The Reverend Al Sharpton's Rap Sheet

TAX EVASION: In a 1988 interview, Sharpton said he saw no reason why blacks should pay taxes. “If we do not have a justice system that protects us, what are we paying for?” Sharpton has faced multiple charges—and one conviction—of tax evasion.

TAWANA BRAWLY: 1987. Al Sharpton, during the infamous Tawana Brawley case, falsely accused a former assistant district attorney of raping and sodomizing Ms. Brawley. Young Tawana stated that white racists abducted, raped, and sodomized her, scrawling the initials “KKK” on her in human feces. A grand jury later found the entire incident a complete hoax. Most likely, Ms. Brawley, afraid of punishment for staying out too late, fabricated the entire story. This did not stop Reverend Al Sharpton, who accused Pagones an assistant district attorney, of the crime. “We stated openly that Steven Pagones did it. If we’re lying, sue us, so we can go into court with you and prove you did it. Sue us—sue us right now.”

Pagones did. After receiving death threats, and threats against his child, Pagones sued Sharpton and two others for defamation. A jury unanimously concluded that Sharpton defamed Pagones, ordering Sharpton to pay $65,000 to Pagones. The Reverend promptly announced his intention not to pay. A couple years later, Sharpton’s buddies passed the hat and paid off Sharpton’s debt, which totaled $87,000 with interest and penalties. To this day, never having paid one penny of his own to Pagones, Sharpton refuses to apologize, “I did what I believed….They are asking me to grovel. They want black children to say they forced a black man coming out of the hard-core ghetto to his knees….Once you begin bending, it’s ‘did you bend today?’ or ‘I missed the apology, say it again.’ Once you start compromising, you lose respect for yourself.”

CENTRAL PARK JOGGER: In 1989 “the jogger,” a young white woman, was monstrously raped and nearly beaten to death in Central Park. Sharpton insisted—despite the defendants’ confessions—that her black attackers were innocent, modern-day Scottsboro Boys trapped in “a fit of racial hysteria.” Sharpton charged that the jogger’s boyfriend did it, and organized protests outside the courthouse, chanting, “The boyfriend did it!” and denouncing the victim as “Whore!” He brought Tawana Brawley to the trial, to show her “white justice” and arranged for her to meet the attackers. Sharpton appealed for a psychiatrist to examine the victim, generously saying, “It doesn’t even have to be a black psychiatrist….We’re not endorsing the damage to the girl—if there was this damage.” (While it doesn’t excuse his calling the victim a “whore” and denigrating any damage to her, or his accusations against the boyfriend, the convictions of the accused were eventually vacated, despite their taped confessions, after another man—whose DNA matched—confessed to the rape in 2002.)

CROWN HEIGHTS/ “DIAMOND MERCHANTS”: In 1991, Gavin Cato, a seven-year-old black child was killed in a traffic accident in Crown Heights (in Brooklyn), when a car driven by a Hasidic Jew went out of control. Sharpton turned it into a racial incident. Sharpton led 400 protesters through the Jewish section of Crown Heights, with one protester holding a sign that read, “The White Man Is the Devil.” There were four nights of rock- and bottle-throwing, and a young Talmudic scholar was surrounded by a mob shouting, “Kill the Jew” and stabbed to death. A hundred others were injured. Sharpton said, “The world will tell us that [Gavin Cato] was killed by accident….What type of city do we have that would allow politics to rise above the blood of innocent babies?…Talk about how Oppenheimer in South Africa sends diamonds straight to Tel Aviv and deals with the diamond merchants right here in Crown Heights….All we want to say is what Jesus said: If you offend one of these little ones, you got to pay for it. No compromise. Pay for your deeds.” Later Sharpton said, “If the Jews want to get it on, tell them to pin their yarmulkes back and come over to my house.”

ARAFAT: When Sharpton announced a 2001 trip to the Middle East, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach helped plan his itinerary. Sharpton, according to the Rabbi, promised not to meet with Yassir Arafat, yet only days later, Jewish New Yorkers opened the morning paper to see a smiling Arafat and Sharpton, meeting and shaking hands in Israel. Furious, Rabbi Boteach said, “Prior to our recent trip to Israel, U.S. black leader Reverend Al Sharpton and I discussed several times that there were to be no meetings with Arab or Palestinian leaders, not because I wished to set preconditions for our travel, but because the express objective of our mission was to show solidarity with Israeli victims of terror. The idea was to provide a magnanimous gesture of friendship and solidarity with the Jewish nation that would hopefully have strong reverberations for the relationship of the Jewish and black communities back home.”

FREDDY’S FASHION MART/”WHITE INTERLOPER”: 1995. A Jewish store owner in Harlem was accused of driving a black record store owner out of business, when the United House of Prayer, one of the largest black landlords on 125th Street, raised the rent on the Fashion Mart owned by a Jew, Freddy Harari, who then raised the rent on his subtenant, Sikhulu Shange, who ran a record store. At one of many rallies meant to scare the Jewish owner away, Sharpton said, “…There is a systematic and methodical strategy to eliminate our people from doing business off 125th Street. I want to make it clear…that we will not stand by and allow them to move this brother so that some white interloper can expand his business.” Following a demonstration three months later, one of the protestors, a black man, stormed Freddy’s Fashion Mart with a pistol, screaming, “It’s on now! All blacks out!” In addition to shooting, he set fire to the building, eventually killing himself and seven others. Initially, Sharpton denied having spoken at any rallies. When tapes surfaced, he said, “What’s wrong with denouncing white interlopers?” Eventually, he apologized—but only for saying “white,” not “interloper.”

CRIMINAL JUSTICE: During the “Million Man March” in Washington, civil rights “activist” Al Sharpton thundered, “O.J. is home, but Mumia Abu Jamal ain’t home. And we won’t stop till all of our people that need a chance in an awkward and unbalanced criminal justice system can come home.”

OUT OF THE KING MOVEMENT: Although he was 14 when Martin Luther King was assassinated, Sharpton claims he “came out of the King movement.” Sharpton once explained, “I was on some show this week, and people said, ‘Why don’t you just let it go? Why don’t y’all just get over it?’ Get over what? Get over Dr. King dying? Get over Medger Evers dying? Get over Goodman, Chaney and Schwerner dying? Get over those four girls in Birmingham dying? We are never gonna get over it, and we are never gonna let you forget it!”

FBI TAPES/COCAINE: In 2002, HBO aired a 19-year-old FBI surveillance of Sharpton with self-described mobster Michael Franzese and an undercover FBI agent posing as a Latin American businessman. The three were discussing promoting boxing matches and musical events. HBO’s “Real Sports” got a hold of a hidden camera video that shows undercover agent Victor Quintana posing as a drug dealer trying to convince Sharpton to play a middleman in a big cocaine buy.

Sharpton asks the undercover agent, “What kind of time limit are we dealing with?”

The phony drug dealer says, “Could be about the same time we have 4 million coming to us.”

“End of April. Six weeks from now. Is that a good time you think?” the agent asks.

Later on, the undercover agent offers Sharpton a finder's fee for help with the drug deal and says to Sharpton, “I can get pure coke for about $35,000 a kilo ... Every kilogram we bring in, $3,500 to you. How does that sound?” Sharpton nods in response.

The deal never went down, and Sharpton has said he was just playing along because he was scared of the would-be kingpin. “And I'm in his office. I don't know whether this man is armed. I don't know what's going on. So I kind of say, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah,’ to get out of there,” Sharpton claimed the tape was leaked by law enforcement officials to disrupt his 2004 presidential run, and he sued HBO, its parent company AOL Time Warner, and several individuals who worked on the story. No charges were ever brought against Sharpton because of the tape, which was allegedly made to get Sharpton to act as an informant for the feds into an investigation into corruption by Don King and the boxing industry. The HBO report featured former Mafia captain Michael Franzese saying that the FBI was on the right track when it targeted Sharpton in a sting back in 1983 to try and root out corruption in boxing.

Sharpton admitted in 1988 that he informed for the government in order “to get rid of drugs and election fraud” in black neighborhoods. He denied informing on civil rights leaders and organized crime figures.

FBI TAPES/DONATIONS: After Sharpton’s name surfaced on wiretaps in an unrelated Philadelphia City Hall corruption case, the FBI launched a probe into Sharpton’s fund-raising for his failed 2004 presidential run. The FBI secretly videotaped Sharpton on May 9, 2003, pocketing campaign donations from two “shady fund-raisers” in a NY City hotel room, and then demanding $25,000 more. The two fund-raisers were La-Van Hawkins and the late Ronald White. Hawkins is currently on trial in Philadelphia on corruption charges. White was going to be indicted, but died before charges were brought. A later wiretap recorded Hawkins telling White that they had raised more than $140,000 for Sharpton the previous quarter, but Hawkins was concerned that Sharpton had only reported about $50,000 to the Federal Election Commission, as required by law. Sharpton said the allegations were a “politically motivated smokescreen” to hide the fact the Justice Department is out to get him. He ripped the probe and the secret videotaping, saying, “Can you imagine what would happen if it was a white presidential candidate?”

Thank you for compling this. Imus got a pass for a long time, and he got canned for doing parody. Offensive parody, to be sure, but still parody.

The “Reverend,” however, is serious. If there is justice in this world, he will get his. If not, the “Reverend” will be defrocked in the hereafter.

Sharpton and Jackson have not power beyond that which granted to them by the liberal media. If they were ignored, or had their histories repeated in every story about them, they would fade away. Now that they are targeting the MSM, watch for the nature of their coverage to change

The real issue hinted at here: the rise of the 21th century Klu Klux Klan
lead by Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson looking to high tech lynch any white person.
We have the Mass Media as enablers to the new form of racism.
This new form of racism is being used by the Marxists/anarchists to seize power.

In 1997, Brawley changed her name to Maryam Muhammad.

"Sharpton and Jackson have not power beyond that which granted to them by the liberal media."

You've got that right! They are just the goto guys the Leftist America-hating Media calls when they want a black mob and/or hate whitie talk. All MSM news is staged, orchestrated or steered for THE AGENDA - and those two have been proven players for this purpose.

I’m not an Imus fan but Al “Big Mouth Racist” Sharpton needs to get his right where it hurts. It’s just waiting in the wings to happen. The world will rejoice.

.. and , this POS used to pronounce the word “ASK” correctly! ! !

{{ I’m sure some NYC TV stations have video in their archives ,.. unless Sharpton’s Sandy Berger did “cleaning” ))

In the early 1990 after a “racial incident” he went to make trouble in the Bensonhurst - an Italian-American neighborhood of Brooklyn. A local stabbed the slob in the gut and derailed his plan. But he survived and he had the Mob mediate a truce.

Has he ever paid the money that was given to him by the government when he ran for president? He did get funding how much I don’t know buy never heard that he paid it back or not.

Didn’t someone commit suicide during the Tawana Brawley incident. He was some minor player with the prosecution or police but I swear I remember someone commiting suicide over this.

By FRANK BRUNI
Cornelia and Harry Crist Sr still mourn death of son, Harry Crist Jr, former Fishkill, NY, police officer who committed suicide after he was named by advisers of Tawana Brawley as one of white attackers who allegedly raped her in 1986; Brawley’s advisers have also suggested that he may have been murdered as part of coverup; Crist’s name is once again under assault by defense attorneys in defamation suit filed by former Dutchess County prosecutor Steven A Pagones against Brawley’s advisers; photo...

Yes, I just googled it!!!!

Not sure. This guy’s misdeeds could fill a damned encyclopedia. I don’t think he ever paid the legal judgement to Steven Pagones, the ADA he defamed.

Big Al is on such a high right now — I hope the racist crook over-reaches and he gets fired. Oh, wait, doofus me: Demagogues can’t be fired.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.