Megachurch Pastor Caught Buying Private Jet With PPP Funds

A new investigation has found that millions of dollars worth of PPP funds ended up going to megachurches, which was a violation of the terms of the PPP loans. And at least one pastor seized on the opportunity to use his PPP money to buy a private jet. These are grifters of the highest order, and they need to be taxed and investigated for their actions. Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins discusses this.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

As small businesses here in the United States continue to close their doors because they simply cannot make enough money to stay open. During this pandemic and recession, a new report has come out to show us that billionaire and millionaire mega church pastors ended up getting their hands on millions of dollars in PPP loans from the federal government, for their churches. And at least one of these pastors, a man by the name of Marcus lamb, who runs day star television, uh, according to religion dispatches, uh, they have as many as 2 billion viewers and it's valued at a quarter of a billion dollars. Uh, he got 4 million

In PPP loans And then he proceeded to buy a Gulf stream five private jet. Now the private Jet is valued at 9 million and he only got four. So of course, yeah, I mean, he had to pony up the other $5 million, but also as we all know, because of the new Republican, Ted's not even new anymore, it's three years old, but because of the Republican tax cut package, he's going to get to write off almost all of the costs of that private jet and on his taxes this year, too. So he, he took our money, our, our tax dollars money that was meant to go to help small businesses survive the pandemic. And he buys himself a private jet with it. And now

After this year ends, okay,

He is going to be able to write off most of the cost of that further fleecing, the American taxpayers, what a time to be alive, right. Folks, because this is how the system works. If you have money, the system is rigged so that you can make even more money, but if you don't have money, if you're struggling to get by the system's rigged so that you can't get a helping hand. In fact, you get punished. If you try to take a helping hand, but this story about these mega church founders is absolutely deplorable. Um, and I think that is the most appropriate word. Uh, Joel Olsteen's, Lakewood church, um, annual budget of 90 million. Um, he is, uh, got a net worth around 50 to 60 million. Uh, they put took four and a half million

In PPP loans.

Um, you've got other churches out here too, um, that have also taken a C 2,000,005 million that's Robert Jeffries and Paula white, who took those amounts.

The whole thing is

It's absolutely disgusting because these mega churches, well, let me back up for a second. Uh, the PPP loans for the first time ever were actually made available to charities. Um, obviously people weren't giving as much to charities. Charity says we're going to go under, we got to help people. So they made PPP loans available to charities, not to churches, but these mega church pastors found a way around that. I'm sure they all charities. And so they use that. Uh, I'm assuming in most cases to get around those laws, regular average, every day, your church, down the street, they weren't able to get these PPP loans.

Most of them,

Some of them I believe did. Um, and to be honest, I'm actually okay with that because I look at, I mean, I know multiple different people who work at the church, they all work at different churches, but we're in the South, it's all the church, right? Um, they work at the church, you know, they're, they're not a pastor than not a none. They're not a priest. They just work. You know, they're, they're in the clerical department, they're our receptionist or whatever they are. They work there.