By Matthew Vadum ——Bio and Archives--April 21, 2009
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Al Sharpton and his National Action Network (NAN) have been fined $285,000 for violating election rules during the racial agitator’s 2004 presidential bid. Sharpton’s campaign, according to the Federal Election Commission (FEC), illegally accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars in contributions from private sources. In addition, the campaign “kept poor records of its activities and expenditures” and commingled its funds with those of the NAN. All of these activities are prohibited under the Federal Election Campaign Act. During the campaign in question, Sharpton at one point had accumulated $509,188 in expenses on his American Express card. According to the FEC, his campaign committee paid only $121,996 toward those expenses. The remainder was bankrolled by the NAN and two private corporations controlled by Sharpton, in violation of FEC rules. [...]The FEC requested Sharpton’s documentation on the expenditures and the reverend claimed that the records were burnt up in a fire. As the National Legal and Policy Center reports
This was the second time a mysterious fire at NAN headquarters had been cited by Sharpton. In 1997, just after Sharpton promised to open the financial records of NAN, he alleged they had been destroyed.Sharpton might as well have claimed his dog ate his homework.
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Matthew Vadum, matthewvadum.blogspot.com, is an investigative reporter.
His new book Subversion Inc. can be bought at Amazon.com (US), Amazon.ca (Canada)
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