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Days after activist and public persona Shaun King released a 72-page report in hopes of clearing his name of fraud accusations, King sat down for an interview on Sirius XM’s The Clay Cane Show to open up the doorways of communication between his detractors.
In the interview Cane directly asks King about the allegations which claim King took thousands of dollars raised on behalf of victims families for his own personal gain. King has also faced plagiarism allegations as well, to which he denied stealing from Black women creators during the interview.
“After this report, we may very well create another team. There is a whole separate thread of people saying that I have plagiarized articles, that I have stolen content,” King said. “It has never happened. Not once. I am as sure and confident as that, as I am saying that I have never touched a dollar that I’ve ever raised for any family, not just in this report, but before the report. I’ve never borrowed content and not properly credited.”
The report was authored by activist Tamika Mallory, Co-Chair of The Women’s March and Co-Founder of Justice League NYC and civil rights attorney Lee Merritt.
However Cane pushed back on King, asking why he opted out of using an independent auditor instead of Mallory and Merritt, whom he knows on a personal level.
Cane also inquired about a $160,000 donation King received from a crowdsourcing foundation called HopeMob in 2013, and why the report didn’t address it specifically. King said the money was paid over a series of years and that the 72-page report only addressed monies received from August 2014 to August 2019.
“Every dollar that came into families went directly to families. We raised millions of dollars for families for the three years that we led HopeMob,” King said.
King became immersed in the spotlight recently over the allegations after he was named as an honoree of Rihanna’s annual Diamond Ball. The announcement again opened the door for the criticism that King has battled over several years.
You can listen to the full interview below to gather your own opinion about King’s responses.
https://soundcloud.com/siriusxm/shaun-king-explains-audit-choice
https://soundcloud.com/siriusxm/shaun-king-responds-to-critics-about-his-role-in-hopemob
