hamsher threads to bitch about why we’re not talking about Hamsher so he/she/it can bitch about it.

    We’ve get a lot of one-note johnnies, but geez, a Gregorian chant has more tonal variation…

  77. 77.

    GregB

    With the news that Fox big wig Ailes had to chide his non-Kool Aid drinkers to stop geting wobbly and support Glenn Beck to thsi Sean Scammity news and reports that Brett Baier got a lot of negative feed-back from his ambush style interview, I’d say the heat is on Fox.

    This Hannity story is going to get bigger and better.

  78. 78.

    FredaMae

    “Where the fuck were these guys when a Kos diarist outed Hannity’s charity, or when the Washington Post reported that most of these charities were scams, in 2007?”

    Still trying to figure out how to work the Velcro on their Shoes!

  79. 79.

    Redshift

    @freelancer: Excellent smackdown by Wiener. And the most hilarious part (though not the best part) is Noonan and Scarborough blathering on about how the Dems shouldn’t be working on health care, they should be focusing on jobs, when anyone with half a brain knows that if they were, Nooners and Scar would be insisting that nothing the government can do (except cutting taxes and regulation) can possibly help the economy. It’s such a transparent attempt to sidetrack for purely political purposes.

    Fortunately for Scarborough, no one with half a brain is likely to watch his show…

  80. 80.

    Lawnguylander

    Schlussel’s crazy ass used to be an occasional guest on Hannity’s Fux News show but he banned her for some reason that I can’t recall and refuse to research. So she’s got a grudge against him and while I’m happy to see her make him squirm, don’t go thinking she did this out of concern for the troops or anything like that. If he called her up and asked her to appear on Monday to discuss jihadist support for Obamacare she’d get right to work writing blog posts attacking Frum and Sullivan for linking to her exposure of his charity.

  83. 83.

    Ash Can

    D’oh! HTML fail. I thought I’d put a strike through “pix”. You get the drift, though.

  84. 84.

    JGabriel

    Michael D.:

    Looks like the Hannity story is starting to fall apart.

    Maybe. Hard to say. For instance, they list 79% of their 2008 funds as being spent on “Program Activities”; Schlussel lists about $2,000,000 going to printing and postage – significantly more than the $945k FA says they spent on fundraising. It would appear that FA is likely hiding some of its direct-mail fundraising as “educational outreach” (or something similar) under the “Program Activities” header.

    Anyway, there are discrepancies, and at this point I’m marginally more inclined to believe Schlussel than FA, at least to the extent that her accusations appear to re-affirm reporting in WaPo dating back to 2007.

    .

  85. 85.

    JGabriel

    @Lawnguylander:

    Schlussel’s crazy ass used to be an occasional guest on Hannity’s Fux News show but he banned her for some reason that I can’t recall and refuse to research.

    Schlussel accuses Hannity of stealing her reporting and not giving her credit for it. So, yeah, there’s bad blood between the two going back a few years now, and that’s what provides the motive for Schlussel to go after him.

    So no one needs to labor under the illusion that she was motivated by principle.

    Not that anyone would.

    .

  86. 86.

    General Egali Tarian Stuck

    The wingnuts are beside themselves with existential fear as a party and ideological movement and it is making them more crazy and pathologically lie prone than they already were. If this bill passes and people like it and feel more secure, which they should with a little time, then the right wing and their world view will have taken a mighty blow and will be forced to moderate some, or go all urban guerrilla. I wouldn’t take bets on them taking the former fork in that road.

  87. 87.

    Mark S.

    @Michael D.:

    A press release by the organization saying the organization did nothing wrong? Well, when Bush said “We do not torture,” that was good enough for me.

  88. 88.

    artem1s

    @Mark S.:

    this points out the problems with 990’s and how you read them. most reasonable people would consider a concert and all of the expenses (SUV’s, private jets, etc., fees to performers) that go with it a fundraising expense. unfortunately most NP’s will put those items under ‘programming’ expenses and the only expenses that will go on the ‘fundraising’ line will often be the salary paid to the development director and the direct mail expenses of making an appeal.

    So you are right in saying that a fundraising efficiency figure is wildly misleading. never the less, 9% or 25% of all expenditures going to the stated purpose of an organization that does not administer any programming (think running a VA clinic and all the staff to go with it) is pretty abysmal. since they aren’t running the clinics or school where the students are going their ‘take’ should be pretty much a reverse of those numbers. 10-25% to run the events and 75-90% going directly to the VA or a scholarship fund.

    As a professional fundraiser I always tell people if they want the most bang for their buck, give directly to the organization that is running the programming you want to support. If you want to support wounded veterans, give to the VA. And if the fundraiser feels like ‘entertainment’, your money isn’t going where you think it is. I’m not saying don’t ever do it but be realistic about it and write a check directly to a charity once in a while so they can pay their electric bill. And when a disaster happens, always give your money to an established disaster relief charity, not any of the fly-by-night ones that spring up just to make a buck.

    Anyway, 990’s are a good way to get info, just look them over carefully. you can get up to the last 3 years available from guidestar.org

  89. 89.

    plasticgoat

    Thanks for the link to the kos diarist, davefromqueens. Dave has passed on to the big political debate in the sky but he was onto Hannity long ago. He followed him to book signings, called his radio show and tipped off a lot of us to the unsavory side of Sean Scam-ity.

  90. 90.

    Adam

    Do you thank Ollie used some of the money from this charity to buy missles to sell to Iran, then used the proceeds of those sales to fund Central American “Freedom Fighters”?

  91. 91.

    Jager

    Years ago Hannity would do paid live appearances for his radio station affiliates and had a list of demands a mile long: limos, suites in 5 Star hotels, first class travel, same for his entourage. He is a rock star…this isn’t anything new for him.

  92. 92.

    Mike in NC

    Do you thank Ollie used some of the money from this charity to buy missles to sell to Iran, then used the proceeds of those sales to fund Central American “Freedom Fighters”?

    More likely an addition to his mansion and a nice shiny new SUV to park in the driveway.

  93. 93.

    Surreal American

    @Michael D.:

    I’ll bet press releases from ACORN claiming innocence would have met your criteria for a non-story.

    Luckily for that organization, the O’Keefe clown was a rank amateur in faking video footage.

  94. 94.

    Groucho48

    I looked over the tax return for 2007. I’m not a tax expert by any means, but, for 2007, it looks like the charity took in about 10.7 million in donations. It paid out slightly under 1 million in grants and scholarships. But, its investment account also went up about 3.2 million. Giving them the benefit of the doubt and assuming all the money in the investment account is for grants and scholarships and such, it looks like roughly about 40% of donations in 2007 will end up going to charity.

    That’s not a very good % for a charity.

  95. 95.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @freelancer: Oh my gods, that was a thing of beauty. A. Thing. Of. Beauty. Nothing I like better than the smell of Epic Smackdown of Nooners. Great, great stuff. Thank you.

  97. 97.

    beanini

    I’m too lazy to read the whole thread but this is the best part of the article:

    A friend of mine was one of the artists who performed in Hannity’s Freedom Concerts and was shocked when I showed him the tax forms and the expenses. He no longer performs at the concerts because he was tired of the egomania. Now, he’s just angry. “We paid our own way and for all of our costs and expenses to perform because we thought we were helping the troops and their families and that all the money was going to them.”

    Having the artists that perform pay for Hannity and his entourage to go to the event.

  98. 98.

    EthylEster

    The head of the foundation, Ollie North…

    Birds of a feather….feathering their own nest.
    I’m shocked!

  99. 99.

    Nutella

    @General Egali Tarian Stuck:

    Existential fear sounds a little extreme but it’s accurate.

    I got a letter yesterday from Michele Bachmann soliciting funds for the ACU STRIKEFORCE which is described as “the perfect vehicle to counter Obama’s radical agenda and plans for the TOTAL DESTRUCTION of our conservative movement.”

    It’s got four more pages about said destruction. That makes no sense since passing HCR does not and cannot destroy any political groups of any sort but that’s what they’re saying.

    I don’t know how I get on these lists. I got the letter from Michele Bachmann and a postcard from the National Abortion Access Bowl-a-Thon on the same day.

  100. 100.

    tripletee

    @kay:

    I know she wanted to help the sainted Oliver North stay free of the taint of Hannity

    C’mon, these are Republican manly men. They’re not scared of sharing a little taint.

  101. 101.

    WK

    Charities are required to allow anyone who wants to examine their tax returns (IRS Form 990) to do so. That means that anyone who wants to can call up Hannity’s charity, request an appointment to review its IRS Form 990s and, even if Hannity et. al. doesn’t like it or does’n want to do it, under the Internal Revenue Code, the charity MUST allow the requestor to examine the IRS Form 990s. So all of the relevant information is likely to be published soon.

  102. 102.

    Peter Principle

    Given Ollie North’s track record with charities, I wouldn’t be surprised if the money was used for something other than putting a Gulfstream seat under Hannity’s fat butt.

    Arming Iranian “moderates” again, perhaps?

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