As some of you know, I served for some months as honorary chairman of Revolution PAC. In recent days, it has been alleged that funds from the PAC were diverted into Gary Franchi’s organizations, and that an inordinate percentage of the monies raised were diverted into imprecise “administrative costs.”
I am trying to get to the bottom of this myself. As an honorary figure, I had no access to the books, never wrote a single check, and had no day-to-day role in the organization. I wrote our Plastic Men ad, signed off on the Compassion ad, and spoke at a New Hampshire event we had. That was pretty much the entirety of my involvement in Revolution PAC.
Now comes this accusation, from someone who runs a competing PAC: “Tom Woods went on a tour making speeches, promoting ‘Rev PAC’ commercials that they never played and splitting the loot amongst themselves.Tom Woods was always trying to find any reason to beat up the campaign, evidentally [sic] not because he wanted Ron Paul to win it, but it very well might have been because he wanted to slander the campaign so people would give to his pseudo-organization which we now know they used to split the loot amongst themselves under the label ‘administrative costs.’ It’s shameful that they used the selfless help and efforts of the believers in this movement for their selfish personal gain.”
Every single sentence in this statement is untrue.
I gave one speech for RevPAC. (Some “tour”!)
I never promoted ads that did not run. The only ad I ever promoted was the Plastic Men ad, which ran several times the day of one of the Republican debates. Which ad that I promoted did not run? I demand an answer.
I never split any “loot.” You know how much I earned from Revolution PAC? A whopping $1200, $700 of which was expense reimbursements for an airline ticket, some books we used as premiums for donors, and shipping expenses for those premiums from the UPS Store. So I earned a whopping $500.
I didn’t want Ron Paul to win? So I made all these videos, viewed by hundreds of thousands of people, for nothing? I did uncompensated work of all kinds, represented Dr. Paul in the media, wrote countless articles in his defense, all because I didn’t want him to win?
Oh, wait — it’s because I wanted people to give me their money so I could run away with it. Sure. That sounds like me. Show me. I demand evidence. I never received one dime from Revolution PAC beyond that $1200, most of which was reimbursement.
Now these are serious accusations, to be sure, and I am reserving judgment until I hear Gary’s full and detailed response. If such a thing is not forthcoming, I will have to decide on a further statement. For now, I intend to give Gary the benefit of the doubt and proceed from there.
But the idea that I ever, or would ever, defraud anyone, or that I became wealthy [!] from the thankless hours I poured into this venture, is absolutely preposterous, and there is not one stitch of evidence to support it.
I finally understand what “no good deed goes unpunished” means.
UPDATE: I informed the editors at policymic.com that this article on their site was not only without foundation but also libelous. I have been told that the article has been substantially toned down, thereby proving my point: these claims were simply made up. (And not innocently: look at those anonymous quotations. Normal people do not speak like that. These are people who resent me because of my unhappiness with some individuals in the official Ron Paul campaign, and because I have told the truth about them.)
UPDATE II: PolicyMic.com has taken the article down. And the plot thickens: the alleged author, “Alex Stenovsky,” is not a real person. More here. And Gary Franchi’s response is here.
