Comstock Campaign Demands LuAnn Bennett Answer Questions About Phony Charity

As Northern Virginia temperatures soar past 100°F in this sweltering summer, so too heats up the highly competitive Tenth District Congressional race between Congresswoman Barbara Comstock and her challenger, LuAnn Bennett.

Comstock’s campaign released a series of ten questions calling on Bennett to account for her leadership of a phony charity Bennett created for political gain.

Back in May, Bearing Drift first covered LuAnn Bennett’s phony charity following an investigation into her other politically-entangled real estate development deals. Following the exposé, Bennett scrubbed any mention of the sham foundation from the personal biography posted on her campaign website.

In a webpage published yesterday, the Comstock campaign called for accountability from Bennett, asking:

1. Does the New Jersey & H Educational Foundation exist and how is the foundation helping the community it promised to help right now?

2. How much money did the New Jersey and H Educational Foundation raise?

3. How was this money distributed to help community residents?

4. Why weren’t the proper forms filed detailing charitable expenditures?

5. What has the New Jersey & H Educational Foundation achieved with LuAnn Bennett on the board?

6. Why was the charity registration status for the New Jersey & H Educational Foundation revoked by the District of Columbia?

7. Did LuAnn Bennett and the Bennett group lie to and take advantage of the people of the community she said she would help?

8. If it was in fact a charity, why did the New Jersey & H Educational Foundation never file the proper tax forms for a charity?

9. Why did LuAnn Bennett list being on the Board of the charity in her campaign bio for the past 7 months claiming, “While leading Bennett Group, she has been deeply involved in the community. She currently serves… New Jersey & H Educational Foundation Advisory Board”?

10. When and why did LuAnn Bennett take the charity off her bio on the website?

These questions and many more surrounding LuAnn Bennett’s phony charity are not going away. Rather, issues of honesty and fair dealing are central to a race where a developer who would do anything for a buck has now become a politician who will say anything for a vote. Bennett owes answers to the voters she seeks to represent.

Bennett’s New Jersey & H Educational Foundation never filed a Form 990 charitable tax return with the IRS and had its registration revoked by DC’s Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs shortly after its formation. Despite its total lack of tangibility, Bennett chose to lie about her involvement in the foundation, touting it in her campaign biography over three years after the phony charity was formally defunct.

Here’s the key: no matter how she spins her sweetheart real estate deal or why the charity wasn’t funded as promised, there’s no escaping the fact that her campaign biography touted her leadership of the New Jersey & H Educational Foundation over three years after the foundation’s registration was revoked by government regulators – until she was caught deceiving voters and scrubbed any mention of the phony charity.

This race began when the national Democratic Party recruited the poorly-vetted LuAnn Bennett after other challengers, including Delegate Kathleen Murphy and Senator Jennifer Wexton, declined to pursue the seat.

As a result of their poor choice in candidates, the Bennett campaign has gone from shooting for the stars to being captured by an unexpected black hole. While the time to final inspiral remains uncertain, she won’t escape the gravity of the situation she’s now in. The question is no longer where the Bennett campaign ends, but rather, how it chooses to swirl down the drain as it falls towards inevitability.

Bennett’s lack of substance and blemished past explains why she launched a relentlessly and falsely negative campaign back in December, whereas Comstock’s operation has remained diligent, positive, and focused on the Congresswoman’s record throughout the entire course of her re-election bid.

This phony charity is indeed bad – but nowhere near the worst thing hidden in Bennett’s past.

Stay tuned.