Comment on Twin Galaxies, Billy Mitchell settle Donkey Kong score case before trial

• mozz@mbin.grits.dev ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Often, when I am covering a topic I lack familiarity or specificity with, I bring in an outside source—in the case of nonprofits, that meant talking to sources like lawyers and financial experts on the challenges that can face charities. (Lawyers, it should be noted, often don’t speak in absolutes about specific situations when talking to media outlets.)

  Jobst didn’t do that, essentially meaning he was interpreting the documentation himself.

  Citation needed. I don't know that Karl consulted with a lawyer before making this video, but given that he's right in the middle of getting sued and has spent over $100k on legal fees defending himself in that lawsuit, it'd be pretty surprising if he didn't talk to his lawyer before making this video, but instead just sort of sprung it on him as a little surprise.

  I'm curious what Ernie's reason is for asserting specifically that he didn't talk to a lawyer about his video.

  Dude is filling time for hours, because that’s how the format works, and that lends itself to slip-ups. It doesn’t seem like he was being intentionally misleading, for the most part.

  By saying that he'd donated money he hadn't donated, he was just... filling time on his stream? "For the most part?" Doesn't that aspect of the issue deserve a little more attention than half a paragraph?

  I have more I'd like to say about other things in this article, but honestly most of it is just beside the point. Like I said, the actual situation is actually extremely extremely simple. Seeing these huge videos or articles, which talk about charity fraud but spend almost all their runtime dealing at incredible length with issues other than "Did Jirard commit the technical definition of charity fraud?", actually specifically emphasizing that it wasn't a big deal if he did for the short time they touch on it, seems very weird.

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  • ampersandrew@kbin.social ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    But these two attempts at defending what Jirard did are genuinely ridiculous.

    Taking issue with how Jobst constructed his videos to attack Jirard is not the same as defending Jirard.

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    • mozz@mbin.grits.dev ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Jobst: He seems to have committed charity fraud

      Video: Whoa whoa whoa, there's a very technical definition of charity fraud; you have to operate a charity and make false statements about what you're doing with the money (subject to a few additional caveats and restrictions.) This is a terribly irresponsible thing Jobst is saying without having proof of it or understanding the law as well as I do.

      You: "There was no smoking gun" "He didn't prove it"

      Also video: Those times Jirard clearly said untrue things about what was happening to the money, well hey, anyone could make that type of obvious innocent mistake

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      • ampersandrew@kbin.social ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        The first video showed the money hadn't moved. Correct, we can observe that from his research. The second video alleged more money was missing, alleged embezzlement and fraud, because he guessed that some money from a golf tournament wasn't accounted for. The problem here is that he has no hard numbers for how much money, no source to say that something malicious happened and was hidden, etc. Please recognize the difference here.

        The video was phrased with reasonable doubt, while often juxtaposed against a tweet from someone to show why a reasonable person would think so.

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