Copyright 2001 The Washington Post
The Washington Post

February 01, 2001, Thursday, Final Edition

SECTION: A SECTION; Pg. A03

LENGTH: 614 words

HEADLINE: Jackson's Group Paid Ex-Aide; $35,000 Allocation Spent on L.A. House

BYLINE: William Claiborne, Washington Post Staff Writer

DATELINE: CHICAGO, Jan. 31

BODY:

A woman with whom Jesse L. Jackson fathered a child during an extramarital affair had approval to use funds from one of Jackson's tax-exempt charitable organizations to buy a house in Los Angeles, according to correspondence confirmed by a Jackson aide today.

According to a Sept. 10, 1999, letter from a top Jackson aide to Karin Stanford, former head of the Washington office of the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, Jackson's Citizenship Education Fund (CEF) approved a "draw" of $ 40,000 for Stanford against future consulting fees "for the purpose of acquiring residential real estate financing."

Stanford, 39, gave birth to a daughter in May 1999, months after Jackson began counseling then-President Bill Clinton over the Monica S. Lewinsky scandal. Jackson, who is married, has acknowledged fathering the child and has asked forgiveness of his supporters.

A copy of the letter, signed by Janice L. Mathis, CEF board member and Rainbow/PUSH general counsel, appears in the upcoming edition of the National Enquirer, due out Friday. It was the Enquirer that first broke the story last month about Jackson's extramarital affair.

Previously, spokespersons for Jackson had offered various explanations for the payment, describing it as moving expenses, an advance on contracted work and as severance pay. But none of the explanations included assistance in buying a house as a reason, and Jackson aides have consistently and emphatically denied that Stanford bought a $ 365,000 house in Los Angeles with money from Rainbow/PUSH-affiliated charities.

Mathis did not return phone calls today, but John Scanlon, a Jackson spokesman in New York, confirmed that Mathis wrote the Sept. 10 letter. But he said the amount was changed from $ 40,000 to $ 35,000 and "therefore the letter was never acted upon." In addition, Jackson is paying Stanford $ 3,000 monthly of his own money in child support, aides say.

Scanlon provided a copy of a CEF disbursement record showing an "employee reimbursement" of $ 15,000 to Stanford and another $ 20,000 payment for "consulting services." With some other expense reimbursements, the total for that pay period was $ 36,181.30.

Scanlon said the $ 15,000 was for moving expenses and the $ 20,000 was payment for contracted research work, which he said has been completed by Stanford. The work, he said, included writing papers on the digital divide between whites and blacks and on Federal Communications Commission licensing in minority communities.

Scanlon said the question of how Stanford spent the money was irrelevant because she was free to dispose of it as she wished. However, he said she insists she did not use the money on the house.

"If she wanted to buy a car, a house or take a trip to the moon, whatever she chose to do with the money was her business," Scanlon said.

The Enquirer article includes a reproduction of another letter from Mathis to Stanford, dated November 1999, which is almost identical to the Sept. 10 letter except that it omits the reference to an advance against consulting fees and simply says the money is for securing house financing.

Scanlon said that letter was never sent because it was "redundant" and that in any case the issue had been resolved in the meantime with the agreement to change the $ 40,000 payout to $ 35,000. He said there had been a disagreement over the amount to be paid to Stanford, but he did not provide details of the dispute.

Rainbow/PUSH tonight also released a copy of a consulting contract between CEF and Stanford, dated Dec. 15, 1999, calling for $ 20,000 in compensation for research work on a "media and telecommunications project."
 

LOAD-DATE: February 01, 2001