CNN's Van Jones Forced Out of Criminal Justice Nonprofit He Founded Amid Leadership Struggle, 'Questions About Fiscal Stewardship'
In one of his worst financial decisions since buying The Washington Post, Amazon founder and billionaire Jeff Bezos once gave $100 million to a radical leftist activist and commentator for charitable causes. He could probably have found a better cause.
This radical activist, Van Jones, is a CNN talking head who has been a leader in leftist activism since his 2009 resignation from his post as “green jobs czar” in the Barack Obama White House after coming under fire for a range of leftist behavior, including defending convicted cop killer and ex-Black Panther Mumia Abu Jamal.
Despite the influence that should be expected from the massive gift from Bezos in 2021, Jones has been forced out of a non-profit group he founded eight years ago amid questions of direction and “fiscal stewardship,” according to The Daily Beast.
Van Jones ousted from his woke nonprofit amid fiscal woes: report https://t.co/leVCcKjZ0h via @americanwire_
— Bo Snerdley (@BoSnerdley) August 21, 2023
The Daily Beast reported Saturday that Jones’ relationship with Dream.org — the organization he started to support leftist causes like “ending mass incarceration” and battling “climate change” — ended in June.
And it ended badly.
“This summer, Jones left the board of one of his principal nonprofits, Dream.org, after tussling with the group’s leadership over its direction, multiple sources with ties to the organization told The Daily Beast,” the liberal outlet reported.
“According to a person with direct knowledge of the situation, he did not leave by choice.”
In the Daily Beast report, former Dream.org director of government affairs CeCe Grant, summed up the status of the group she left in April:
“Quite a few people have questions about the fiscal stewardship that Dream.org has had,” she said.
Jones has used very little of the $100 million for Dream.org, in fact, he appears not to have used much of it for any charity, according to The Daily Beast.
However, according to the Daily Beast, in 2020, Bezos’ climate charity, Earth Fund, came up with a separate, three-year grant of $10 million for a subsidiary of Dream.org called Green For All — an environmental group, naturally.
“The group tore through that money with little to show for it, several ex-employees said,” The Daily Beast reported.
That grant has not been renewed, the Daily Beast reported.
The Daily Beast quoted two former employees of Dream.org who were critical of Jones’ record.
“He can’t stay at anything for longer than a few years before passing it off,” one said.
The other said Jones has a record of “moving on to the next thing, and possibly not creating the best infrastructure before he leaves.”
As if to confirm this quote, The Daily Beast also reported this statement from Jones’ representative:
“Van continues to work with Dream.org in the justice innovation space and beyond,” the representative said. “He is a proud supporter of their work at every level. With Dream.org’s support, he is working to launch a new, complementary initiative, which will be announced soon.”
The “work” of Dream.org is broadly stated on its website:
“From ending mass incarceration, to stopping climate change, to creating new economic opportunities in overlooked communities, the only durable solutions are the ones that lots of people create together. Common ground is often found in uncommon places. We will work with anyone who is willing to be a part of the solution, even if we disagree on many things. Our communities deserve nothing less.
“Already, this approach has won bipartisan criminal justice reform that brought 18,000+ people home from behind bars, earned $70,000 starting salaries for our tech cohort graduates, and drove $78.5 billion in federal funding for green investments like public transportation, electric vehicle charging, and clean school buses.”
The conservative New York Post brutally roasted Jones over the Daily Beast report.
In an editorial published Monday titled, “Jeff Bezos should have given $100 million to the poor, not Van Jones,” the Post called Jones’ work part of “the woke grift.”
The editorial not only tried to make the case that Jones had wasted or sat on Bezos’ donation, but cheekily praised the debacle: “Given the laundry list of lefty policy disasters Jones is dedicated to backing — everything from climate insanity to ‘ending mass incarceration,’ per Dream.org’s website — such financial fumblings have only benefited society.”
Hilariously, Jones spoke with Us Weekly in a story published Friday about how he is “investing” the $100 million.
“I’m trying to do path-breaking stuff maybe nobody else would be willing to take a chance on,” Jones said. “We want every penny to make a miracle if we can. We’re really trying to do stuff that, ‘if this works, it could create a whole different system.’”
Dream.org’s board of directors clearly didn’t the miracle happening.
“I am in the camp that Van Jones is a brilliant visionary,” Grant, the former Dream.org government affairs director, told The Daily Beast. “Is he a brilliant executioner of that vision? I do not know.”
Jones remains a political commentator at CNN, where he can continue to dispense the wisdom with which he has led Dream.org and managed the $100 million Bezos gave him two years ago.
And Bezos still owns The Washington Post, a company that, according to The New York Times, is on a pace to lose $100 million on its own in 2023.
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