Entertainment

D.L. Hughley book: Rev. Jesse Jackson paid mistress — again

Todd Seavey Contributor
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Rev. Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow/PUSH Coalition claimed in 2001 that a final $40,000 payment for Jackson mistress Karin Stanford had been nixed in 1999.

But in a new book, comedian D.L. Hughley, a liberal in good standing and a political commentator on TV and radio, suggests that the final $40,000 payment did go through.

Hughley should know: The money was for a house he was selling.

Rainbow/PUSH was at one point embroiled in controversy over smaller but substantial payments to Stanford, ostensibly made for moving expenses and a consulting paper she wrote for the organization.

Hughley makes the claim in his new book of comedy and often race-related political commentary, titled “I Want You — to Shut the F#ck Up!”

I know for a fact that Jesse [Jackson] succumbed to venality, because it affected me directly. In 1999, I had a house that I wanted to sell in Baldwin Hills. I had a property-management company taking care of the sale for me, and we got a bid on the house from a young woman. “She really wants the house,” the broker told us. But the bid was significantly less than we wanted — I’m talking forty grand less. At that time, the market was pretty solid. There was no need for us to take a bath on the sale.

“No,” I told the broker. “If she really wants it, you tell her that the asking price is the actual price.”

A couple of days later, the buyer matched the price. There was a check from the Rainbow Coalition making up the difference between her original offer and our final price. I instantly thought that somebody down there at the Coalition had himself a little chippy on the side, but I didn’t care one way or another. What mattered to me was whether the check cleared — which it did.

Several weeks after the sale closed, I was on the set of The Hughleys.

“Is that your house?” someone asked me.

“What are you talking about?” I said.

“That’s your house on the TV news!”

And it was. Everyone from the show gathered around to watch the TV set. The reporters had cameras in front of my old house, and the newscasters were proclaiming that this was the home of Jesse Jackson’s love child. His mistress had had a baby, and they were saying that he had bought the house for her.

At some point in the following days, the government even called me investigating whether Jesse had used funds improperly. Obviously, I played dumb. “I don’t know,” I said. “I’ve never seen anything and I don’t know what you’re talking about. Talk to my lawyer.”

A minor John Edwards-sized scandal in the grand scheme of things, but an amusing reminder that it’s a small (political) world.

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