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Bill Clinton Quits Scam DEI Conference Following Daily Wire Exposé
Top Democrats including former President Bill Clinton apparently withdrew as headline speakers at the National Diversity Conference after The Daily Wire revealed the conference is run by a man accused of stealing millions from a diversity nonprofit.
The National Diversity Conference took place April 7-10 at the Westin Bonaventure Hotel in Los Angeles, after selling non-refundable tickets with Clinton, Oprah Winfrey, and Obama cabinet secretary Julian Castro as the main draws. The conference had been selling photo ops with Oprah for $50,500 for one person or $550,000 for eight people, according to its sponsorship materials.
But as the event rolled around, the only keynote speaker listed on the conference website was far-left professor Cornel West. Others apparently pulled out after The Daily Wire’s March 27 story exposing the conference as a scam, with the website quietly removing names without noting the change.
For years, marketing materials gave the impression that the National Diversity Conference was a program of a longstanding nonprofit called the National Diversity Council. The Council filed for bankruptcy on March 17 after its board said in a lawsuit that its founder, R. Dennis Kennedy, “improperly paid himself millions of dollars from NDC’s donor funds.”
The suit said Kennedy “paid himself a grossly excessive salary” while using the nonprofit as a front for his for-profit diversity consulting business called Diversity & Leadership Inc., intertwining the two in imperceptible ways so that costs went to the nonprofit and revenue-generating activities went to his company.
A tax form on the conference’s website indicates that it is run by Diversity & Leadership Inc. According to Texas business filings, the company’s corporate registration was revoked in March 2023 for failure to pay taxes, but was reinstated two months later.
The nonprofit’s 2020 IRS disclosure said Kennedy was paid $450,000 for 10 hours of work per week. In 2022, at the height of corporations’ DEI hype, Kennedy, chief executive officer Ángeles Valenciano, and chief financial officer Jason deGroot also “unilaterally decided that they were owed almost $3 million in ‘back pay,’ and then paid themselves more than $1 million of donor funds,” the lawsuit said.
As board members became suspicious and determined that there was no basis for the payments, Kennedy systematically moved the nonprofit’s trademarks and web domains into his own name, and essentially created a fake organization with the same name that would trick people into paying him directly, the suit indicated.
In 2021 and 2022, Kennedy filed for 350 trademarks with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, registering NDC’s name, initials, and key program names such as the National Diversity Awards to himself personally. In some cases, Kennedy allegedly waited for notification that the NDC’s trademarks were expiring, and instead of renewing them for the organization, he re-trademarked them in his own name without telling the board.
NationalDiversityCouncil.org now leads to a website of an organization that purports to be the National Diversity Council, listing Kennedy as its founder and no board. Dawn Hooper, an accountant who is managing the bankruptcy for NDC’s board, told The Daily Wire that the site is “not operated by the National Diversity Council.”
The suit said the trio’s conduct “gives rise to criminal liability…at a minimum, a third degree felony.”
In addition to the for-profit D&L Inc., Kennedy ran two Texas-based nonprofits, the Texas Diversity Council and the California Diversity Council, which were used to double-dip on salaries for the trio of executives and siphon off consulting revenue from NDC, while using NDC staff and resources for all the groups’ expenses, the lawsuit said.
According to tax disclosures, in 2021 Kennedy was paid $787,000 in salary by the national nonprofit and $351,113 from the Texas one; Valenciano was paid $460,000 from NDC and $133,000 from Texas; and deGroot was paid $460,000 from national and $123,000 from Texas. The IRS filings claim Valenciano and deGroot worked 40 hours a week for the Texas nonprofit while also working 35 hours a week for the national nonprofit. They also claim Kennedy worked 40 hours a week for the Texas nonprofit, which would leave little time for his many for-profit ventures or the national nonprofit.
“Kennedy, along with his co-defendants, used NDC resources, such as their own time and the time of NDC staff, to assist with non-NDC organizations in order to benefit Kennedy’s other ventures and, ultimately, Kennedy himself,” the suit said.
Kennedy is now running a constellation of identity- and anti-racism focused groups, all of which appear to be bare-bones fronts for his for-profit firm.
The conference’s materials indicate that numerous politicians have been taken in by the alleged grifter, with Barack Obama, Jeb Bush, Colin Powell, Eric Holder, and Hillary Clinton all listed as past speakers.
The speaker changes came just after The Daily Wire asked the Harry Walker Agency, which represents both Clinton and Winfrey in speaking engagements, about the story, though Walker never responded to the request for comment.
Dwayne Mason, a patent attorney who has represented Kennedy, responded to The Daily Wire’s inquiry by saying “you’d think if he stole millions of dollars, then somehow there’d be charges brought by the state [of Texas], which hasn’t happened.” He demanded that it delete its story because it is “full of lies.” When asked for an example, he said “no, I’m staying at the 6,000 foot view.”
Kennedy appears to have escaped culpability in the civil lawsuit precisely because his fleecing of the nonprofit was so extensive. On March 28, the lawsuit was administratively closed because the nonprofit had filed bankruptcy.
Related: National Diversity Council Files For Bankruptcy, Says Top Employees Stole Millions
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