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The Administration successfully has managed several natural disasters and ongoing relief efforts, including deadly tornados in Joplin, MO and Tuscaloosa, AL. The DHS played a lead role in federal response efforts following the BP oil spill in the Gulf.
The President’s highest priority is to keep the American people safe. He is committed to ensuring the United States is true to our values and ideals while also protecting the American people. The President is committed to securing the homeland against 21st century threats by preventing terrorist attacks and other threats against our homeland, preparing and planning for emergencies, and investing in strong response and recovery capabilities. We will help ensure that the Federal Government works with states and local governments, and the private sector as close partners in a national approach to prevention, mitigation, and response.
The National Security Strategy, released May 27, 2010, lays out a strategic approach for advancing American interests, including the security of the American people, a growing U.S. economy, support for our values, and an international order that can address 21st century challenges.
The United States has been in an uninterrupted state of national emergency since 1979. Here in 2014, we’re not dealing with just one emergency – there are currently 30 of them in effect.
That’s according to data on presidential declarations of emergency compiled by Gregory Korte of USA Today. “Those emergencies, declared by the president by proclamation or executive order, give the president extraordinary powers — to seize property, call up the National Guard and hire and fire military officers at will,” Korte writes.
President Obama has declared nine so far, eight of which are currently in effect — they primarily deal with preventing business with people or organizations involved in global conflicts or the drug trade. Obama has also renewed many of his predecessors’ orders — just last week he renewed our ongoing state of emergency with respect to Iran for its 36th straight year.
Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush took a light touch on declarations of emergency – they invoked only a handful, none of which remain in effect. But Bill Clinton proclaimed 16 emergencies and George W. Bush declared 14, 13 of which are still in effect today.
Blocking business transactions with various interests may not seem like national emergency material. But the language underlying these declarations is often nearly apocalyptic. Obama’s recent continuation of a Bush-era emergency relating to “the property of certain persons contributing to the conflict” in the Democratic Republic of the Congo states that “this situation continues to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the foreign policy of the United States.”
The Obama administration also maintains that “the actions and policies of certain members of the Government of Belarus and other persons continue to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States.”
You may wonder why the president needs to declare a state of emergency to deal with what appears to be fairly routine instances of corruption in far-flung corners of the world. Korte notes that Congress provides little oversight on emergency declarations, even through it’s mandated to do so by law. In an era when tussles over executive power are a near-daily occurrence, this is a strange incongruity.
“What the National Emergencies Act does is like a toggle switch, and when the president flips it, he gets new powers. It’s like a magic wand. and there are very few constraints about how he turns it on,” said Kim Lane Scheppele, a Princeton professor interviewed by Korte.
In the absence of a crisis, there’s little compelling reason for a government to adopt a permanent crisis stance. The danger is that a public desensitized to claims to extraordinary circumstances could be more likely to allow excesses of authority performed in the name of those circumstances.
As Korte writes, “A post-9/11 state of national emergency declared by President George W. Bush — and renewed six times by President Obama — forms the legal basis for much of the war on terror” — a war which has so far seen a rise in terrorism around the globe.
The Afghan government’s decision to release 65 suspected Taliban detainees from Bagram prison despite repeated protests from the U.S. has raised fears that some of them may return to fight for the insurgent group. In the past, the Pentagon has said that detainees released from Guantanamo have been found to be involved in attacks against coalition forces in Afghanistan.
Beyond rejoining the Taliban, there is Daesh (Islamic State) where there is guerilla fighting tactics, tactics, recruiting and fund-raising that is attractive to Gitmo detainees.
An ex-Guantanamo detainee based in northern Pakistan is leading an effort to recruit jihadists for the Islamic State, an al Qaeda offshoot that controls large portions of Iraq and Syria.
Abdul Rahim Muslim Dost, who was detained at Guantanamo for three years, has sworn allegiance to Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al Baghdadi. Dost’s oath of allegiance was issued on July 1, just two days after Baghdadi named himself “Caliph Ibrahim I” and declared that his Islamic State was now a “caliphate.”
Pakistani officials have accused Dost of recruiting jihadists for Baghdadi’s organization. He is thought to be behind a graffiti campaign, which aims to spread pro-Islamic State messages throughout northern Pakistan.
According to Dawn, a Pakistani newspaper, Dost has even been named the head of the Islamic State’s presence in the “Khorasan,” an area that covers much of Central and South Asia, including Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran.
U.S. officials have confirmed to THE WEEKLY STANDARD that Dost is recruiting for the Islamic State. It is not clear how effective his efforts have been, given that Dost and his supporters are operating in areas that are strongholds for al Qaeda and the Taliban, both of which are opposed to Baghdadi’s “caliphate” project.
Thus far, the Islamic State has had only limited success in Pakistan and elsewhere in attracting established jihadists to its cause. However, Dost, who is in his 50s, is a veteran jihadist leader.
Dost was originally detained in Pakistan in late 2001. He was transferred to U.S. custody and detained at Guantanamo for three years. Dost was already a veteran jihadist with a thick dossier at the time.
But U.S. officials transferred Dost from Guantanamo to Afghanistan in April 2005. Joint Task Force Guantanamo (JTF-GTMO), which oversees the detention camps, recommended that he be released or transferred due to his health problems. Dost “poses a low risk, due to his medical condition,” JTF-GTMO concluded in a memo that was subsequently leaked. A combatant status review tribunal (CSRT) at Guantanamo also concluded at some point that Dost was no longer an enemy combatant.
In 2006, however, Dost was detained in Pakistan once again. He was subsequently part of a prisoner exchange between the Taliban and the Pakistani government in 2008. Dost and Taliban fighters in Pakistani custody were exchanged for Pakistan’s ambassador to Afghanistan and dozens of Pakistani soldiers, all of whom were in the Taliban’s custody. The deal was reportedly brokered by Baitullah Mehsud, who led the al Qaeda-linked Pakistani Taliban until his death in 2009.
A statement by Dost explaining his reasons for swearing allegiance to Baghdadi was included in a jihadist propaganda video posted online in July. THE WEEKLY STANDARD has obtained a translation of the video.
Dost claims that he had a vision prophesizing the establishment of Baghdadi’s caliphate during his time in U.S. custody.
“While in Guantanamo in [2002],” Dost claims, “I saw a vision of a palace with a huge closed door, above which was a clock pointing to the time of 10 minutes before 12.” Dost says he “was told that was the home of the caliphate” and so he “assumed then that the caliphate would be established after 12 years.”
Coincidentally, the Islamic State declared its caliphate in 2014 – or 12 years after Dost’s supposed vision.
Dost argues that ever since the caliphate fell in 1924 the Islamic ummah [worldwide community of Muslims] “has experienced phases of disagreement, division, failure and disputes” and “become divided into fighting groups and different small states” that fail to represent Islam. All Muslim governments are now null and void, Dost says, as they have been replaced by the caliphate with Baghdadi, the “caliph of the Muslims, the emir of the believers,” as its leader.
Dost thanks Allah for the “opportunity to witness the establishment of the Islamic caliphate” under Baghdadi’s leadership. He swears allegiance to Baghdadi and calls on all other Muslims to do the same.
The video of Dost’s allegiance to Baghdadi includes a summary of his extensive biography. In the 1970s, Dost studied under a jihadist sheikh in Afghanistn. Some of the sheikh’s students would go on to join al Qaeda. Dost joined the jihad against the Soviets in the late 1970s.
In 1979, Dost was among the radicals, led by Juhayman al Utebi, who laid siege to the Grand Mosque in Mecca. Juhayman and his men challenged the Saudis’ right to rule over Islam’s holy sites, but were eventually extracted by force from the mosque. That incident influenced the next generation of Islamic militants, including some of al Qaeda leaders. Dost was arrested shortly after the siege, but somehow escaped and made his way to Peshawar, where joined the jihad once again.
Dost soon became a prolific writer, publishing three magazines and authoring numerous articles and books.
According to his biography, Dost had “good relations with the Taliban and the mujahideen.” Interestingly, Dost claimed the opposite during his combatant status review tribunal (CSRT) at Guantanamo, saying that he was at odds with the Taliban prior to his capture in late 2001. Dost is more forthcoming about his Taliban ties pre-9/11 now that he is free.
The Gettysburg National Cemetery was dedicated by President Abraham Lincoln a brief four months after the Battle. Lincoln’s speech lasted only two minutes, but it went into history as the immortal Gettysburg Address.
“Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation: conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war. . .testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated. . . can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war.
We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate. . .we cannot consecrate. . . we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.
It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us. . .that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion. . . that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain. . . that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. . . and that government of the people. . .by the people. . .for the people. . . shall not perish from the earth. “
1. Lincoln wrote the speech on the back of an envelope
This is perhaps the biggest myth about the Gettysburg Address. Lincoln started working on his remarks shortly after the battle was fought in July 1863, according to Lincoln experts. Several drafts of the speech also exist that were written before November 19, 1863.
2. Lincoln wrote the speech on the train ride from Washington to Gettysburg
That’s another big myth that is easy to debunk. The draft copies of the speech are in Lincoln’s normal, steady handwriting. Given the bumpy nature of train travel in 1863, at least one of the drafts would have uneven handwriting. What is known is that Lincoln didn’t have a final version of the speech done until he arrived in Gettysburg.
3. Lincoln omitted the words “under God” form the original speech
We’ve reported on this story before and it is true the two early drafts of the speech don’t have the words “under God” in the copy. But at least four newspaper accounts, written by reporters in the audience, include the words in the transcript of the live speech, and they were in three additional versions of the speech written by Lincoln after the event.
4. Where exactly did Lincoln give the speech?
That is a point that is still contested. Of course, the speech was in Gettysburg, but the question is where was the location of the speakers’ platform? One modern theory is that the speech was given from a platform inside Evergreen Cemetery, which was next to the Soldiers National Cemetery that was being dedicated.
5. How many known photographs are there of Lincoln giving the speech?
There are no pictures of Lincoln giving the speech and there is one confirmed picture of him at the event called the Bachrach photo. There may be a second picture, based on recent claims about another photo that contains the image of a man with a beard and a stove top hat in the crowd near the platform.
6. Did Lincoln give the “real” Gettysburg Address?
Technically, famed orator Edward Everett was the featured speaker of the day and he spoke for about two hours before Lincoln made his brief “dedicatory remarks.”
7. Did everyone love the speech after Lincoln gave it?
Everett certainly liked it and he told Lincoln, “I should be glad, if I could flatter myself that I came as near to the central idea of the occasion, in two hours, as you did in two minutes.” Pro-Union newspapers praised it.
The speech was interrupted by applause, but how much applause and when it happened is still a subject of debate. But Democrats quickly criticized the speech, since they were Lincoln’s avowed opponents north of the Mason-Dixon line. A correspondent for the Times of London called the speech “dull and commonplace.” The Chicago Times claimed Lincoln insulted the fallen soldiers the ceremony was supposed to honor. Another critic, a Harrisburg newspaper, had harsher comments (and just apologized for them last week as the 150th anniversary approached).
A terrorist attack on Tuesday at a synagogue in Har Nof in West Jerusalem killed five people, including three U.S. citizens, and injured several others. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) – one of six active designated foreign terrorist organizations – has claimed responsibility, though this remains unverified. This attack is in addition to several acts of violence which have taken place in the past two months in and around Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Each of these attacks occurred at a soft target. We have no information that any of the American victims were targeted because they were American citizens.
Today’s incident differs from recent attacks, potentially demonstrating low-level coordination to attack a pre-identified soft target as opposed to an opportunistic random act of violence. While we cannot predict where and when attacks may take place, we have consistently seen a cycle of violence in East Jerusalem neighborhoods following incidents like the one today.
In addition, U.S. government officials are restricted from using the Jerusalem Light Rail north of French Hill through December 23 at 6:00 p.m.
The current dynamic security environment underscores the importance of situational awareness, especially in crowded public places that may have minimal overt police presence. We advise that you monitor local media outlets for current information.
What is a Soft Target?
The State Department considers soft targets to include places where people live, congregate, shop or visit, including hotels, clubs, restaurants, shopping centers, identifiable Western businesses, housing compounds, transportation systems, places of worship, schools, or public recreation events, often with little or no security presence.
Making Yourself a Harder Target
We advise taking steps to make yourself a “harder target” and raise your situational awareness when frequenting these areas; make your routes, arrival and departure times unpredictable, ensure a colleague, friend or family member is aware of your travel, and report suspicious activity to local authorities.
We strongly recommend that U.S. citizens traveling to or residing in Israel, Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza enroll in the Department of State’s Smart Traveler Enrollment Program (STEP) . STEP enrollment gives you the latest security updates, and makes it easier for the U.S. embassy or nearest U.S. consulate to contact you in an emergency. If you don’t have Internet access, enroll directly with the nearest U.S. embassy or consulate.
Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed revenge on the Palestinians responsible for the attack on the Jerusalem synagogue, pledging to demolish the homes of the men involved.
Speaking just hours after the attack, which claimed the lives of five people, he said he would ‘settle the score with every terrorist’, claiming those who wanted to force the Israeli people out of Jerusalem would not succeed.
He said: ‘We are in a battle over Jerusalem, our eternal capital.’
Addressing the nation, Mr Nethanyahu said: ‘We are at the height of an ongoing terror attack focused on Jerusalem.
‘This evening, I ordered the destruction of the houses of the Palestinians who carried out this massacre and to speed up the demolition of those who carried out previous attack.’
He said: ‘Citizens of Israel, I call on you to demonstrate great vigilance and to respect the law because the state will bring to justice all the terrorists and those who dispatch them.
‘It is forbidden for anyone to take the law into their own hands, even if tempers are high and even if you’re burning with anger.”
He linked the attack to inflammatory statements about the flashpoint Al-Aqsa mosque compound made by the Palestinian Authority, the Islamist Hamas movement and Israel’s Islamic Movement, a religious advocacy group.
Known to Jews as the Temple Mount, the mosque compound is sacred to both faiths and one of the most sensitive sites in the Middle East.
‘Hamas, the Islamic Movement and the Palestinian Authority are spreading no end of libels… against the state of Israel.
‘They say that the Jews are defiling the Temple Mount, they say that we are planning to destroy the holy places there, that we are intending to change the prayer rites there.
‘It’s all a lie. And these lies have already cost a very high price..
‘Today more victims were added to their number due to this crazy blood libel.’
The Rev. Al Sharpton, who came to prominence as an imposing figure in a track suit, shouting indignantly at the powerful, stood quietly on a stage last month at the Four Seasons restaurant, his now slender frame wrapped in a finely tailored suit, as men in power lined up to exclaim their admiration for him.
Mayor Bill de Blasio and Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo hailed him as a civil rights icon. President Obama sent an aide to read a message commending Mr. Sharpton’s “dedication to the righteous cause of perfecting our union.” Major corporations sponsored the lavish affair.
It was billed as a “party for a cause,” in honor of Mr. Sharpton’s 60th birthday. But more than a birthday celebration, or a fund-raiser for his nonprofit advocacy group National Action Network, the event in Manhattan seemed to mark the completion of Mr. Sharpton’s decades of transition from consummate outsider to improbable insider.
“I’ve been able to reach from the streets to the suites,” he said that night.
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President Obama and Mr. Sharpton, the founder and president of the National Action Network, at the organization’s national convention in April.
Credit Pool photo by Julia Xanthos
Indeed, Mr. Sharpton’s influence and visibility have reached new heights this year, fueled by his close relationships with the mayor and the president.
Obscured in his ascent, however, has been his troubling financial past, which continues to shadow his present.
Mr. Sharpton has regularly sidestepped the sorts of obligations most people see as inevitable, like taxes, rent and other bills. Records reviewed by The New York Times show more than $4.5 million in current state and federal tax liens against him and his for-profit businesses. And though he said in recent interviews that he was paying both down, his balance with the state, at least, has actually grown in recent years. His National Action Network appears to have been sustained for years by not paying federal payroll taxes on its employees.
With the tax liability outstanding, Mr. Sharpton traveled first class and collected a sizable salary, the kind of practice by nonprofit groups that the United States Treasury’s inspector general for tax administration recently characterized as “abusive,” or “potentially criminal” if the failure to turn over or collect taxes is willful.
Mr. Sharpton and the National Action Network have repeatedly failed to pay travel agencies, hotels and landlords. He has leaned on the generosity of friends and sometimes even the organization, intermingling its finances with his own to cover his daughters’ private school tuition.
He has been in the news as much as ever this year, becoming a prominent advocate on behalf of the families of Eric Garner, a Staten Island man who died in police custody, and Michael Brown, the unarmed black teenager who was killed by a white police officer in Ferguson, Mo. He also has a daily platform through his show on MSNBC.
Behind the scenes, he has consulted with the mayor and the president on matters of race and civil rights and even the occasional high-level appointment. He was among a small group at the White House when Mr. Obama announced his nomination of Loretta E. Lynch, the United States attorney for the Eastern District of New York, to become the next attorney general.
Mr. Sharpton’s newly found insider status represents a potential financial boon for him, furnishing him with new credibility and a surge in donations. His politician-heavy birthday party, at one of New York City’s most expensive restaurants, was billed as a fund-raiser to help his organization. Mr. Obama also spoke at the organization’s convention in April, its primary fund-raising event.
But the recent troubles of Rachel Noerdlinger, Mr. Sharpton’s closest aide for many years and more recently a top official in the de Blasio administration, served as a reminder of Mr. Sharpton’s fraught history and how easily it can spill over into the corridors of power in which he now travels.
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Mayor Bill de Blasio; the first lady, Chirlane McCray; Rachel Noerdlinger; and Mr. Sharpton at his National Action Network House of Justice in Harlem on Jan. 20 for the announcement of Ms. Noerdlinger’s appointment as Ms. McCray’s chief of staff.Credit Rob Bennett/Office of the Mayor
Ms. Noerdlinger took a leave of absence from her post on Monday, after the arrest of her teenage son on trespassing charges. The decision capped weeks of scrutiny after news accounts revealed that she had failed to disclose a live-in boyfriend with an extensive criminal record on a background questionnaire when she became the top adviser to Mr. de Blasio’s wife, Chirlane McCray. The omission was unrelated to Mr. Sharpton, but it is the kind of paperwork oversight that has been a trademark of his nonprofit, where Ms. Noerdlinger built her career.
Mr. Sharpton acknowledged his financial troubles in recent telephone interviews. He said all of the debts were being paid, thanks to vastly increased revenues from donors. And he pointed out that he had lent the organization money himself, while at times not taking a salary.
“You can say I’m not a great administrator,” he said. “You can’t say that I’m not committed.”
Often Strident Language
Mr. Sharpton got his start preaching in Brooklyn churches at age 4. As a young man, he worked at the side of the soul singer James Brown, where he met a backup singer, Kathy, who would become his wife. By the 1980s, however, he was becoming increasingly involved in fiery activism on behalf of black people hurt by the police or members of other racial groups, sometimes making outlandish accusations. He accused an upstate New York prosecutor, Steven A. Pagones, of being part of a group of white men whom he said had abducted and raped the teenager Tawana Brawley, an allegation that a grand jury report showed had been fabricated.
He often used strident language that many saw as inflaming racial tensions. During rallies at the Slave Theater in Brooklyn, he characterized black people who disagreed with him as “yellow niggers” and called white people “crackers.” After a car in a prominent Hasidic rabbi’s motorcade jumped a curb in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn and killed a 7-year-old black boy in 1991, Mr. Sharpton referred to the neighborhood’s Hasidic Jews as “diamond merchants.” In 1995, he referred to a Harlem businessman who wanted to expand his store into a space that had been occupied by black-owned business as a “white interloper.”
Problems keeping his personal and professional affairs in order have threatened Mr. Sharpton’s rise from the streets for decades.
In 1990, he was acquitted of felony charges that he stole $250,000 from his youth group. Then in 1993 he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor for failing to file a state income tax return. Later, the authorities discovered that one of Mr. Sharpton’s for-profit companies, Raw Talent, which he used as a repository for money from speaking engagements, was also not paying taxes, a failure that continued for years.
In 1998, Mr. Sharpton lost a defamation suit brought by Mr. Pagones and was ordered to pay a judgment of $65,000. He said he did not have enough money to pay all at once, and after years of a slow trickle of money from wage garnishments, Mr. Sharpton was forced to testify under oath about his finances.
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Mr. Sharpton helped lead a march from Far Rockaway to Broad Channel, Queens, in 1998 to protest a racially offensive float at a Labor Day parade.Credit Edward Keating/The New York Times
He said he had no assets, save for a watch and a ring. Everything else, including some of his suits, was owned by a for-profit business, Revals Communications, he said. He testified that he put nearly all of his $73,000 in take-home pay from the National Action Network into Revals, which in turn paid many of his expenses, including his daughters’ private school tuition and some of the rent on his house. Even though state law prohibits nonprofits from making loans to officers, Mr. Sharpton said National Action Network had also once lent him money to cover his daughters’ tuition.
During the deposition, Mr. Sharpton coyly suggested he was not really sure who owned the Brooklyn house where he lived with his wife and two daughters.
Mr. Sharpton had performed the wedding ceremony of Mr. Jordan’s daughter at Zoe Ministries, the Upper West Side church where Mr. Jordan is the pastor. Mr. Jordan, who makes millions of dollars a year offering “prophecies” that predict the futures of his followers, and his wife, Debra, had been among only three couples to give the maximum allowable amount to Mr. Sharpton’s 1997 mayoral campaign, records show.
It also appears from property records that Mr. Sharpton got a deal on the six-bedroom house, which he said at the time he wanted in order to dispel questions of his residency in the city before starting his mayoral campaign. He testified that he paid $1,500 a month. He moved there from a two-bedroom apartment in Englewood, N.J., where years earlier he had been paying the same amount, according to court records.
But he still insisted he could not pay off the Pagones judgment. In 2001, friends paid it for him.
With the National Action Network’s finances always tenuous, that year it quietly paid $70,000 toward the judgment against one of Mr. Sharpton’s co-defendants in the case, Alton H. Maddox Jr., a lawyer who was suspended for refusing to cooperate with a grievance committee investigating his conduct in the Brawley case. Mr. Sharpton acknowledged the payment in an interview last week, saying the nonprofit’s board had supported the idea that Ms. Brawley deserved to be represented. Tax lawyers told The Times that because the payment benefited just one person, it could have led the Internal Revenue Service to revoke the group’s nonprofit status.
A Move Into the Mainstream
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The house at 1902 Ditmas Avenue that Mr. Sharpton rented from E. Bernard Johnson in the 1990s.
Credit Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times
Even with his recurring legal problems, Mr. Sharpton was by then already evolving into more of a mainstream figure. He had expressed regret for some of his past incendiary comments and surprised many with his performances in the 1992 and 1994 United States Senate races and his 1997 mayoral campaign. Mr. Sharpton received national exposure with his adroit performance in the debates among the Democratic candidates for president in the 2004 race.
But the messiness of his financial affairs continued to lurk in the background.
With Mr. Sharpton focused on the 2004 presidential race, National Action Network’s finances were reaching crisis levels, tax documents and other public records show. The group’s revenues totaled just over $1 million in 2004, about half of what they had been two years earlier. Nevertheless, it picked up expenses from Mr. Sharpton’s presidential bid: $181,115 in consulting and other costs that should have been charged to his campaign, the Federal Election Commission later found. The group also faced court judgments for several hundred thousand dollars in unpaid office rent and hotel bills.
To stay afloat, the nonprofit became reliant on money that was supposed to go to payroll taxes, according to its financial statements. The amount National Action Network underpaid the federal government in taxes went from about $900,000 in 2003 to almost $1.9 million by 2006, records show. Mr. Sharpton, making more money from a new radio contract, tried to help by forgoing a salary from 2006 through 2008 and giving the organization a $200,000 no-interest loan.
In financial statements for 2007 and 2008, the group’s accountant noted that the organization’s “existence has been dependent upon” loans from Mr. Sharpton and “the nonpayment of payroll tax obligations.”
“These circumstances create substantial doubt about the organization’s ability to continue as a going concern,” the accountant wrote.
In 2009, when the group still owed $1.1 million in overdue payroll taxes, Mr. Sharpton began collecting a salary of $250,000 from National Action Network. The recent Treasury report that called that sort of practice abusive also said only 1,200 organizations in the nation owed more than $100,000 in unpaid payroll taxes, which would put Mr. Sharpton’s group among the most delinquent nonprofit organizations in the nation.
Mr. Sharpton denied in a recent interview that the payroll tax shortfall was intentional. Contradicting the statements by the group’s accountants that this was how the organization was surviving, he said the underpayment stemmed from disagreements over how to classify certain workers, after the I.R.S. began investigating the group in late 2007. The agency demanded that some people who were working as independent contractors be treated as employees, he said, so the organization needed to retroactively turn over their payroll taxes.
“It cost us a lot to go through the investigation,” Mr. Sharpton said. “If we didn’t have the legal fees, we could have paid all the taxes.”
At a protest rally on Staten Island in August, a besuited and slimmed-down Rev. Al Sharpton looked back over his career in political activism, spanning more than a quarter of a century.
Video by Stephen Farrell on Publish Date November 18, 2014.
On the personal front, Mr. Sharpton separated from his wife, Kathy, in 2004 and moved to an apartment in Manhattan. She stayed in the Brooklyn house owned by the Jordans. Once again, even though the landlord was a friend, problems arose paying the rent.
In 2006, the Jordans sued the Sharptons for $56,000 in Brooklyn Housing Court. They did so again in 2007 for $42,000. The outcome of the suits is not clear. Mr. Jordan and his lawyer did not return calls for comment.
There were apparently no hard feelings. The two men have helped each other in numerous public appearances and explored a partnership in a multilevel marketing company.
Today, Mr. Sharpton still faces personal federal tax liens of more than $3 million, and state tax liens of $777,657, according to records. Raw Talent and Revals Communications owe another $717,329 on state and federal tax liens.
Mr. Sharpton said the federal liens resulted from a demand by the I.R.S. that he pay taxes on earnings from speaking engagements that he had turned over to National Action Network. He said he was up to date on payment plans for both the federal and state liens, so, he said, the outstanding balance was much lower than records showed.
But according to state officials, his balance on the state liens is actually $220,000 greater now than when they were first filed during the years 2008 through 2010. A spokesman for the State Department of Taxation and Finance said state law did not allow him to provide any further details.
An I.R.S. spokesman said federal law prohibited the agency from providing any information about individual taxpayers.
National Action Network’s revenue has increased sharply, to more than $4 million in both 2011 and 2012, the year of the group’s most recent tax filing.
Much of that revenue appears to be from large corporate sponsors. A person who handled solicitations at a company that has supported the group said National Action Network often requested $50,000 or $100,000 to sponsor events.
Mr. Sharpton said his birthday party grossed about $1 million, enough that he expected to be able to clear up the organization’s tax debts, removing a cloud that has long hung over the group and himself.
“I think it shows we were able to continue to fund-raise, despite it being challenging,” he said. “We were able to turn it around.”
