Where’s the money going?

The Associated Press reported on July 21, 2006, that the Minutemen Civil Defense Corps, an organization founded 15 months ago, has no way to account for the donations that the organization has received.  The story is here.

The AP story references a Washington Times story on the same subject.  That story, by Jerry Seper, is here.  Seper writes:

[President Chris] Simcox, in an interview last week with The Washington Times, estimated that about $1.6 million in donations have been collected, all of it handled through the Herndon-based Declaration Alliance, founded and chaired by Mr. Keyes. He said the donations, solicited on the group’s Web site and during cross-country appearances, included $1 million directly to MCDC and $600,000 for a fence on the U.S.-Mexico border.
    But Mr. Simcox’s numbers could not be independently verified, including claims in a 3,961-word statement issued after the interview that he spent $160,000 on “our last two monthlong border-watch operations.”
    The Minuteman organization has not made any financial statements or fundraising records public since its April 2005 creation. It also has sought and received extensions of its federal reporting requirements and has not given the Minuteman leadership, its volunteers or donors any official accounting. A financial statement promised to The Times by Mr. Simcox for May was never delivered.

The organization’s website continues to solicit donations, but makes no mention of the Washington Times story or the AP story, nor does it  attempt to provide any account as to how donations made to date have actually been spent.

Meanwhile, the official website for the Minutemen Project (a likeminded group which also solicits donations) goes out of its way to stress that they are not affiliated with the Minutemen Civil Defense Corps.  I guess they are worried that an ill-informed public might leap to facile but inaccurate conclusions.

Live by the sword…..

-jmc