Sean Hannity On The Loose

BILL BERKOWITZ FOR BUZZFLASH

Hannity on the Loose:  A best-selling book, an expansive book tour and a charity gone rogue

While Sean Hannity’s new book, “Conservative Victory: Defeating Obama's Radical Agenda” will no doubt hit the best-seller list, his so-called Freedom Concerts may be landing on another list; a list of organizations not to be trusted with the public’s donations.  

The other day I received an email from the Heritage Foundation -- signed by its president Edward Fuelner -- letting me know that Sean Hannity’s new book has been released. The book, according to Fuelner, “spells out exactly what needs to be done to rescue America from the clutches of a destructive leftist policy agenda.” And make no mistake about it, Conservative Victory: Defeating Obama's Radical Agenda, will be on the best-seller lists before you’ve finished your first cup of coffee on Monday morning. (As of Thursday, April 1, the book was ranked #2 in Amazon’s “Best Sellers in Books” category; #33 in sales rank at Barnes & Noble; and there was only “1 left in stock” over at Powell’s Books.)

Fuelner’s email said not a thing about a hot little scandal that appears to be brewing about “Sean’s” keppele (little head). More on that later. Meanwhile back to Fuelner’s missive.
Sean – the Heritage Foundation calls him Sean because he is “our friend” and a “true ally” of the conservative Washington, D.C.-based think tank – “issues a stirring call to action for every citizen who is ready to defeat the radical liberal activism that has come to mark the Obama administration and lawmakers on Capitol Hill — and that threaten America's future well-being. “ Fuelner emphatically suggests that you “should order your copy today! (http://www.hannity.com/pages/conservative-victory)”

Hannity – I call him by his last name because he is neither my “friend” nor “ally,” although he was nice enough to mention me in one of his earlier books – tears the lid off the Obama Administration’s march toward _______ (you fill in the blank). In his first book in six years (many thanks for sparing us), he “carefully documents the president’s affiliation with radical theology [might we expect a note or two on Rev. Jeremiah Wright], his advisers’ history of Marxist activism [is there a Van Jones in this picture], his fight against independent media voices [will Hannity decry the president’s attack on Fox?], and his support for leftist dictators [he did accept a book from Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez!]. Sean exposes their campaign to dismantle the American free-market system and forfeit our national sovereignty.”

If Hannity stopped there, he would have already made an extraordinary contribution toward understanding the historical period we are living through. “But he doesn't stop there,” Fuelner promises. “Sean also draws on the examples of Ronald Reagan and the GOP’s Contract with America to show how conservatives can unite behind this country’s most cherished principles — our nation’s First Principles — and act now to get America back on the right track while we still can.” Uh, pardon me, but is that a veiled reference to Team Obama’s oft-heard election slogan “Yes we can?”

In case we’ve forgotten, Fuelner reminds us that the partnership between Heritage and Hannity goes all the way back to … three years ago: “You may recall that The Heritage Foundation began our radio partnership with Sean three years ago in a campaign that asked ‘What Would Reagan Do?’ Ronald Reagan proved that when our leaders govern according to our conservative First Principles, America flourishes.”

Therefore, it was only “fitting that Sean's first stop on his book tour … [was] at an event at the Ronald Reagan Library … [on] March 30.” And, over the next few weeks Hannity will be making stops in Salt Lake City; Pittsburgh, Penn.; Minneapolis, Minn., where special guests include Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachmann, Tim Pawlenty, and uber-lobbyist Jack Abramoff’s pal Ralph Reed; Grand Rapids, Mich. (will Michael Moore show up? -- after all the sanest, most civil interview with a progressive/leftist that I’ve ever seen on the Hannity program – and I do admit to favoring Rachel Maddow in that timeslot -- was the night he had Moore on); Atlanta, Ga., where special guests include the newly minted CNN contributor, Erick Erickson, former White House press secretary Dana Perino, and the ever-illuminating spinmeister, Frank Luntz; Orlando, Fla., where special guests include GOP senatorial candidate Marco Rubio and former Notre Dame University (among others) football coach Lou Holtz; and several other cities.

Where does the money that Hannity and Oliver North has raised for veteran’s families really go?

Meanwhile, while Hannity is making the rounds and selling oodles of books, another Washington, D.C.-based organization is sorta trying to throw another kind of book at the Seanster.

On March 29, the day before Hannity’s book hit the streets, CREW (Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington), filed complaints with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) against Sean Hannity, his Freedom Concerts, the Freedom Alliance (http://www.freedomalliance.org/) and Lt. Col. Oliver North.

According to a CREW press release, the “FTC complaint alleges Hannity and Freedom Concerts have engaged in illegal and deceptive marketing practices by suggesting that all money generated by ticket sales for the Freedom Concerts he sponsors each summer goes to scholarships for children of killed and wounded service members.

“In fact, the concerts are staged by Premiere Marketing, which is headed by Duane Ward – also the head of Premiere Speakers Bureau, which exclusively represents Mr. Hannity and Lt. Col. North. After staging the concerts, Premiere donates an unknown portion of the concert proceeds to the Freedom Alliance,” the release notes (http://citizensforethics.org/node/44511).

In promoting the concerts, Hannity has claimed that “Every penny, 100 percent of the donations are applied to the Freedom Alliance scholarship fund.” North has made similar statements: “There’s no overhead. There’s no expenses taken out. Every penny that’s donated or that’s raised through things like the Freedom Concerts goes to the scholarship fund.” 

Freedom Alliance’s chairman, Tom Kilgannon, said that there was "absolutely no merit to the scurrilous charges." His brief statement pledged that "the smear-mongers who have launched this politically motivated witch hunt against Freedom Alliance will be proven wrong as we aggressively defend ourselves in the days and weeks ahead."

According to Salon’s Joe Conason, “Kilgannon offered no further detail than a week earlier, when he and North posted an answer to similar accusations by conservative blogger Debbie Schlussel, who quoted inside sources saying that Hannity squandered funds supposedly raised to benefit veterans and their children. She also performed her own examination of the charity's tax returns, but both Hannity and Kilgannon rebuffed her attempts to question them about her troubling discoveries.”

Conason reported that “At the heart of the CREW complaints -- and the questions raised about the Freedom Alliance by Schlussel -- is how much of the total that Hannity and North promised to devote to scholarships for the children of wounded and deceased veterans was spent on that worthy purpose. The data compiled by CREW's researchers from Freedom Alliance's own IRS 990 forms show that in every year since 2003, when the concert tours began, the organization has spent more on postage and printing combined (and on salaries) than on "grants" -- and far more on ‘expenses.'

“In 2007, for example, the charity collected nearly $12.5 million in revenue -- of which $1 million was spent on ‘fundraising,’ $200,000 on consulting, $1.4 million on postage, $1.1 million on printing, and $500,000 on ‘conferences.’ Another $1.4 million went to salaries. But that year, the Freedom Alliance reported making grants of only $895,347, while retaining ‘net assets’ of over $19 million.”

Conason also pointed out that despite Kilgannon’s protestations, the American Institute of Philanthropy’s -- “the gold standard” of charity regulators -- has “graded” Freedom Alliance “dismally low” in recent years. According to CREW, the organization received a “D” in both December 2008 and 2009, a slight improvement over the "F" it received in both December 2006 and December 2007.

A CREW spokesperson pointed out that an AIP official noted that "Freedom Alliance has repeatedly failed to respond to our requests for financial information, which is why they are listed with 'closed-book' status in the [AIP] Guide. The closed-book status does not affect the letter grade we assign to a charity. However, many donors like to consider a charity's willingness to be transparent when considering whether or not a given charity is worthy of their donation, so we list a charity's open or closed-book status as additional information."

The group’s annual series of fundraising "Freedom Concerts" tour is scheduled to kick off in New Jersey in August, headlined by Lynyrd Skynyrd and the Charlie Daniels Band.

Let The Sun Shine In......