Archive » Al Franken

I’m scheduled to appear on Fox News Channel’s O’Reilly Factor tonight with my investigative blog partner Brian Maloney to talk about our reporting on Air America. It’ll be old hat for readers of our blogs, but we’re glad for the opportunity to bring the story into the mainstream.
Update: Video at The Political Teen.
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Air America: Groveling [...]

Via Tax Prof Blog, Al Franken–talk show host on the foundering Air America radio network–will be lecturing today at Yale Law School.
The Business School laughed him off.
If you happen to be in the area, please stop by and ask Franken how the Air America panhandling is going, whether he plans to donate any of the [...]

Stuff it with cash, please!
Al Franken’s liberal radio network, Air America, is now scraping the bottom of the barrel for investors. Having taxed the patience of deep-pocketed liberal sugar daddies, Air America execs have cooked up a new campaign to hit up their own listeners for cash donations.
My investigative blog partner Brian Maloney and I [...]

***Please note 9/28 note correction: Terrero was employed at Gloria Wise, but did not work under Cohen***
Inside Air America: The loan scandal deepens
by Brian Maloney and Michelle Malkin
Part of a continuing investigative blog series
9/14/05
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If you believe Air America, Al Franken, and their clueless defenders, the liberal radio network’s now-notorious financial problems with the Bronx-based Gloria [...]

***235pm EDT: Updated with just-released statement from NYC Department of Investigations***
Yesterday, in our latest joint investigative piece on Air America and the Gloria Wise Boys and Girls Club loan scandal, Brian Maloney and I reported that “knowledgeable sources tell us the liberal radio network is contemplating how to stem the lingering bad publicity. Anticipating further [...]

Inside Air America: Al Franken’s Lying Lies
Part of an ongoing investigative blog series
by Brian Maloney and Michelle Malkin
Sept. 7, 2005
(Part II of this installment is at The Radio Equalizer)
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Take a close look at this signature.

Inside Air America: An Investigative Blog Report
The Sheldon Drobny Files
by Brian Maloney and Michelle Malkin

Part of a continuing series

My investigative blog partner, Brian Maloney, watched the surreal appearance of Air America co-founder Sheldon Drobny on C-SPAN this weekend. Drobny was on the network to plug his 2004 book, “Road to Air America: Breaking the Right [...]

Michelle and I have spent much of the last month investigating the Air America scandal, where $875,000 in taxpayer-funded community center grants were allegedly diverted to the liberal radio network.
Today our New York Post piece, “Money Pit”, appears on the op-ed page. See it here.
Also, at the Radio Equalizer, Al Franken’s softball interview from The [...]

Part II is up at The Radio Equalizer.
Brian Maloney and I take a close look at the financial plans of Sheldon and Anita Drobny, the deep-pocketed, far left Illinois Democrat couple who dreamed up Air America and have been involved in its many strange and dubious business reorganizations. The key questions that curious radio [...]

The New York Sun is the first print outlet to pick up on yesterday’s Air America post authored by Brian Maloney and me. Reporter David Lombino writes:
A lawsuit filed by an owner of radio stations claims that the transfer of ownership of the Air America radio network from Progress Media to Piquant LLC in May [...]

*see updates below*
Inside Air America: An Investigative Blog Report
Part 1: A Trail of Debts
By Michelle Malkin and Brian Maloney
michellemalkin.com/radioequalizer.blogspot.com
August 17, 2005
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It’s not just the Gloria Wise Boys & Girls that’s knocking on Air America Radio’s door looking for lost money. According to court records obtained by Radio Equalizer/MichelleMalkin.com, another major creditor has been demanding that [...]

The subject of my latest column: Where in the world is Evan Montvel-Cohen? The former chairman of Air America Radio and disgraced development director of the Bronx-based Gloria Wise Boys & Girls Club has been unavailable to the MSM. New York investigators will not comment on whether they have been able to interview him. And [...]

Despite liberals’ insistence that the Air America / Gloria Wise story is “undersourced” and “appears to be phony,” the AP article by David Caruso is being carried by dozens of MSM papers, including the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Baton Rouge Times Picayune, Fort Worth Star Telegram, Myrtle Beach Sun News, Kansas [...]

As I reported here on Thursday night, New York Times reporter Alan Feuer botched the Al Franken quote in his article about the Air America loan. To its credit, the New York Times has run a correction acknowledging the error:
An article yesterday about state and city investigations of a loan made by a [...]

According to Emily Gest, a spokeswoman for the New York City Dept. of Investigation, the “transcript” of Al Franken’s remarks cited by the New York Times in this article apparently does not exist. “There is no official transcript,” Gest informed me. “You should expect to see a correction in the Times.” As I [...]

After 15 days of silence, the New York Times has filed a thin little report on the Air Scamerica/Air Enron fiasco. But you need a magnifying glass to find it. Go the the NYTimes.com homepage. Nothing there. Click over the National section. Nothing there. Find your way to the NY/Region section. Scroll way down past [...]

The New York Post reports this morning on a drastic shake-up at the Gloria Wise Boys & Girls Club, the Bronx non-profit charity ensnared in smelly “loan” schemes with the liberal Air America radio network:
Just days after the executive director abruptly resigned following Post reports that the club had provided $875,000 in bizarre loans [...]

Al Franken is laughing it off and the elite media is still blowing it off, but the Air America/Air Enron financial fiasco continues to unfold. Ed Morrissey and his legal consultant/reader Eric Costello shine renewed light on the Piquant buyout shell game here and here, previously explored by Leon H. at Macho Nachos.
The Washington Times [...]

Cue the violins. Get out the Kleenex. The New York Post’s John Mainelli reports that Air America host Al Franken is playing the victim card:
Al Franken says 20,000 poor kids and old people weren’t the only victims of an exec who allegedly arranged a Bronx charity’s mega-buck “loan” to Air America.
“About three weeks into the [...]

This morning’s New York Post is reporting that New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer has launched an investigation into the shady $875,000 loan from Gloria Wise Boys & Girls Club to Air America.
Spitzer’s inquiry is focusing on the conduct of Gloria Wise’s board of directors. “The question is: Was their action appropriate?,” Spitzer spokesman [...]

Yesterday, on Your World with Neil Cavuto, commentator Bill Press stated repeatedly that the current managers of Air America bear no responsibility for the shady loan the network received from the Gloria Wise Boys & Girls Club because the money was stolen by former Air America chairman Evan Cohen. “The point I’m making is, this [...]

Well, now we know why the NYTimes hasn’t bothered to cover Air Enron/Air Scamerica. They’re too preoccupied with prying into the adoption records of Supreme Court nominee John Roberts’ young children, according to the Drudge Report.
For God’s sake.
Jeff Goldstein has a list of what’s next on the NYTimes’ dirt-digging agenda.
4: Can Judge Roberts account for [...]

Number of NY Times articles mentioning Air America since March 2004: 59
Number of NY Times articles mentioning the Air Enron scandal: 0
(Via Nexis)
It seems we’re not the only ones monitoring the MSM’s near-total blackout of Air America’s financial shenanigans. New York Times ombudsman Byron Calame (public@nytimes.com) is “closely watching” the Air America story and how [...]

David Lombino of The New York Sun continues to move the Air America story forward. According to Lombino’s latest article, Al Franken revealed that Air America’s current owners have known about the loan from Gloria Wise Boys & Girls Club for some time:
Mr. Franken said he has learned details of the story only in [...]

Blogger Leon H. takes a hard look at Air America’s latest explanation for the public funding mess involving NYC non-profits. Writes Leon:
There are a couple of other rather large glaring holes in this statement. If Gloria Wise went under, was that due to the fact that they were short about half a million in cash? [...]

*scroll down for updates*
Air America is being investigated in New York for diverting federal/local funds–possibly “hundreds of thousands of dollars”–meant for inner-city kids and senior into the station’s coffers.
Um, why isn’t the New York Times, which has spilled tons of adulatory ink on the liberal radio network, covering this scandal on its front page?
Radio [...]

Via Bloomberg News:
The U.S. Supreme Court rejected appeals by reporters for the New York Times and Time magazine who face jail for refusing to disclose their sources to a prosecutor investigating the leak of a CIA operative’s identity.
The justices in Washington turned down arguments by New York Times reporter Judith Miller and Time correspondent Matthew [...]

Brian Maloney at The Radio Equalizer has the scoop on Al Franken’s painful performance at the Talkers Magazine radio hosts’ convention on Friday night. Maloney also points to this amusing account of the evening from the NY Post:
Al Franken became the guest who wouldn’t leave — at a talk-radio convention held in his honor.
The [...]

The latest Arbitron ratings (you know, the ones Al Franken says aren’t available to the public) show that Air Amerca continues to struggle.
Don’t worry about Franken though. He has back-up plans.
Related entries here.

Via AP with a hat tip to Daly Thoughts:
Radio host Al Franken, who is mulling a run against Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., in 2008, has purchased a town house on the edge of downtown Minneapolis and will establish residency in Minnesota.
“It’s one of the things I need to do if I decide to make a [...]