this post was submitted on 16 Dec 2023
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I'm not going to defend or attack the guy, merely point out that facts. How much he knew and when is certainly up for debate, we just have limited evidence of that.
What we do have are facts, and those facts can certainly be used for cause for tht authorities to investigate.
That's partially true. What we know is that his dad runs a golf tournament and put the Open Hand Foundation on the ads. Usually this means all proceeds go to the charity, or at least that they get the sponsorship money (i.e. merch and whatnot) according to the prices they have listed for sponsors, but we don't have the actual agreement AFAIK between the tournament and the charity.
So there's certainly enough to warrant an investigation, but not enough to actually prove any kind of crime. There does seem to be enough to prove negligence for holding onto the money for 10 years though, which should be enough to trigger a thorough audit, including alleged golf tournament income.
And that's what I don't like about this whole thing. They've already presented facts and contacted the relevant authorities, so anything further they say is conjecture and therefore YouTube drama. The first video by Mutahar was informative, the second was a bit of drama (they should've investigated the golf thing a bit more), the third was just dunking on him, and any further videos I see that aren't directly related to an investigation are pure Internet drama at this point.
Over a decade he announced each year that the donations go to a specific charity and then he claimed that all this time he could not find a charity to donate to. That's different from ignorance.
He claimed he knew the money hadn't been donated in 2021, so if that's true, we're looking at 2 years, not 10. He was an officer the whole time, but it's very common for family run businesses and charities to name people as officers even when they don't have an active role.
My point is that it's very possible that he didn't know for the first 7-8 years, and later just followed the same script he'd been following. That's still bad, especially since he didn't get the money donated until called out, but not as bad as sitting on it for 10 years.
The golf thing is the final smoking gun, and I'd very much like to hear his explanation of that before jumping to conclusions. It could very well be that one of his siblings is doing something shady there and he wasn't involved. Until I have details, I'll keep my finger pointed at the charity itself and not Jirard, though he is a prime suspect. I think it should absolutely be investigated by the authorities, who'll have access to all of the account data and can provide proof of what happened.
He cannot claim and keep a straight face that he's looking for charities when he speaks about a specific charity for years, be it 10 or 2.
My point is that he could have just been evaluating charities for the past two years, and before that his siblings were supposed to take care of that. We don't know what the internal agreements were, or the communication between him and the rest of the people in the foundation. All we know is that he claims he knew the money wasn't donated in 2021, and that pushing on him last month got the money donated.
None of this is particularly relevant to those who have donated, but it's pretty important when looking at legal consequences and culpability. I think there's enough here to say Jirard is a scumbag, but not enough to necessarily claim that he is a criminal, though there's a good chance someone at the foundation has committed a crime.
Even if he only he knew in 2021 he then continued to claim the money was being donated as recent as 2022. Which means he is either complicit or lying.
I don't think you can draw either conclusion confidently. Here's an alternate explanation: his sister acknowledged that the money wasn't donated, and told him that it would once they pick a charity, and he didn't press on it until it got publicity. I haven't reviewed every time he boosted his charity, but in the ones I did see, he said he "worked with charities X, Y, and Z," not that they've actually donated money to them (i.e. they've been in talks about the donation process). I don't know how likely that is, but it's plausible enough for me to hold back on personal accusations, especially if I had a public platform like a popular YouTube channel (e.g. Mutahar @ someordinarygamers YT channel)
The way I see it, he's either complicit, lying, or negligent. I'm not going to guess which one until I see more evidence.