this post was submitted on 15 Jan 2024
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I'll start you off by saying that his "textbook definition of charity fraud" is not from a textbook, and you'll find that and many other answers in the video I linked you. It's long, but it's chapter coded with timestamps, and while I didn't skip it, the author gives you a sizable chunk on tax law that you can skip if it's too dry.
As far as I can tell, the only thing he actually proved was that approximately $600k sat in a bank account that most people probably believed was being moved along more judiciously than that. Even that has a reasonable explanation from a legal perspective, and even that answer may not be good enough for the people who donated to Open Hand. As someone who just wanted to know the truth, whatever it was, there was no smoking gun in the next two Jobst videos I watched, and that's the problem. Legally, the video I linked gets into far more about what they shouldn't have said and why Jirard's video was definitely heavily advised and/or drafted by actual lawyers (which even us non-experts suspected, even if we didn't know why) who may have set up Jobst to fall for a trap allowing Jirard to legitimately sue him.
These two and a half videos from Jobst (I got fed up with his "this response is the worst thing ever" video) are the first I've ever watched from him, because it came up in my recommendations, and his reputation around Billy Mitchell and Wata preceded him. What I saw led me to believe that perhaps he just needs to be the guy who exposes people's scummy secrets, but maybe this one actually ended before it got truly juicy, because life isn't always as dramatic as what gets written for television, and then he just had to fill time in extra videos. Either way, I was not a fan of what I saw and decided to never watch a certain YouTuber again based on his videos; it just wasn't Jirard...oh, and ordinary gamers was probably worse than Jobst.
The assertion was that Jirard had confirmed that some of the money was spent on things that weren't charity, and that the explanations Jirard gave for why it hadn't been given to charity after years had passed were nonsense. All of that depends just on Jirard's statements.
That said, I can buy the idea that there were other allegations in the video that shouldn't have been made because they're not provable; I'll watch your video.
Counter-sue? Karl is suing Jirard? When did this happen?
You're right, miswording on my part. I got lost in the legal threats back and forth. I'll correct it.
There were no legal threats from Karl's side to get lost in. There were statements about Jirard's conduct, but no threats. I'm suddenly a lot more skeptical about what you're saying, although I'll still watch the video.
Okay, I've seen enough; I made it to 33:12. This video is way longer than it needs to be; Karl made some pretty specific allegations, which do line up with the legal definition of charity fraud (which is laid out in clear legalese in the video), if they're true. The most critical part is the way Jirard repeatedly on stream made very specific statements about where the money was going to go, or had gone, that turned out not to be true by his own later admission. The video could have started at 28:29 with "what is fraud, and did it happen," and done at most a couple minutes' Cliffs Notes for the rest.
I waited and waited for this to be addressed.
At 31:02, he artfully excerpts a statement from Jobst saying the behavior was "unethical and almost certainly illegal," by saying only the "certainly illegal" part. Those are two very different statements, and this was the first time my whoa-hold-the-fuck-up meter started to register.
At 31:30, he airs one of the statements by Jirard that's not really an issue, and explains that as a general statement it's not really an issue. How about the statements Karl took issue with? I was back in waiting mode.
At 33:04, he says, "The times where Jirard has stated that funding has occurred might be obvious miscommunications or simple misstatements. Human error."
Shut the fuck up Mr. Lawyer Man. You can't make a whole half hour lead up about why the whole thing is a huge misunderstanding and what a great position Jirard is in since he never actually did any fraud, and then just casually drop that "Oh yeah and those the times he lied about where the money had gone he probably just made a mistake and it's not a big deal." Especially since part of the defense is, well we were waiting before we actually gave the money for it to be enough to be able to do X Y Z fancy thing.
I am not a lawyer. There may be some additional explanation that clarifies why they were "obvious miscommunications." But I saw enough to satisfy my curiosity.
Look, I get you're a fan of his, but this "if" is the problem, like I've been saying. The video I linked you, which you aren't interested in watching, only outlines why he may legally want to shut up about Jirard. The video author comes to this conclusion tediously because the law is tedious, but at least he's got some sense of humor. I personally just never want to watch another video of Jobst's because I think he did a poor job of reaching a burden of proof that an actual reporter would need before coming forward with a story. Even not being a journalist myself, I came to the same conclusion as that link the other user sent you. Good on you if you enjoy Jobst's videos, but I hope he holds himself to higher standards in the future.
I'm not trying to get into a big back-and-forth about this, but just to take one more stab at what I've been saying:
The Moon video, Jobst, and the article someone else sent me here all seem to be in agreement that Jirard is on video claiming to have already donated money that it turned out later he hadn't donated. I'm not sure where you're getting that there's a lack of evidence of charity fraud.
Jobst, if I remember correctly, showed the clips of him saying it. Moon said they were "obvious miscommunications or simple misstatements." Ernie said they were "slip-ups" and that he was just filling time on his stream. To me, the latter two sound like bullshit. You are, of course, free to draw your own different conclusions and judgements about any or all of this. Just the fact that he said some things doesn't automatically mean he's guilty. But it's weird to say there's no evidence when all the sources seem to acknowledge (with their own wildly differing spins on the presentation) that there is.
As for your implication that I'm just saying all this because I wasn't interested in the video, I just like Karl Jobst's videos, etc:
"Well, I haven’t ignored [evidence for creationism]; I considered the purported evidence and then rejected it. There is a difference, and this is a difference, we might say, between prejudice and postjudice. Prejudice is making a judgment before you have looked at the facts. Postjudice is making a judgment afterwards. Prejudice is terrible, in the sense that you commit injustices and you make serious mistakes. Postjudice is not terrible. You can’t be perfect of course; you may make mistakes also. But it is permissible to make a judgment after you have examined the evidence. In some circles it is even encouraged." -Carl Sagan
The Moon video quite derisively mocks his and OrdinaryGamers' definition of charity fraud, as coming from the equivalent of "legal Tinder" for matching lawyers and clients, with the distinction being that one is interested in being easy to understand while the other is a definition that determines whether or not someone violated the law. They demonstrably typed in "definition of charity fraud" and went with the top result regardless of its reliability. The Moon video then goes on to point out several ways that the charity could be operating that would make the actions of Open Hand not just legal but ordinary. Jobst has circumstantial evidence for lots of things, and Jirard could be guilty of some of it. Given the scrutiny he's about to be under, we'll know for sure inside of a couple of years. The problem with what Jobst did is that we ought to be sure now, and we're not. If we're going to destroy someone's reputation (and the jobs of the people that he employs in the process) for doing something nefarious, we should know for sure that he actually did it.
Actually: I've exhausted the length of time I want to spend on this. Sorry. You're right that the early section of the video spends a ton of time being derisive towards Jobst, and explaining at incredible length that charities can in general do whatever they want with their money, which is true, and throwing shade at Jobst and strawmanning his complaints a little.
After quite a long time of that, it finally gets around to acknowledging one of Jobst's core complaints, which was not just that Jirard did whatever he wanted with the money (which is his right), but that he lied about it (which is, with certain caveats and reservations, a crime.)
I pretty much gave up on the video when he finally did admit that that happens but dismissed it so airily as oh, that was a "misstatement," it's fine, instead of acknowledging it in any kind of head-on manner or making some convincing argument that Jirard wasn't actually on video lying about it.
I'm actually find with tedium; I was irritated at the video because not because it was dry (it wasn't really), but because it seemed like it was spending time obfuscating the truth and dealing with trivialities. Did a lawyer help Jirard with his apology video? Probably. Where did Jobst get the simplified explanation of charity fraud he used in his video? I don't care, as long as the conduct does match the actual definition. Why was Jirard "saving" the money? It honestly doesn't really matter -- he can, as Moon notes, do whatever he wants, as long as he doesn't lie about it. But if he does lie, all of a sudden the explanation for why he was doing what he was actually doing when he was saying something else is probably irrelevant. Just get to the point. Etc.
Anyway. That's my take on it. You've got yours. Good luck and all the best.
I watched that section of the video, yes. Did you watch the section of the video after that, that I listed the timestamps of? I talked about it at some length.
I think I got so mad that I spent half an hour of my life watching this, that I replied to myself. But my response (after watching most of the video) is up there.