By Larry Elder, Apr. 13, 2007
The Reverend Al Sharpton
TAX EVASION: In a 1988 interview, Sharpton said he saw no
reason why blacks should pay taxes. “If we do not have a justice system that
protects us, what are we paying for?” Sharpton has faced multiple charges—and
one conviction—of tax evasion.
TAWANA BRAWLY: 1987. Al Sharpton, during the infamous Tawana
Brawley case, falsely accused a former assistant district attorney of raping
and sodomizing Ms. Brawley. Young Tawana stated that white racists abducted,
raped, and sodomized her, scrawling the initials “KKK” on her in human feces. A
grand jury later found the entire incident a complete hoax. Most likely, Ms.
Brawley, afraid of punishment for staying out too late, fabricated the entire
story. This did not stop Reverend Al Sharpton, who accused Pagones an assistant
district attorney, of the crime. “We stated openly that Steven Pagones did it.
If we’re lying, sue us, so we can go into court with you and prove you did it.
Sue us—sue us right now.”
Pagones did. After receiving death threats, and threats
against his child, Pagones sued Sharpton and two others for defamation. A jury
unanimously concluded that Sharpton defamed Pagones, ordering Sharpton to pay
$65,000 to Pagones. The Reverend promptly announced his intention not to pay. A
couple years later, Sharpton’s buddies passed the hat and paid off Sharpton’s
debt, which totaled $87,000 with interest and penalties. To this day, never
having paid one penny of his own to Pagones, Sharpton refuses to apologize, “I
did what I believed….They are asking me to grovel. They want black children to
say they forced a black man coming out of the hard-core ghetto to his
knees….Once you begin bending, it’s ‘did you bend today?’ or ‘I missed the
apology, say it again.’ Once you start compromising, you lose respect for
yourself.”
CENTRAL PARK JOGGER: In 1989 “the jogger,” a young white
woman, was monstrously raped and nearly beaten to death in Central Park.
Sharpton insisted—despite the defendants’ confessions—that her black attackers
were innocent, modern-day Scottsboro Boys trapped in “a fit of racial hysteria.”
Sharpton charged that the jogger’s boyfriend did it, and organized protests
outside the courthouse, chanting, “The boyfriend did it!” and denouncing the
victim as “Whore!” He brought Tawana Brawley to the trial, to show her “white
justice” and arranged for her to meet the attackers. Sharpton appealed for a
psychiatrist to examine the victim, generously saying, “It doesn’t even have to
be a black psychiatrist….We’re not endorsing the damage to the girl—if there
was this damage.” (While it doesn’t excuse his calling the victim a “whore” and
denigrating any damage to her, or his accusations against the boyfriend, the
convictions of the accused were eventually vacated, despite their taped
confessions, after another man—whose DNA matched—confessed to the rape in
2002.)
CROWN HEIGHTS/ “DIAMOND MERCHANTS”: In 1991, Gavin Cato, a
seven-year-old black child was killed in a traffic accident in Crown Heights
(in Brooklyn), when a car driven by a Hasidic Jew went out of control. Sharpton
turned it into a racial incident. Sharpton led 400 protesters through the
Jewish section of Crown Heights, with one protester holding a sign that read,
“The White Man Is the Devil.” There were four nights of rock- and
bottle-throwing, and a young Talmudic scholar was surrounded by a mob shouting,
“Kill the Jew” and stabbed to death. A hundred others were injured. Sharpton
said, “The world will tell us that [Gavin Cato] was killed by accident….What
type of city do we have that would allow politics to rise above the blood of
innocent babies?…Talk about how Oppenheimer in South Africa sends diamonds
straight to Tel Aviv and deals with the diamond merchants right here in Crown
Heights….All we want to say is what Jesus said: If you offend one of these
little ones, you got to pay for it. No compromise. Pay for your deeds.” Later
Sharpton said, “If the Jews want to get it on, tell them to pin their yarmulkes
back and come over to my house.”
ARAFAT: When Sharpton announced a 2001 trip to the Middle
East, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach helped plan his itinerary. Sharpton, according to
the Rabbi, promised not to meet with Yassir Arafat, yet only days later, Jewish
New Yorkers opened the morning paper to see a smiling Arafat and Sharpton,
meeting and shaking hands in Israel. Furious, Rabbi Boteach said, “Prior to our
recent trip to Israel, U.S. black leader Reverend Al Sharpton and I discussed
several times that there were to be no meetings with Arab or Palestinian
leaders, not because I wished to set preconditions for our travel, but because
the express objective of our mission was to show solidarity with Israeli
victims of terror. The idea was to provide a magnanimous gesture of friendship
and solidarity with the Jewish nation that would hopefully have strong
reverberations for the relationship of the Jewish and black communities back
home.”
FREDDY’S FASHION MART/”WHITE INTERLOPER”: 1995. A Jewish
store owner in Harlem was accused of driving a black record store owner out of
business, when the United House of Prayer, one of the largest black landlords
on 125th Street, raised the rent on the Fashion Mart owned by a Jew, Freddy
Harari, who then raised the rent on his subtenant, Sikhulu Shange, who ran a
record store. At one of many rallies meant to scare the Jewish owner away,
Sharpton said, “…There is a systematic and methodical strategy to eliminate our
people from doing business off 125th Street. I want to make it clear…that we
will not stand by and allow them to move this brother so that some white
interloper can expand his business.” Following a demonstration three months
later, one of the protestors, a black man, stormed Freddy’s Fashion Mart with a
pistol, screaming, “It’s on now! All blacks out!” In addition to shooting, he
set fire to the building, eventually killing himself and seven others.
Initially, Sharpton denied having spoken at any rallies. When tapes surfaced,
he said, “What’s wrong with denouncing white interlopers?” Eventually, he
apologized—but only for saying “white,” not “interloper.”
CRIMINAL JUSTICE: During the “Million Man March” in Washington,
civil rights “activist” Al Sharpton thundered, “O.J. is home, but Mumia Abu
Jamal ain’t home. And we won’t stop till all of our people that need a chance
in an awkward and unbalanced criminal justice system can come home.”
OUT OF THE KING MOVEMENT: Although he was 14 when Martin
Luther King was assassinated, Sharpton claims he “came out of the King
movement.” Sharpton once explained, “I was on some show this week, and people
said, ‘Why don’t you just let it go? Why don’t y’all just get over it?’ Get over
what? Get over Dr. King dying? Get over Medger Evers dying? Get over Goodman,
Chaney and Schwerner dying? Get over those four girls in Birmingham dying? We
are never gonna get over it, and we are never gonna let you forget it!”
FBI TAPES/COCAINE: In 2002, HBO aired a 19-year-old FBI
surveillance of Sharpton with self-described mobster Michael Franzese and an
undercover FBI agent posing as a Latin American businessman. The three were
discussing promoting boxing matches and musical events. HBO’s “Real Sports” got
a hold of a hidden camera video that shows undercover agent Victor Quintana
posing as a drug dealer trying to convince Sharpton to play a middleman in a
big cocaine buy.
Sharpton asks the undercover agent, “What kind of time limit
are we dealing with?”
“Coke?” the agent asks.
“Yeah.” Sharpton says.
The phony drug dealer says, “Could be about the same time we
have 4 million coming to us.”
Sharpton: “End of April?”
“End of April. Six weeks from now. Is that a good time you
think?” the agent asks.
“Probably,” Sharpton replies.
Later on, the undercover agent offers Sharpton a finder's
fee for help with the drug deal and says to Sharpton, “I can get pure coke for
about $35,000 a kilo ... Every kilogram we bring in, $3,500 to you. How does
that sound?” Sharpton nods in response.
The deal never went down, and Sharpton has said he was just
playing along because he was scared of the would-be kingpin. “And I'm in his
office. I don't know whether this man is armed. I don't know what's going on.
So I kind of say, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah,’ to get out of there,” Sharpton claimed
the tape was leaked by law enforcement officials to disrupt his 2004
presidential run, and he sued HBO, its parent company AOL Time Warner, and
several individuals who worked on the story. No charges were ever brought
against Sharpton because of the tape, which was allegedly made to get Sharpton
to act as an informant for the feds into an investigation into corruption by
Don King and the boxing industry. The HBO report featured former Mafia captain
Michael Franzese saying that the FBI was on the right track when it targeted
Sharpton in a sting back in 1983 to try and root out corruption in boxing.
Sharpton admitted in 1988 that he informed for the
government in order “to get rid of drugs and election fraud” in black
neighborhoods. He denied informing on civil rights leaders and organized crime
figures.
FBI TAPES/DONATIONS: After Sharpton’s name surfaced on
wiretaps in an unrelated Philadelphia City Hall corruption case, the FBI
launched a probe into Sharpton’s fund-raising for his failed 2004 presidential
run. The FBI secretly videotaped Sharpton on May 9, 2003, pocketing campaign
donations from two “shady fund-raisers” in a NY City hotel room, and then
demanding $25,000 more. The two fund-raisers were La-Van Hawkins and the late
Ronald White. Hawkins is currently on trial in Philadelphia on corruption
charges. White was going to be indicted, but died before charges were brought.
A later wiretap recorded Hawkins telling White that they had raised more than
$140,000 for Sharpton the previous quarter, but Hawkins was concerned that
Sharpton had only reported about $50,000 to the Federal Election Commission, as
required by law. Sharpton said the allegations were a “politically motivated
smokescreen” to hide the fact the Justice Department is out to get him. He
ripped the probe and the secret videotaping, saying, “Can you imagine what
would happen if it was a white presidential candidate?”
One Question. Why isn't he in Jail for Tax Evasion?
ReplyDeleteI'd rather see his mouth Bricked-Up to stop his Racist Rhetoric, but Prison Time would be good.
Maybe get him a boyfriend in there.