Air Scamerica's Big, Fat, Red-Handed Idiot

Taking another break from Mortal Katrina Kombat, this week saw another hugely entertaining development in the financial scandal engulfing the entity that was going to put Rush Limbaugh out of business. Al Franken knew about the shady shenanigans from day one and has been lying on-air about his supposed ignorance about them ever since:

Along with the network's current management and shell-game-playing owners, Al Franken has gotten a pass, even from some conservative commentators who have claimed that it's unfair to blame the liberal radio network's financial and legal entanglements on its on-air talent.

Those claims are wrong.

According to a November 2004 settlement agreement between former Air America head honchos Evan Cohen and Rex Sorensen and Air America's current owners and investors at Piquant LLC, Al Franken was smack dab in the middle of negotiations over the debts owed by the liberal radio network - including the Gloria Wise loan. The agreement was signed to clear the decks in advance of the questionable asset transfer from Air America's old owners, Progress Media and Radio Free America, to Piquant. (This is the transfer being challenged by Multicultural Radio Broadcasting Inc. as a "fraudulent conveyance," which we first reported exclusively in the first installment in our investigative blog series, "A Trail of Debts.")

Far from being an innocent party with no knowledge of Air America's money woes, Franken was a signatory to the agreement. The document, published here for the first time, exposes how Franken misled his listeners and the press about his knowledge of the charity loan.

Please, do read both halves of the Malkin/Maloney duo's latest blogsclusive, pondering all the while what the Extreme Media response would be if this were the aforementioned El Rushbo and Clear Channel.

"Hurricane? There was a hurricane....?"

[HT: CQ]