Air America - Graves Goes on Record at politburo diktat 2.0

Air America - Graves Goes on Record

While some have called the Air America story “under-sourced,” and only coming from the supposedly non-Google-able Bronx News, today’s New York Sun interviews Jeannette Graves, president of the Bronx-based Gloria Wise Boys & Girls Club organization’s executive committee. Ms. Graves notes that Air America took (”borrowed,” or “received via wire transfer”) at least $613,000 from the kids’ charity.

The top executive at a Bronx youth organization said yesterday that the former director of Air America Radio received more than $800,000 in loans for himself and the radio network from the nonprofit organization while serving as its development director.

Some of the transfers, according to the president of the Bronx-based Gloria Wise Boys & Girls Club organization’s executive committee, Jeannette Graves, occurred when the development director, Evan Montvel Cohen, who for a time served simultaneously as the liberal radio network’s director, appealed to the organization for two loans worth $35,000. Another member of the executive committee said Mr. Cohen told the executive director of the organization that he needed the money to pay for chemotherapy for himself and other medical expenses for his ill father.

Ms. Graves said that Mr. Cohen also received another $213,000 loan for Air America in a check that was approved without her authorization and stamped with an imprint of her signature, and that the club wired more than $400,000 to him without her knowledge. …

After the initial two loans, Ms. Graves said that just before the launch of Air America her organization lent the network another $213,000, authorized with a rubber stamp of her signature on a document she said she never saw. More recently, Ms. Graves said, Gloria Wise made a wire transfer of at least $400,000 to Air America without her knowledge.

In addition, according to Ms. Graves, the longtime executive director of Gloria Wise, Charles Rosen, later told the board he had lent an additional $35,000 of the organization’s funds to Mr. Cohen for medical expenses. According to Ms. Capell, the board member, Mr. Cohen told Mr. Rosen he needed $25,000 to pay for chemotherapy. Mr. Cohen told associates that he recovered from brain cancer, according to Ms. Capell. Later, Mr. Cohen asked for $10,000 - which he was lent - be cause his father, a businessman in Asia, was “gravely ill,” Ms. Capell said.

I wonder how Barbara at Mahablog will respond to this additional, independently sourced, attributed report, from a newspaper whose existence even she cannot deny. Probably in the cowardly way she always responds to unpleasant facts - by deleting and blocking comments and trackbacks.

Ongoing coverage of the Air America scandal:
Captain Ed
Brian Maloney
Michelle Malkin