Bombshell Report Drops on Raphael Warnock, Herschel Walker Has Amazing Response

[Eupher]

Lots of Twatter in this one. 

It's October and the "October Surprises" are just now rolling in. But is anyone really surprised by the length and breadth of Wifebeater Warnock's hold on money and desire for yet more power? I didn't think so.

If one-tenth of this story is true, Wifebeater Warnock should be run out of town on a rail. Herschel Walker shouldn't be considered a parliamentarian by any means, but odds are his corruption levels don't come close to those of Wifebeater Warnock's. 

Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) is in a tight race with Herschel Walker to hold onto his Senate seat in Georgia.

Democrats make much of the fact that Warnock is a pastor and he’s come out in the past condemning evicting people during the pandemic.

“Unemployment benefits have expired, rent is due today, and many Georgia families are at risk of eviction in the middle of a pandemic,” Sen. Raphael Warnock (D., Ga.) wrote in a tweet in August 2020, charging that by failing to act, his political opponents were “clearly only concerned with serving their own interests.”

Sounds very sympathetic, right?

What politicians say is rarely who they truly are. But Warnock just had a bombshell report drop on him.

Warnock is the senior pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church. The Church not only gives him a salary but also gives him a $7,417-a-month housing allowance. $7,417 for housing a month? Where does he live? Beverly Hills in a house made of gold? Or is that meant to juice his salary a bit?

But when you think about how much they are shelling out for him for housing and then look at what the Church is doing regarding the low-income tenants to whom they are renting, it feels like night and day apart from those principles that Warnock was espousing.

The church is the 99 percent owner of the Columbia Tower at MLK Village in downtown Atlanta, according to documents obtained by the Washington Free Beacon, which describe the building as a home for the “chronically homeless” and those with “mental disabilities.”

A dozen eviction lawsuits were filed against Columbia Tower residents over the course of the coronavirus pandemic, the first one in February 2020 and, most recently, in September 2022. The total sum of past-due rent cited in the lawsuits is just $4,900, a figure that could have been covered by one of Warnock’s monthly housing stipends from the church.

The lawsuits were filed by Ebenezer Baptist Church’s business partner, Columbia Residential, the 1 percent owner of the building, which manages its day-to-day operations. The revelations threaten to undermine Warnock’s efforts to cast himself as an ally of struggling Georgians working to meet rent in the face of pandemic-era challenges.

One person they were trying to evict owed just $28.55.

The Free Beacon noted that the Church is not desperate for money because they had cash at the end of 2021 of $1.2 million.

Some of the tenants didn’t know the Church owned the building and were getting eviction notices for very low amounts and less than one month late. One of the tenants, Phillip White, who is a 69-year-old Vietnam veteran got an eviction notice for owing $192. “They treat me like a piece of shit. They’re not compassionate at all,” he said. The average owed by the people who got notices over the past two years during the pandemic was just $125.

At the time that was going on, Warnock was attacking his Republican opponent saying that she wasn’t protecting Georgia families because she wasn’t in favor of an eviction moratorium.

Meanwhile, the Columbia Residential founder donated $14,000 to Warnock’s 2020 Senate campaign and the building has gotten $15 million in federal and state funding because of being involved in housing the homeless. They also got $5 million in COVID funds to renovate the building in August.

The building also received $1.5 million in federal and state low-income housing credits in 2005, as well as a $2 million grant in 2007 from the Atlanta Development Authority to rehabilitate 39 of the 96 units in the building. That’s in addition to $6.6 million in HomeFlex rental assistance since 2015. HomeFlex is an Atlanta program designed to secure affordable housing units for low-income families in the city.

Because it’s owned by the Church, they also pay almost no property taxes, paying just $77.77 in property tax over seven years, according to the tax records.

One of the residents said that they “need help” and called this information bout the Church “disheartening” and “horrifying.”

The resident, who asked not to be identified, citing a fear of retaliation, said she was served an eviction lawsuit after submitting her rent just a day late. “I put in the wrong card number. The money was in the bank but it didn’t go through. The next day I rectified the situation, but they still served papers,” the resident said, adding that she ultimately paid more than $300 in court fees—a figure equivalent to about two months of rent—to make the situation go away.

“It was devastating and surprising. I know they have the ability to be patient with me and let me pay my rent. And it was paid,” the resident said. “I asked for patience, but I was totally ignored.”


Ding, ding, ding.

The Free Beacon also raises whether this shell company arrangement is trying to hide true ownership from the IRS. The Church owns the building through a shell corporation — the MLK Corporation. But they share the same address as the Ebenezer Building Foundation and the same officers. Then the front corporation that filed the lawsuits and runs the day-to-day management is Columbia Residential.

Bottom line? Democrats are big hypocrites and this is who they are. Chances that the liberal media picks this up and runs with it? Probably not likely, despite the importance of the information.

But it did get noticed by Herschel Walker, who has been facing his own issues. He had a generous response, offering to pay for the people who the Church was trying to evict.

Touché.

https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2022/10/11/bombshell-report-drops-on-raphael-warnock-herschel-walker-has-amazing-response-n641348?bcid=d519b945f8a32ba161895b1c7231c16c5fa3cd48222b27fc1e013476354174f9

[Texacon]

There's going to be some interesting elections around the country next month.

These people who won't debate their opponent are pissing me off.  I don't care if it's a republican or a democrat, you should be on a debate stage at least once and preferably, at least 3 times.

KC

[Eupher]

It gets mo betta. 

I just love October Surprises. 

Investigation Now Underway After Bombshell Report Drops on Raphael Warnock

Earlier this week, I wrote about the bombshell report that dropped about the church for which Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) works — the Ebenezer Baptist Church.

The Church pays Warnock a $7,417 monthly housing allowance, in addition to a salary. Yet the Church owns a building where they have been trying to evict tenants, even during the pandemic, as Warnock spoke out against eviction during the pandemic. The Church owns the Ebenezer Building Foundation which has identified Warnock as its principal officer on its Form 990s and says that it delegates the management duties of the Foundation to the Church.

Many of the people were being evicted for small amounts of money. The total sum owed for the dozen lawsuits filed during the pandemic was $4,900, which could have been covered by just one month of Warnock’s housing allowance. Warnock’s opponent, Herschel Walker offered to pay the rent for anyone still being evicted.

But in addition to the screaming hypocrisy in all this, there were other legal questions about what was going on here.

Now Georgia has just launched an investigation.

The Georgia Secretary of State Office’s Securities and Charities Division on Wednesday sent a letter to Ebenezer Building Foundation demanding that the charity explain why it is operating in the state without an active registration. The Ebenezer Building Foundation has reported in each of its Form 990 tax returns filed with the IRS since 2011 that it is registered to operate as a charity in Georgia. But the Georgia Securities and Charities Division told the Free Beacon that Warnock’s charity is not registered with state authorities. [….]

“The Division’s records indicate that Ebenezer Building Foundation … is not registered as a charitable organization with the State of Georgia,” an attorney with the Georgia Securities and Charities Division wrote in the letter to Kenneth Palmer, a member of the Ebenezer Baptist Church Board of Trustees.

The letter warned Palmer, who also serves as the chairman of Ebenezer Building Foundation, that soliciting charitable contributions and operating a charitable organization in Georgia without an active registration or an applicable exemption are violations of state law and will subject the charity to administrative penalties.

Georgia has given the Foundation until Nov. 2 to prove they are somehow exempt and not in violation.

That’s not all. On top of that, a watchdog group has filed a complaint with the IRS, demanding an audit for concealing the ownership by the Church of the building, the Columbia Tower at MLK Village.

“It is abundantly clear that Ebenezer Building Foundation, Inc., has violated one or more IRS laws and regulations regarding the operation of a nonprofit charity,” the National Legal and Policy Center charged in the complaint. “The IRS must conduct a full investigation and audit of the Foundation’s finances and transactions and assess appropriate civil and criminal penalties, and revoking their tax-exempt status if warranted. The public interest demands it.”

Among the alleged issues highlighted in the complaint is Ebenezer Building Foundation’s failure to report in its Form 990s that it holds a 99 percent stake in Columbia Tower through a shell company called MLK Village Corporation, which shares the same address as the church and the charity and is led by the same three officers as the charity.

“The Foundation failed to disclose MLK Village Corp as a related organization since it has had the same three registered officers since 2018,” the watchdog group said in its complaint. “In that case, they are considered a Brother/Sister organization since they are ‘controlled by the same person or persons that control the filing organization.'”

There are a lot of questions involved here and it’s big news, right before the election.

But there’s virtually no national coverage apart from Fox News; nothing by the networks shows up in a Google search. Certainly not the coverage that his opponent got for negative information about him.

https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2022/10/14/investigation-now-underway-after-bombshell-report-drops-on-raphael-warnock-n643197?bcid=d519b945f8a32ba161895b1c7231c16c5fa3cd48222b27fc1e013476354174f9

[Happy Fun Ball]

I saw "Ebenezer" in all of this and wondered if this was satire, but I guess it turns out that he really is a Scrooge.

[Eupher]

I saw "Ebenezer" in all of this and wondered if this was satire, but I guess it turns out that he really is a Scrooge.

I've seen megachurches before, but have never belonged to one. Therefore, their financial position has to be "up there" but I never would've believed that even a megachurch can afford to provide a $7,400 monthly housing allowance to any of its pastors.

I also can't believe that the church board would approve of such wasteful spending. There is no pastor on the planet worth that kind of money for a housing allowance.

I have to believe, therefore, that the amount of graft, greed and corruption associated with Wifebeater Warnock and his "church" rivals that of D.C. -- just on a smaller scale. In that sense, Warnock is a perfect senatorial candydate. He fits right in with the grifters. 

But I hope that Walker can somehow muster the skills to redeem the faith that at least some Georgians put in him and kick Wifebeater Warnock's ass right out of the Swamp. After all, he'll still be collecting his $7,400 monthly housing allowance plus his salary.

[Ralph Wiggum]

I saw "Ebenezer" in all of this and wondered if this was satire, but I guess it turns out that he really is a Scrooge.