Several years ago, Tony Mauro wrote an article for The Legal Times entitled “The Secrets of Jay Sekulow” which examined how “through the ACLJ and a string of interconnected nonprofit and for-profit entities, [Sekulow] 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.”
The article went on to note how “Sekulow’s wife, brother, sister-in-law, and two sons have been on the boards or payrolls of organizations under his control or have received generous payments as contractors” … but none of the revelations in the article seemed to have diminished Sekulow’s reputation among his Religious Right allies in any way, as he remains a recognized and respected leader in the movement to this day.
So presumably this new article revealing that all the money donated to the ACLJ actually goes to a Sekulow-controlled organization called Christian Advocates Serving Evangelism won’t raise any eyebrows among Sekulows’ Religious Right allies either:
Sekulow, a celebrity among conservative Christians, now sits as the principal officer of two closely related multimillion-dollar legal charities: Christian Advocates Serving Evangelism, which he founded in San Francisco, and the better-known American Center for Law and Justice, founded by Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson and based in Virginia Beach.
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Since 1998, the two charities have paid out more than $33 million to members of Sekulow’s family and businesses they own or co-own, according to the charities’ federal tax returns.
One of the charities is controlled by the Sekulow family — tax documents show that all four of CASE’s board members are Sekulows and another is an officer — an arrangement criticized by a nonprofit watchdog group.
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Sekulow was running CASE before he became involved in ACLJ in the 1990s. Today both charities operate under the name American Center for Law and Justice. When supporters send donations to ACLJ, the funds actually go to CASE, which handles the fundraising for both groups, tax records show.
According to the article, the ACLJ asserts “that Sekulow has taken no salary since 2002.” Of course, that might have something to do with the fact this little tidbit that Mauro reported in his earlier article:
Sekulow outsourced his own legal services from the ACLJ, shifting from a position with a publicly disclosed salary to that of a private contractor that requires no public disclosure. He acknowledged to Legal Times that his salary from that arrangement is “above $600,000” a year.
