Jay Sekulow: America's Christian Right Lawyer
Tony Mauro writes for Legal Times (via Overlawyered):
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. ...
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. ...
Nothing in the relatively loose regulations that govern nonprofits prohibits family members from serving on boards, drawing salaries, or spending money. But critics say the extravagant spending burns up money that Sekulow solicits from donors for legal causes. Citing the high cost of litigating Supreme Court cases, Sekulow wrote in a 2003 fund-raising letter, “We are asking God to prompt every member of the ACLJ to get involved personally in this effort.” He added later, “Please send a generous gift right away.”
Bruce Hopkins, a partner at Polsinelli Shalton Welte Suelthaus in Kansas City, Mo., and author of 11 books on nonprofit operations and governance, says that Sekulow is “certainly engaging in practices where higher scrutiny is warranted.”
Ed Brayton focuses on the part of the article which explains how Sekulow has kept his first legal organization, Christian Advocates Serving Evangelism (CASE), running even after joining Roberston’s ACLJ. This is relevant because Jay Sekulow has apparently been routing ACLJ donations to CASE:
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...
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.
Jillian comments Brayton’s blog about Jay Sekulow’s “honesty”:
The ACLJ has a call-in radio show that I listen to whenever my lunch break at work coincides with it. The callers are usually moms of elementary schoolers, calling to find out if it’s legal for their kids’ schools to ban “Silent Night” from the Christmas concert. And Sekulow starts up on a rant about how the liberals are determined to destroy Christianity in this country and force good Christian children to be raised according to their hollow liberal values. [...]
[D]espite his claims about defending “religious freedom”, I have never once heard tell of the ACLJ defending, say, a Wiccan student’s right to wear a pentacle to school, or a Sikh student’s right to wear a turban. And these sorts of religious infringement cases also show up on occasion. Where are the ACLJ amici briefs in these cases?
Americans United comments on the article:
The article reveals a side of Sekulow that has received much less attention: the personal financial empire he has built. As Mauro explains, Sekulow told Legal Times in June that his salary was $275,000 a year. But Mauro discovered that did not include compensation from another group Sekulow runs. Added together, the salary figure was far higher, and Sekulow later conceded his salary now exceeds $600,000 yearly. Sekulow was making so much money that he arranged to work for the ACLJ (which is a non-profit organization) as an independent contractor, so that his salary does not have to be publicly reported on financial disclosure forms.
Jay Sekulow has also managed to enrich family members as well: his wife, brother, sister-in-law, and sons have been on various boards and payrolls of groups which he either controls or has a lot of influence with.
Sekulow’s use of non-profits to enrich himself and his family does not sit well with some of his associates. One anonymous former employee told Legal Times, “Some of us truly believed God told us to serve Jay, 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 remarked, “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.”
Jay Sekulow defends himself, in part, by citing how much money people in his position in private practice can charge. He has a point: very good, experienced lawyers can earn a lot of money and usually deserve to be paid well. It would be wrong to begrudge him a decent salary.
At the same time, though, he misses the point: he isn’t working in private practice for large corporations. He’s working for a non-profit organization dedicated to fighting on behalf of the religious liberty of individual Christians. It survives from the donations of Christians who are asked to sacrifice in order to help others be free, not so that Sekulow can live lavishly — or even just earn a tidy sum like he would in private practice. Every dime he takes in compensation isn’t going for other tasks.
People who work for non-profit organizations are expected to do so in the interest of further the organization’s cause — and at the cost of making as much money as they would in a for-profit industry. IRS regulations allows a reasonable salary, but nothing excessive. People in non-profits who defend their large compensation packages by pointing to what corresponding jobs get in for-profit industries are ignoring the crucial difference between non-profit and for-profit enterprises.
I hope that someone launches an investigation of Jay Sekulow and his financial dealings.
Read More:
Comments
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Delphi/1340/jesus_in_india.htm