Sharpton has more than $4.5 million in current state and federal tax liens against him and his businesses. His National Action Network has repeatedly failed to pay travel agencies, hotels, and landlords, records show. Sharpton has allegedly sought to keep his nonprofit afloat with money that was supposed to go to payroll taxes, although he contends that the payroll tax shortfall was not intentional. The reverend accused an upstate New York prosecutor, Steven Pagones, of being part of a group of white men who raped teenager Tawana Brawley in 1987. A grand jury found overwhelming evidence that the rape allegation had been fabricated. Pagones sued Sharpton for defamation and won a judgment of $65,000. Sharpton reportedly paid the judgment with money raised by his supporters. Sharpton has frequently sparked controversy with his strident language. During a rally in Brooklyn, he called white people crackers. After a car in a Hasidic rabbis motorcade killed a 7-year-old black boy in Brooklyn in 1991, Sharpton referred to the Hasidic Jews as diamond merchants and said if the Jews want to get it on, tell them to pin their yarmulkes back and come over to my house. Shortly afterward, an innocent Hasidic Jewish student visiting the area from Australia was set upon by a mob and stabbed to death. In 1995, an African-American Pentecostal church in Harlem, New York, asked a Jewish tenant of one of its properties, Freddies Fashion Mart, to evict a black-run record store that was subletting part of the property. Sharpton showed up outside Freddies vowing to a crowd: We will not stand by and allow them to move this brother so that some white interloper can expand his business. Two weeks before Christmas that year, Freddies was attacked by a man in the crowd who shot several customers and then set fire to the building with a flammable liquid, killing seven employees. Sharpton subsequently apologized for his white interloper remark, but vehemently denied responsibility for the violence. Read Latest Breaking News from Newsmax Newsmax/…/sharpton-fi…/2014/12/09/id/612015/…
Posted on: Thu, 11 Dec 2014 02:17:50 +0000
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