Beck's smear of Creamer not even close

During his show today, in the midst of an extended attack on progressive activist Robert Creamer, Glenn Beck claimed that Creamer had “no problem completely ripping off the non-profit entity that he's working for.” Beck later added that the progressive movement was “the people that [Creamer's] stealing from.” This isn't even close to right.

Creamer pled guilty to federal bank fraud and tax charges in 2005 due to his handling of Illinois Public Action, but no one ever alleged that he had stolen money from the group. Creamer had been “writing checks on accounts without sufficient funds to cover them while moving money between accounts and playing the so-called float to prevent the checks from bouncing,” but doing so in order to keep the nonprofit from failing, not in order to steal from it.

In fact, the judge in the case reportedly gave Creamer a lesser sentence than prosecutors had sought “because no one suffered 'out of pocket losses' and Creamer acted not out of greed but in an effort to keep his community action group going without cutting programs.”

It seems Beck's trouble with felonies continues.