Gottlieb’s Private Inurement and Benefit Problem
In Florida, as everybody knows, Disney is suing DeSatan because DeSatan brought government power down on Disney after Disney had the unmitigated gumption to speak while woke. And then DeSatan even bragged about what he did on the campaign trail and in his book! “Florida is where woke [speech] comes to die.” Way over at the other corner of the country Alan Gottlieb, a gun enthusiast, nonprofit fiduciary, author, nuclear engineer, and gun rights businessman is suing a gubernatorial candidate, the latter currently serving as Attorney General, claiming that the AG is wielding his governmental power to investigate him and his nonprofit organizations because the AG doesn’t like Alan Gottlieb’s speech in favor of gun rights.
The funny thing is, Disney could have copied Gottlieb’s complaint and vice versa. Disney claims, pointing to factual evidence galore, that DeSatan is just mad at Disney’s speech; Gottlieb claims, without any facts other than the investigation itself, that the AG is just mad at Gottlieb’s speech. Here is the substantive difference. Disney is right, Gottlieb is wrong. That’s it and never mind ripeness.
Everybody knows what precipitated Florida Mussolini to enact laws against Disney’s interests. Here is how the WSJ describes the what precipitated the AG’s investigation of Gottlieb:
The Second Amendment Foundation, a small but influential organization involved in scores of federal lawsuits to expand gun rights, is being investigated by the Washington state attorney general’s office, with the organization saying investigators have examined transactions involving its founder.
The nonprofit, its founder and top executive, Alan Gottlieb, and other related entities this week sued the attorney general’s office, saying the probe is politically motivated. State investigators seem to have shifting legal theories, the lawsuit claimed, among them that Mr. Gottlieb was “unjustly enriching himself.” In the lawsuit, the plaintiffs denied any wrongdoing.
A review of the tax filings of the Second Amendment Foundation and the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, another nonprofit run by Mr. Gottlieb, shows what legal specialists called an unusual series of dealings with private entities owned by or controlled by Mr. Gottlieb.
The nonprofits rent space in a Bellevue, Wash., office building that is owned by Mr. Gottlieb and his wife, the filings show. The organizations’ biggest vendors include a direct-mail company Mr. Gottlieb owns, to which they each pay hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. The groups pay similar sums for back-office services to another company that Mr. Gottlieb founded and helps run.
The two nonprofits have paid Mr. Gottlieb, family members or entities associated with him at least $22 million from 2010 through 2021, amounting to about 27 cents of every dollar raised by the two organizations over that period, a review of the nonprofits’ filings by The Wall Street Journal shows.
In an interview, Mr. Gottlieb said he has complied with all nonprofit laws and has been transparent about the related-party transactions in the groups’ annual filings. He said he abstains from board decisions concerning his private entities. None of his family members returned messages seeking comment.
Even Ray Charles can see there is something here that ought to be explained, if nothing else. The Service should join in, as a matter of fact, but Second Amendment Foundation is a conservative group and ain’t nobody in TE/GE trying to lose their job for doing their job right now. Is it just me, by the way, or are civil complaints more like press releases or campaign speeches these days? Gottlieb’s complaint is about half the length of Disney’s complaint, perhaps because there are so many supporting facts for Disney and hardly any for Gottlieb. But neither complaints can be described as “short and plain” statements.
darryll jones