LD24: The inconsistencies of political morality.

 
In 2017, Senator Steve Oroho became quite emotional over an allegation that he committed a crime. The allegation – one of bribery – was made by an opponent during his re-election effort that year. Oroho ending up replying to that allegation with a threat of legal action.
 
Fast forward to 2023, Dawn Fantasia is attempting a similarly snide allegation of criminality against one of her opponents – suggesting that he committed voter fraud. She’s even produced a document in an effort to argue that he lived and voted in Pennsylvania while residing and voting in New Jersey. But according to that document, the person the document actually refers to, last voted in 1999 – when Fantasia’s opponent was 16 years old and a well-known student attending high school in Sussex County. Fantasia’s allegation is, in a word, ridiculous.
 
Maybe Fantasia isn’t a close reader or maybe she doesn’t care if she trashes the reputation of an innocent man? But what about Steve Oroho and Hal Wirths? Shouldn’t they care? Fantasia is their hand-picked candidate for Assembly and they have remained silent as she’s tossed around allegations every bit as hurtful as the bribery allegation against Steve Oroho in 2017. Why the silence? Is it okay to trash someone… so long as it’s not you?
 
And while she is quick to make-up stuff and talk about allegations of criminality against others, Dawn Fantasia doesn’t believe that anyone should discuss the actual criminal convictions of those associated with her. In common with so many other “prince” and “princess” candidates recruited by the establishment these days, their past is off limits – even as they fashion the pasts of others.
 
For example, Dawn Fantasia has spent her entire professional career working for iLearn Schools. She’s been nurtured by a leadership that values loyalty above all else and she’s held key positions, including Chief Growth Officer and Chief Communications Officer.
 
But according to The Record newspaper & NorthJersey.com, iLearn Schools is linked to an Islamic cleric who is a convicted criminal in his native Turkey and wanted for terrorism.  Here’s a good overview from The Record/ NorthJersey.com (February 16, 2017):
 

WATCHDOG Investigation: Charter school leaders, founders linked to controversial Turkish cleric

 
A group of charter schools that arose from North Jersey’s Turkish community is rapidly growing in the state, with seven schools collecting more than $60 million in taxpayer money last year alone to fund their growth.
 
Now, an investigation by The Record and NorthJersey.com shows that some founders and leaders of the schools have close ties to the movement of Fethullah Gulen, the controversial Islamic cleric accused of working to overthrow the government in his native Turkey last summer. Gulen is fighting extradition demands as he lives in a secluded compound in Pennsylvania's Pocono Mountains, about 10 miles from the New Jersey border.
 
…Some belong to Turkish émigré groups that tout the cleric's teachings. There are also political donors who collectively have furnished hundreds of thousands in donations to U.S. office holders while the North Jersey charter schools in general have been adept at wooing state and local government officials with trips to Turkey and, in some cases, jobs.
 
Records show the charter schools in North Jersey also have been a channel for state taxpayer money to private entities that serve the schools as landlords or vendors — in one case, a Wayne boarding school that is openly Gulen inspired.
 
Turkish prosecutors accuse Gulen of attempts to overthrow the government and of instigating the 2016 coup attempt. In 2000, he was found guilty, in absentia, of scheming to overthrow the government by embedding civil servants in various governmental offices. A Turkish criminal court has issued an arrest warrant for Gulen and Turkey is demanding his extradition from the United States. Gulen is wanted as a terrorist leader in Turkey and Pakistan, as well as by the OIC and GCC. Turkey is a member of NATO.
 
…Officials in the turbulent Turkish republic have maintained Gulen is leveraging a network of more than 100 charter schools nationwide and U.S. tax dollars to support revolution back home that would put his followers in power.
 
“It’s clear these schools were being used both to raise funds for Gulen and employ Gulen followers and teachers and basically have them tie a percent of their income back to Gulen,” said Robert Amsterdam, a London-based lawyer hired by the Turkish government who is investigating charter schools in the U.S. that he alleges are linked to Gulen.
 
…As the international controversy around Gulen swirls, the Turkish-led schools in New Jersey continue to collect tens of millions of dollars in state financing and local tax support, public records show.
 
The Record's review raises key questions about state oversight of the schools…
 
The investigation found:
 
A state-financed property deal involving the Paterson Charter School for Science and Technology also benefited its landlord, a private group with close ties to the Gulen movement:
 
That group sold the property and used the proceeds to help open a new campus in Wayne for its private boarding school that hews closely to Gulen's teachings and caters largely to students from Turkey. 
 
Public money, in fees and rent that could amount to millions of dollars over time, continues to flow to the charter school's new landlord, a firm with multiple ties to Turkish charter schools in New Jersey and elsewhere. 
 
Connections run deep among people involved with the schools, Gulenist groups and Turkish charter schools elsewhere in the U.S:  
 
Two of the New Jersey schools, for example, have a founder who has served as a director at the New York-based Alliance for Shared Values, considered the voice of the Gulen movement in this country.  
 
The CEO of iLearn Schools Inc. – an Elmwood Park-based non-profit that manages four of the local charter schools – comes from a charter network in Texas that the Turkish government claims is linked to the Gulen movement. 
 
The schools and their vendors have successfully courted prominent public-school educators and political figures.   
 
The state’s top charter school regulator, Harold Lee, left his post last summer for a job at iLearn.
 
This is the same Harold Lee who appears as a host on invitations for Assembly candidate Dawn Fantasia’s May 17th fundraiser in Sussex County. During Dawn Fantasia’s December 2022 interview with LD24 and SRM staff, she made it very clear that iLearn’s leadership would facilitate her role as a legislator and that they saw her advancement in positive terms for their movement. The Record/ NorthJersey.com continues:
 
Security consulting contracts at four of the schools worth more than $90,000 a year are held by ex-Bergen County Sheriff Leo McGuire, who took a 10-day trip to Turkey before he left office in 2010 with his family and local Turkish nationals tied to the schools. It was paid for in part by a Gulenist group.
 
More than $30 million in long-term, low-interest loans have been granted by the state to benefit the Paterson charter school despite its continuing financial and academic troubles:
 
In 2014, a Wall Street ratings agency downgraded the bonds issued for its expansion to junk status because the school’s revenues had fallen. Last year, Wall Street lowered its overall outlook on the bonds to “negative.”
 
Tracking tax dollars spent by the schools can be difficult because of loopholes in state law:
 
ILearn, which is set to add a fifth charter to its chain this year, declined to answer routine requests for information about its payroll, saying that as a private contractor it is not subject to the state Open Public Records law.
  
State officials said it is unclear if such charter-management organizations fall under the law, even though charters draw their funding directly from the tax-funded budgets of regular public schools. 
 
…A number of prominent Turkish nationals connected to the charters or their vendors have emerged as fundraisers and contributors to Hillary Clinton and Obama, among other political leaders. A former head of the Science and Technology charter in Paterson, Furkan Kosar, is the president of the Council of Turkic American Associations. Kosar raised more than $500,000 for Obama’s re-election bid in 2012. He did not return calls made to the council.
 
Critics say the presence of big-money contributors connected to the schools in New Jersey and other states is evidence the cleric and his followers are advancing the Gulen movement at the expense of U.S. taxpayers.
 
“They’re engaging in a series of activities that really don’t have anything to do with charter schools, and have much more to do with building political influence in the U.S. for his movement,” said Amsterdam, the lawyer for the Turkish government.
 
Among those critics is retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, Donald Trump’s recently ousted national security adviser who claimed American taxpayers “are helping finance Gulen’s 160 charter schools in the United States” in an op-ed piece written in November for The Hill, the congressional newspaper that assailed the Obama administration for allowing Gulen to remain in the United States.
 
Are Steve Oroho and Hal Wirths aware of this? And if they are, do they support Gulen and his works? Moreover, are they comfortable with sending someone from that organization into the GOP legislative caucus?

BBC: Anti-Gulen protest in Turkey.

"It's all the same people that dug the hole, and every time we ask for a clear, third-party fresh set of eyes, they throw in somebody else that appears out of the past. How many times can you recycle the same names? Are they protecting specific people, or are they protecting the county?”

(New Jersey Herald, March 28, 2015)

We welcome your commentary.  If you would like to submit a column for publication, please contact us at jerseyconservativetips@protonmail.com.