A prominent fundraiser for President Barack Obama, who led a nonprofit ostensibly committed to helping impoverished youth, has made a startling confession.
According to a statement from the Justice Department, Howard Dixon Slingerland illegally took federal grant money to pay off more than $600,000 of his organization's payroll and credit card debts, which included personal expenses.
According to court filings, the $1.5 million grant was meant to provide career advancement for young adults who had been through the criminal justice system.
Slingerland raised nearly $750,000 for Obama's 2008 and 2012 presidential campaigns.
In addition to admitting to embezzling tens of thousands of dollars from his nonprofit to pay property taxes, fund personal tutors for his children and an expensive dinner at a Michelin-starred restaurant, Slingerland also admitted to underreporting around $450,000 in income and owing nearly $150,000 in back taxes.
Slingerland pleaded guilty to one count of misapplication of funds and one count of lying on his tax returns. He faces a maximum sentence of 13 years in federal prison.
However, this isn't the Democrat's first run-in with fraud-related charges. According to The Washington Free Beacon, in 2014, Slingerland's nonprofit, the Youth Policy Institute, didn't properly disclose over $140,000 it spent lobbying Obama's White House and federal agencies for grant funding — potentially violating federal lobbying laws.
An attorney for Slingerland said he “takes responsibility for the mistakes he made,” citing his misapplication of funds and failures to report personal income.
Then from 2015 to 2019, the Obama fundraiser used more than $14,000 from his nonprofit to pay down property taxes. He reportedly also spent more than $10,000 on tutoring his children, more than $6,000 for an upscale family dinner at Momofuku Ko in New York City and nearly $2,000 on a new personal computer.
Not only did Slingerland help himself to hundreds of thousands of dollars, but he also helped line the pockets of Democrat candidates like former Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti (D.). According to Fox News, Slingerland hosted multiple fundraisers for Garcetti's 2013 campaign and contributed $5,000 to Democrats in the 2018 midterms.
Slingerland ran his Los Angeles-based nonprofit, The Youth Policy Institute from 1996 until 2019, when he was accused of misusing funds and fired. A bankruptcy filing alleged the former CEO had misspent $1.7 million in company money. Slingerland called the filing “extremely misleading” and said only “a handful of expenditures were mistakenly made,” according to The Capital Research Center.
The Youth Policy Institute was founded to fight poverty and empower poor youth through education and job training initiatives, according to court filings. Slingerland pocketed as much as $400,000 annually during his final years at the nonprofit.
Slingerland must complete a financial disclosure form and pay back at least $821,958.56 in restitution to the federal government before his sentencing.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.
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