Private: A Tangled Web?: Tony Mauro on Jay Sekulow's Finances

Tony Mauro of Legal Times recently posted a long investigative piece on Jay Sekulow, chief counsel for Pat Robertson's American Center for Law and Justice. The piece takes a searching look at Sekulow's work as a leading Supreme Court litigator on behalf of politically conservative religious causes and as one of the "four horsemen" promoting President Bush's judicial nominees, as well as the manner in which he is paid for that work, suggesting, Mauro argues:

a "lifestyle [that] is at odds with his role as the head of a charitable organization that solicits small donations for legal work in God's name."

Sekulow is well known as a skilled litigator and adept fundraiser, and has been perhaps the nation's most outspoken proponent of President Bush's Supreme Court nominations. He doggedly championed Harriet Miers even as a bipartisan chorus raised concerns about her suitability to serve on the High Court. He characterized the nomination of Samuel Alito as "a grand slam." But Mauro suggests that Sekulow may be hitting a few foul balls when it comes to his dealings with the evangelical organizations that pay his salary.
Specifically, Mauro reports on the complex, overlapping layers of compensation that have flowed to Sekulow through the ACLJ, as well as a group called Christian Advocates Serving Evangelism (CASE), and Sekulow's own Center for Law and Justice (CLJ). While the ACLJ and CASE paid Sekulow a total of $483,825 in 2002, Mauro reports, funding streams that benefit Sekulow or his realtives have been shifted in recent years so that payments are made to the CLJ instead. In 2003, the ACLJ and CASE (both of which employ Sekulow's brother Gary as their chief financial officer) paid the CLJ about $1.36 million. Sekulow told Legal Times that his annual salary as a private contractor with CLJ is now "above $600,000."

The bottom line: Sekulow performs legal services as before, but now he is paid as an outside contractor, blurring the exact compensation he personally receives from the groups. One former employee quotes Sekulow as saying, before the law firm was created, "We've got to get the salaries off the 990s [a reference to IRS Form 990, upon which nonprofit organizations are required to report certain of their financial arrangements, including the salaries of top officials]." Sekulow denies making that statement.

According to Mauro, if the figure for his compensation is accurate, Sekulow would be the 13th-highest-paid executive of a charitable organization in the United States - just below the United Way's CEO, Brian Gallagher - according to a ranking by the American Institute of Philanthropy, another charity watchdog group.
The level of funding flowing to Sekulow and his family from these entities is sufficiently large that some ACLJ supporters have been alienated by what they perceive as excess, according to Mauro.

"Some of us truly believed God told us to serve Jay," says one former employee, who requested anonymity out of fear of reprisal. "But not to help him live like Louis XIV. We are coming forward because we need to believe there is fairness in this world."

Mauro also notes that CASE has "paid for or subsidized" three homes used by Sekulow and his family. Additionally, according to Mauro, Sekulow (who frequently argues before the Court) used a CASE-owned plane in 1998 to fly Justice Antonin Scalia to Regent University, where Scalia was scheduled to give a talk. Contacted by Mauro, neither Justice Scalia nor Regent founder Pat Robertson recalled the details of the flight. Sekulow, though, characterized the trip as "very pleasant."