Roy Moore guaranteed $180K annually by charity in undisclosed deal: report

Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore (R) received more than $1 million from a charity group between 2007 and 2012 for part-time work despite claiming he received no “regular salary” from the group, according to a new report.

The Washington Post reported Wednesday that Moore had arranged to take a yearly salary of $180,000 from the Alabama-based Foundation for Moral Law, a charity he founded to promote Christian values in government.

Moore told a jury in 2011 that his salary was not a “regular” one from the foundation but rather a “special project” he set up.

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“My salary does not come by way of a regular salary from the Foundation, but through a special project that I run so that I don’t inhibit the Foundation,” Moore said in August of that year.

That special project was “Project Jeremiah,” a fundraising effort spearheaded by Moore that the former Alabama chief justice proposed would pay for his special salary. However, a deal with the group stated that the charity would pay the difference if Project Jeremiah was unable to fund Moore’s desired $180,000 in a given year, according to the Post.

Despite this, the group was unable to afford to pay all of Moore’s salary when he left the group in 2012 and instead gave him a promissory note that eventually became worth $540,000 or an equal stake in a historic building in Montgomery, Ala., the charity’s most valuable asset, the newspaper reported.

The property is a pre-Civil War office building the charity bought in 2005 for $546,000 and immediately began renovating. Those improvements cost hundreds of thousands more, according to the Post. 

According to charity officials, Moore still carries that note, which he can cash in on demand.

Moore, who was twice ousted as chief justice of the state Supreme Court, defeated establishment favorite Sen. Luther Strange in last month’s GOP primary runoff for the seat vacated by Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

Moore is favored against Democrat Doug Jones in the Dec. 12 special election.