Latest / The Overlap / Private Jets for Jesus: The Tax-Free Gospel

Transcript

Private Jets for Jesus: The Tax-Free Gospel · The Overlap

0:00
Bonnie Parker lived in Windsboro,
0:02
Louisiana. She was sick, and for years,
0:05
every Sunday she watched Kenneth and Gloria Copeland on television,
0:09
hoping to be healed. The Copelands preached the prosperity gospel,
0:14
which teaches that faith and giving bring health and wealth back to the giver.
0:19
Bonnie Parker gave. Her daughter,
0:22
Christy Beach, later said she donated.
0:25
Tens of thousands of dollars, possibly hundreds of thousands.
0:29
Her husband, Alvin Parker, said she died believing that she had not given enough
0:35
to be healed. Around the same time,
0:38
a reporter at WFAA in Dallas named Brett Ship obtained flight records
0:43
for Copeland's ministry's $20 million jet.
0:47
On a trip to a seminar in Australia,
0:49
the plane stopped in Maui, in Fiji.
0:53
And in Honolulu, for what the Copelands called eating and rest.
0:58
The same records showed the jet flying to the La Fonda Hunting Ranch in South Texas.
1:04
Bonnie Parker's family asked the ministry for an accounting of what she had given.
1:09
They wanted to know where her money went.
1:11
Christy Beach told reporters, I just can't comprehend them going on vacation
1:16
in a jet that my mom paid for with her life.
1:19
The ministry declined to be interviewed and
1:22
What it offered instead was a statement from an accounting firm saying
1:26
its jet travel complied with tax law.
1:29
The family asked for an accounting of one woman's donations and got
1:34
a firm's opinion about the airplane.
1:58
Hello and welcome back to The Overlap.
2:00
This is The Overlap. I'm Joshua.
2:03
And I'm Will. This episode is about prosperity gospel televangelists.
2:07
Chiefly Kenneth Copeland. The Jets donors paid for the mansions.
2:13
They pay no they pay no property tax and a federal tax agency that opened
2:17
one examination of a church in all of its fiscal for twenty fourteen.
2:20
Copeland's history explains a lot about the Plains.
2:22
Before he was a broadcaster, he was actually a pilot.
2:26
And the man he flew for was Oral Roberts.
2:29
Not far from where I live now is Oral Roberts University.
2:34
His own organization is legally a church called Eagle Mountain International Church,
2:40
and it does business as Kenneth Copeland Ministries,
2:43
based in Newark, Texas, near Fort Worth.
2:46
Keep that legal status in mind because nearly every protection we discuss
2:49
in this episode attaches to the word quote church.
2:52
And this particular church apparently owns an airport.
2:55
It's called Kenneth Copeland Airport in Newark.
2:58
Reporting from twenty twenty five says Copeland owns five aircraft.
3:02
Plane from the Cold Open is a Cessna Citation X.
3:05
In 2005, Copeland got his donors to pay for it.
3:10
At the time, it was the fastest private jet in the world,
3:15
and it cost about $20 million.
3:18
Trinity Foundation, a watchdog group that tracks televangelist finances,
3:23
says he uses it regularly to fly to his resort home in Steamboat Springs,
3:28
Colorado.
3:29
Praise Jesus. The paperwork around that plane has its own wrinkle.
3:33
In July 2005, the same year the Citation 10 was bought,
3:36
a for-profit company called AIR Inc.,
3:39
clever name, was created in Newark,
3:42
Texas. Its directors were Gasou,
3:45
Kenneth Copeland, and Charles G.
3:47
Hyde. The Senate Finance Committee staff named Air Inc.,
3:51
AIR Inc. in its review of the ministry.
3:54
Whatever payments moved between the church and that company were never disclosed.
3:58
So what we can say is limited to this,
4:00
a church that owns jets and an airport operates alongside a
4:04
for profit aviation company with the founder on its board,
4:07
and nobody outside has seen the books of either one.
4:10
Then in 2019, Inside Edition sent Lisa Guerrero to ask Copeland about
4:16
the jets on camera. He gave her two lines that traveled a very long way.
4:21
He described commercial airliners as a tube full of demons.
4:26
And when she pressed on him specifically about the money,
4:31
he said, I'm a very wealthy man.
4:34
Just gets better and better. The program also reported at least 143 flights
4:39
to the Colorado vacation home.
4:40
I want to be careful with that number.
4:42
Much of the jet tracking material in this story comes from Trinity Foundation,
4:46
which reads public flight data and draws conclusions about where a plane went
4:49
and why. Trinity is an advocacy watchdog and it worked alongside
4:53
the Senate committee for six years.
4:55
Aviation blogs that repeat these figures,
4:58
like Arrow Corner and Jetly, mostly repackage earlier reporting.
5:02
So 143 flights and the purpose of any single trip rests on a watchdog's reading
5:06
of flight data rather than the ministry's own logs.
5:08
Because those aren't available.
5:10
Where we can, we'll cite the original reporting,
5:13
meaning WFAA and the Senate staff report.
5:16
The ministry has its own account of its flying and it deserves a full hearing.
5:19
It says the planes are used for ministry work about 90% of the time.
5:23
For the period from November 2006 to November 2007,
5:27
it says its board approved personal use of the aircraft 10% of the time.
5:32
And when you have five aircraft,
5:33
ten percent of the time can be a lot of ~ lot of time in the air.
5:35
Lot of flight hours.
5:37
Yeah, it says personal trips are charged and that an accounting firm reviewed
5:41
the jet travel and found it compliant with tax law.
5:43
If those charges are real and the family paid them,
5:46
that that changes the legal picture.
5:48
A steamboat springs trip the Copeland's paid for at a proper rate
5:51
is a different thing from a trip that donors cover.
5:53
The trouble is that the repayments have never been publicly verified.
5:57
Nobody outside the ministry has seen the invoices,
5:59
the rates, or the checks.
6:01
What the public has is a percentage the ministry chose to release and
6:05
a summary from a firm it hired.
6:06
And take the ministry's number at face value for just a second,
6:09
right? Even ten percent of the flying on a twenty million dollar jet is
6:15
a lot of personal travel on an aircraft that donors paid for.
6:19
And the board that approved it is the board of Copeland's own church.
6:24
No conflict there that I can tell.
6:25
The newest addition to the fleet came from Hollywood.
6:29
The church's Gulf Stream 5, tail number N1967J,
6:34
was sold to Eagle Mountain International Church by Tyler Perry.
6:37
Sources disagree on whether the sale happened in 2017 or 2018.
6:42
Copeland said Perry made the price so cheap for me I couldn't help but buy it.
6:46
What the church actually paid was never disclosed.
6:49
In Medea and Copeland's defense,
6:51
all of this rests on time. He says the Jets let him cover more ground
6:57
in a ministry he claims was brought that's brought 122 million people to Christ.
7:03
If you accept that premise that every hour saved means more people are reached,
7:09
a faster plane,
7:10
Or saved.
7:12
right, or saved, becomes a ministry expense.
7:16
Meanwhile, estimates of his
7:18
Personal net worth have been reported at about seven hundred
7:21
and fifty million dollars.
7:23
Jesus has been generous. And the $122 million figure that we talked about there
7:28
for the people that have been brought to Christ comes from Copeland himself.
7:32
I'm sure he's been counting. There's no way to check it,
7:34
and for the same reason there's no way to check the ninety percent.
7:36
Both numbers come from inside an organization that publishes nothing
7:39
it doesn't want to, despite the fact that the truth will set you free.
7:43
In two thousand seven, the same year WFAA published the flight records,
7:47
Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa,
7:49
a Republican you might have seen,
7:51
~ regularly refused to uphold decorum rules for the FBI director.
7:57
It said in a Senate Finance Committee that he opened investigation into
8:03
six television ministries Kenneth Copeland,
8:05
Benny Hinn, Creeflow Dollar, Eddie Long,
8:09
Joyce Meyer, and Paula White.
8:13
There's a who's who for you. ~ what he asked for,
8:16
what Senator Director Grassley asked for was ordinary.
8:19
Records on jets, homes, and vehicles,
8:22
plus records of any repayments the leaders had made for personal use
8:25
of the ministry property. That last item goes straight at the Copeland claim
8:28
we just heard. If personal flights were being charged back,
8:31
Grassley's request would have produced the paperwork proving it.
8:33
The six splits into two groups,
8:35
Joyce Meyer Ministries and Benny Hinn Ministries cooperated.
8:40
They handed over material, they changed how they set compensation
8:44
and how they governed their organizations.
8:46
So the Senate scrutiny produced real reform at two of the six ministries named
8:52
in this episode.
8:53
And I think they probably had their own struggles to deal with
8:55
at Benny Hinn's ministry. But the
8:57
Mm-hmm.
8:58
other four, we know, Copeland,
9:00
Dollar, Long and White, which sounds like a horrific law firm,
9:03
Ha
9:04
gave incomplete answers or none at all.
9:06
The investigation actually ran for more than three years.
9:08
On January 6th, 2011, Grassley's staff released a 61 page final review.
9:15
A lot of what they learned about the Copeland operation came from outside
9:19
the ministry, including from former Copeland Ministries employees.
9:23
Those former employees told Senate staff that they had been warned that
9:27
if they talked, quote, God will blight our finances.
9:32
So if if you're saying if you're threatening for God to do it,
9:35
does that make it not your fault?
9:36
Is that how that works? Is that like a ~ enforce majeure kind of thing?
9:41
Act of God? ~ anyway, sorry, just
9:43
I'm not gonna weigh in on that one.
9:45
just thinking out loud. For someone who worked at a ministry because they believed
9:48
in it, the warning that warning threatens their livelihood and
9:51
the vocabulary of their faith.
9:53
Meaning like if your whole identity is wrapped up in that in that ministry,
9:57
it's a real threat to say you're gonna be cut off or that God's gonna blight your
10:00
finances, meaning you're fired.
10:02
I would say is it probably the subtext there.
10:04
And in this whole story, no investigator had the power to go around
10:07
it by compelling the records directly.
10:10
Even with the doors mostly shut,
10:11
staff found some numbers. Fifteen Copeland family members were
10:17
on the ministry payroll. That drew in about $1.5 million in salary just between
10:23
the 15 members of his family. Kenneth and Gloria's combined salaries exceeded
10:28
$600,000. And on top of those salaries,
10:32
the church paid their living and operating expenses.
10:36
And if my math is n is tracking here,
10:38
you divide one point five million by fifteen people,
10:40
and the average comes to a hundred thousand dollars for each family member
10:43
on the payroll. Whatever else Kenneth Cole Copeland Ministries is,
10:47
it's also the Copeland's family employer.
10:50
Then of course there's the land.
10:51
The staff review found that John Copeland,
10:55
who appeared alongside Kenneth and Gloria in the WFAA reporting,
10:58
bought three properties the church owned after an oil and gas field
11:04
was found on top of them. The price he paid was seventy three thousand dollars.
11:10
The order of events though is what stands out here.
11:12
Donated money buys land for the church,
11:14
and later an oil and gas field turns up under it.
11:17
After the discovery, the land leaves the church for seventy three thousand
11:21
and goes to a copland. Nobody outside has reported what that oil
11:25
and gas later produced because the church has no obligation to say.
11:28
The other holdouts had their own aircraft arrangements.
11:31
Creeflo Dahler was CEO of a for-profit company called World Airs,
11:36
Inc., and his wife Taffy Dahler was its secretary.
11:40
World Airs owns the Gulf Stream the Dollars usually fly on.
11:45
It also sold another Gulf Stream to Kenneth Copeland.
11:50
So two of the ministries under Senate
11:52
Hmm.
11:52
investigation were trading airplanes with each other.
11:56
Through a for-profit company run by one of the pastors entirely.
12:00
The Senate could definitely see that the sale happened,
12:04
but it couldn't see the price and who on either side came out ahead.
12:09
Eddie Long, the late Bishop of New Birth Missionary Baptist Church,
12:13
had a company called Long Charter Air LLC.
12:16
It was registered at the church's own address,
12:19
at least a Grumman Jet to a Long affiliated organization for $30,000 a month.
12:23
And if Long Charter Air was were ever dissolved,
12:27
its assets would go to Eddie Long personally.
12:29
Run the arithmetic on that one with me.
12:31
$30,000 a month is $360,000 a year.
12:34
Leaving a religious organization
12:37
and landing in the company at the church's address whose assets end up
12:42
~ with the bishop. Every lease payment builds value and something long would
12:46
eventually own outright.
12:47
Paula White, now Paula White Kane of Without Walls International Church
12:52
was the fourth hold out. She also gave complete answers,
12:56
incomplete answers when ~ the Senate committee probed her organization.
13:01
And the ending was anticlimactic.
13:03
The ~ staff said they lacked the time or resources to issue subpoenas,
13:07
so no one was penalized. Grassley handed the question of reform
13:11
to the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability,
13:14
which is a private group.
13:16
~ ol Anthony of Trinity Foundation said the EFCA has no teeth.
13:23
A private counsel can't compel a document any more than Grassley staff choo chose
13:29
to, right? So in in three years of federal investigation,
13:33
what they ended with was that the matter was passed on to an organization with less
13:39
power than the Senate.
13:41
Here is the fair counterweight,
13:42
and we should give it its full weight.
13:44
The Senate investigation found no violations of federal tax rules,
13:48
given that there was no evidence,
13:49
and no clear proof of wrongdoing.
13:51
Copeland was never accused of breaking the law.
13:54
When we describe how the system works,
13:56
we're describing conduct that nobody has shown or proven in a court of
13:59
law to be illegal.
14:01
And that's very important, especially when your highest paid ~
14:05
co workers are legally married to you,
14:08
which keeps you from being compelled to testify against them in court.
14:12
And the reason nobody showed it is the same report.
14:16
Four ministries declined to hand over their full records,
14:19
and the committee decided against subpoenaing those four specific organizations.
14:25
An
14:25
investigation that can't get the documents can't find any violations in them.
14:30
Both facts can be true at the same time.
14:34
And the ministries are entitled to the first one.
14:37
The reason this fell to a senator in the first place actually goes back
14:41
to the year I was born, nineteen eighty four.
14:44
That year Congress passed the Church Audit Procedures Act,
14:49
Section seven hundred six one one of the tax code.
14:52
Before the IRS can even open an inquiry into a church,
14:55
a senior IRS official has to approve it.
14:59
The church gets written notice and the offer of a meeting.
15:03
And any examination is pretty limited,
15:06
it's it's only to the three most recent tax years.
15:09
Let's put that through a year window against the Copeland timeline.
15:12
The citation 10 was paid for in 2005.
15:15
Grassley's letters went out in 2007.
15:18
An IRS examination opened even a couple of years after that could already
15:22
be outside the window for the year the plane was bought.
15:25
The rules are built so that by the time an inquiry clears the approvals,
15:28
the oldest transactions have aged out.
15:30
Churches also start with less on file than any other charity because other
15:35
tax exempt groups file a public Form 990 every year,
15:39
and churches just don't have to.
15:41
And the category of church is wider than most people would actually guess.
15:46
Daystar Television Network is classified as a church,
15:50
so it also does not have to file a Form 990.
15:53
Television network with a church's disclosure obs obligations.
15:56
Hold on to Daystar 'cause it comes up again when we go get to the Jets.
16:00
Then two thousand eight, a court ruling blocked the IRS from auditing Living Word
16:05
Christian Center, Mac Hammond's Church in Minnesota.
16:07
Trinity Foundation says that after the ruling,
16:11
the IRS effectively stopped auditing churches.
16:14
And the government's own numbers bear that out as well.
16:16
The government accountability office later reported that the IRS opened
16:19
two church examinations in fiscal twenty thirteen and one in twenty fourteen.
16:24
That one examination covered every church in the country for a full year.
16:28
Now, most recent figures are a little higher and still tiny.
16:31
Between October 1st, 2020 and September 30th,
16:35
2022, the IRS opened 14 church tax examinations,
16:39
according to the law firm Wagenmaker and Oberly,
16:43
which Trinity actually cites. That works out to about seven investigations per year.
16:49
And Trinity also found that in 2023,
16:52
no church lost its tax exempt status as a result of an IRS audit.
16:58
Wow, that speaks volumes. Part of the explanation is staffing.
17:01
Between fiscal twenty ten and fiscal twenty nineteen,
17:03
the IRS lost more than twenty-nine thousand six hundred and eighteen full time
17:07
positions. An office that has to get their senior sign-off for every church inquiry
17:11
while shedding that many people is going to be open to very few.
17:14
And when the IRS does find something,
17:16
the public never really learns what it was.
17:18
Fines from church audits are kept secret under the Privacy Act of 1974.
17:23
So for these 14 examinations, the only outcome anyone outside
17:28
can actually report is that none of them cost a church its exemption in 2023.
17:34
Any penalty, any repayment, any fighting,
17:37
all of that stays sealed.
17:39
Now I do want to push back on the version of this story where the
17:42
IRS has no options. A federal appeals court ruled that the Church Audit Procedures
17:46
Act doesn't protect church records held by a bank.
17:49
The IRS can demand those records directly from the bank without going through
17:52
the church's notice and meeting process.
17:54
Now that shifts some of the responsibility.
17:56
The 1984 law slows the IRS down,
17:59
and the staffing cuts slow it down a little more.
18:02
But the agency has a particular path to church bank records that
18:08
the courts have consistently upheld.
18:10
The low audit counts come partly from the law and partly from the choices that
18:15
IRS has made about where to spend the staff that it has actually left.
18:19
Which brings us to November fifth,
18:21
twenty twenty two. Copeland flew the church's Gulf Stream,
18:24
same tail number as before, ~ which we mentioned,
18:27
that came from Tyler Perry from Fort Worth Alliance Airport
18:30
to Palm Beach International. So again,
18:33
he's flying formerly Tyler Perry's Gulf Stream from Fort Worth to Palm Beach.
18:37
The occasion was a Trump rally promoting Mehmet Oz,
18:40
who was running for the Senate in Pennsylvania.
18:42
Then Mr. Copeland flew back to Texas.
18:46
Pete Evans at the Trinity Foundation asked just two questions about that trip.
18:51
Did the flight have any ministry purpose?
18:53
And was the church actually compensated for it?
18:58
Churches are barred from campaigning for candidates under the Johnson Amendment.
19:02
And Trinity says the IRS has, quote,
19:06
virtually ignored the Johnson Amendment for churches.
19:09
So you have a church owned jet flying a church founder to a campaign rally
19:15
for a Senate candidate, and the two questions that would settle anything whether
19:18
anything improper happened are the same two questions Senator Grassley asked
19:22
in two thousand seven personal use and repayment.
19:25
Fifteen years later they're still being asked by a watchdog with no power
19:29
to get an answer.
19:30
And the twenty twenty two flight is recent enough to fall inside
19:33
the three year window, or at least it was at the tax filing window
19:38
of April twenty twenty six. So if the IRS wanted to actually look at it,
19:43
the nineteen eighty-four law would have allowed it,
19:47
basically, with senior approval.
19:48
But there's no public sign that one was ever opened,
19:52
and under the Privacy Act, there wouldn't be a public sign if one had been.
19:57
Assume what you like. ~ federal income tax is one layer at issue here,
20:02
but property tax is local and at the county level you can put a dollar figure
20:06
on what the neighbors cover.
20:07
So let's start with 2008. Terrent County appraisers denied a property
20:12
tax exemption on one of the ministry's jets,
20:14
a Cessna Bravo 550, worth about $3.6 million.
20:19
The exemption application required a list of salaries,
20:23
and the ministry just refused to provide it outright.
20:28
And you can go ahead and read that as a choice.
20:29
The ministry had a path to a tax break on a three point six million dollar aircraft.
20:33
The price of the break was showing up to the county or showing
20:37
the county what everybody gets paid.
20:38
It kept the private payroll and gave up the exemption.
20:41
That tells you something about how much the ministry values keeping
20:45
its salaries out of public view.
20:46
So in 2014, John Burnett at NPR reported that Tarrant County exempts thirty million
20:53
dollars of Copeland property from local taxes.
20:56
That number includes a parsonage,
20:58
which is an 18,000 square foot home valued at six point three million dollars.
21:04
Across
21:05
Not usually associated with parsonages.
21:07
right, when I think of parsonage,
21:09
I don't definitely don't think of an 18,000 square foot house.
21:12
I usually think of a of a rotting cabin with a leaking roof.
21:16
Now across
21:16
Exactly.
21:17
that property the the exemptions excuse about six hundred
21:21
and sixty thousand dollars in property taxes from the previous year.
21:28
And in 2021, the Houston Chronicle ran an investigation called Unfair Burden
21:33
Tax Sanctuaries. By then, the Lakeside Mansion was valued at $7 million,
21:38
and Reed Mansion is parsonage.
21:40
It's owned
21:41
Mm-hmm.
21:41
by Eagle Mountain International Church,
21:43
and it pays no property tax because it's classified as a parsonage under section
21:46
eleven point two zero of the Texas Tax Code.
21:50
The Chronicle put the savings at about $150,000 a year.
21:54
So those two numbers measure different things,
21:57
right? The NPR number covers the whole thirty million dollars of exempt property.
22:03
And the chronicle number covers the house by itself,
22:06
right? The $150,000 is just what the Copeland's primary home would owe.
22:13
That money would otherwise go toward Terrant County services like schools
22:17
and police and firefighters, libraries.
22:20
So the household around the ministry pays a little more to make up
22:25
for the house that pays nothing.
22:27
And that comes out to by my count eight hundred and ten thousand between
22:31
the two of them. If the three thirty
22:32
Something like that.
22:33
million was six hundred and sixty and the house was one hundred fifty.
22:36
Anyway,
22:36
Mm-hmm.
22:37
~ local officials haven't simply waived this through.
22:41
Jeff Law, the Tarrant County Chief Appraiser,
22:43
said in twenty twenty one that he would ask the church to reapply
22:46
for the parsonage exemption. And Law's office is the same one that turned down
22:51
the Jet exemption in two thousand eight.
22:53
So the county has pushed back at least twice,
22:55
and in both cases the tool was paperwork.
22:57
Make the ministry file and make it show something.
23:00
Copeland is is far from the only Texas pastor using this exemption.
23:03
In Houston, Bishop IV Hilliard of New Light Church World Outreach
23:08
and Worship Centers has a parsonage in Spring,
23:12
Texas of nearly 25,000 square feet on eleven point eight acres.
23:18
It currently is avoiding about $100,000 per year in property taxes.
23:23
And then there's Joel Osteen, a wealthy Texas megachurch,
23:25
The one and only
23:27
the one and only. None like him.
23:29
the wealthy Texas megachurch pastor,
23:33
by anybody's measure, pays about two hundred and eighteen thousand dollars
23:37
a year in property taxes on his home and doesn't claim the parsonage exemption
23:41
Now, Osteen's tax,
23:42
to his credit.
23:43
yeah, to his credit, I guess. Osteen's tax bill settles one argument.
23:48
The parson exit parsonage exemption is something specific pastors
23:54
can decide to claim, right? The richest pastor in Houston pays $218,000
24:00
per year. He could have tried to avoid.
24:03
And Copeland and Hilliard, with houses of $18,000 and nearly $25,000.
24:10
square feet decided I'm gonna take that break.
24:13
Which also means the exemptions defenders can't claim it's essential
24:16
to running a large ministry. Lakewood Church operates with its pastor paying full
24:20
property tax on his house.
24:22
Now the jets themselves get raised for in public,
24:25
right? And the pitches travel from you know preacher to preacher.
24:29
In 2015, Creeflow Dollars World Changers Church International in College Park,
24:34
Georgia launched its project called Project G650.
24:39
The goal was about $65 million for a Gulfstream G650.
24:44
The ask was for 200,000 people.
24:49
To give three hundred dollars or more each.
24:52
The math on that ask is straightforward.
24:54
Two hundred thousand people at three hundred dollars apiece comes to sixty million.
24:59
And the or more was supposed to cover the last five million.
25:02
And this was the same Creflow dollar whose for profit company World Airs already
25:07
owned the Gulf Stream Gulf Stream he usually flew,
25:09
according to the reporting around the Senate investigation.
25:12
Now, to be fair, public backlash actually shut the campaign down within
25:16
a couple of days. The ministry had a New York public relations firm,
25:21
5W Public Relations, who handled the response with Judy or sorry,
25:27
Judah Ingle Mayer, representing Creeflo Dollar Ministries during this entire ordeal.
25:34
So public pressure has stopped at least one of these campaigns and stopped it fast.
25:38
When the ask is sixty-five million in a single announcement,
25:41
people notice. The routine costs,
25:43
the parsonage exemption every year,
25:44
the lease payment every month,
25:46
never produce that kind of moment.
25:48
And then old Jesse Duplanis from Destrahan,
25:51
Louisiana. In twenty eighteen he asked his followers to support a
25:56
new Desalt Falcon 7X, a fifty-four million dollar aircraft,
26:00
and said God had told him to believe for it.
26:04
follow-up came on November 27th,
26:06
2023. Duplantis was appearing at Kenneth Copeland Ministries Telethon when
26:12
he announced that he had bought the Falcon 7X.
26:14
It was a used 2008 model, and the reported price was 21 million.
26:18
The till number is in N7JD, I think it's a shortened tail number there.
26:23
~ and the plane is registered to Voice of the Covenant Church Inc.,
26:26
which is the legal name of Jesse Duplantis Ministries.
26:29
So that that is a correction we do owe the ministry,
26:31
right? That the headline figure from twenty eighteen was fifty four million.
26:34
And what Duplanus paid came in at less than half of it.
26:38
The big round numbers in the appeals tend to overstate what gets spent,
26:45
but he bought it on faith.
26:47
And the airplane is registered to a church.
26:49
So the same protections we walked through for Copeland,
26:51
no Form nine ninety, the nineteen eighty four audit rules,
26:54
the secrecy around any penalties,
26:56
cover a twenty one million dollar Falcon seven X in Louisiana.
27:00
Look at where you made the announcement too.
27:02
Copeland's Telethon was the stage for yet another preacher's jet.
27:05
Trinity Foundation's tracking work,
27:07
reported in 2025, connected aircraft to more names.
27:12
Bishop I. V. Hilliard, the same pastor with the nearly 25,000 square foot parsonage.
27:17
Joni Lamb of Daystar Television Network,
27:21
which is classified as a church,
27:22
also filing no Form 990.
27:26
Keith Kraft of Elevate Life Church in Frisco,
27:29
Texas, and Kenneth Copeland.
27:31
Hilliard and Lamb are the useful cases there because each one shows
27:34
a different protection stacking on top of a plane.
27:36
For Hilliard, it's the parsonage exemption plus the aircraft.
27:39
For Lamb, it's a broadcast network wearing a church's legal status,
27:42
which means the network's plane comes with the church's disclosure rules.
27:45
And then the next generation. In June 2025,
27:48
Religion Unplugged reported that Copeland's grandson,
27:53
Jeremy Pearsons, is raising money for a private jet.
27:57
He's the son of Terry Copeland Pearsons,
28:00
who heads Legacy Church. The aviation site Jetly put the target
28:06
at $2 million for a Cessna citation Bravo.
28:09
That number comes from an aggregator rather than original reporting.
28:14
Take it for what it's worth.
28:16
I do like the unplugged album by religion,
28:18
~ but the you read enough of this stuff and it's the righteous gemstone starts
28:23
to seem a little understated. ~ this these habits run in the family.
28:28
The grandfather flew for Royal Roberts,
28:30
built a fleet of five aircraft in an airport,
28:32
and hosted the telethon where Duplantis announced his jet.
28:34
Now the grandson runs his own church and has his own fundraising campaign
28:37
for a new plane.
28:39
Now, the defense. And it should get a hearing too.
28:42
In 2008, the commentator Doug Weed,
28:46
WEAD, argued that about 16,000 corporations operate their own aircraft.
28:52
He pointed out that Billy Graham's ministry,
28:55
the Mormon Church, and Catholic diocese all use private planes.
28:59
And he argued that Pentecostal ministries were being singled out.
29:03
And that's a partisan blog post,
29:05
and it contains at least one real fact.
29:07
Large religious organizations do use private aircraft,
29:10
and Copeland's ministry would hardly be the first.
29:12
Where the comparison runs into trouble is the Bonnie Parker family.
29:16
They gave to a ministry, they asked that ministry where the money went,
29:19
and they got an accounting firm statement about jet travel.
29:21
The defense covers whether a ministry may own a plane.
29:24
It says nothing about whether the people who paid for the plane can see the book.
29:28
And the 16,000 corporation figure cuts the other way too.
29:32
A corporation's plane gets paid for out of revenue that the corporation earns.
29:38
Like it or not, that's capitalism,
29:40
but they're paying for it with their own money.
29:43
The citation 10 was paid for by donors through direct asks
29:50
in a ministry that tells people their giving will get them into heaven.
29:56
So let's be specific about where pressure has worked,
29:58
because the record has a few cases where it did.
30:01
Clearuses in Tarrant County in 2008.
30:03
The county required a salary list for the jet exemption,
30:05
but the ministry just refused.
30:07
And the county denied the exemption on a $3.6 million aircraft.
30:12
A disclosure requirement at a county level produced a real tax bill that
30:17
any of us could see. Jeff Law's 2021 decision to have the church reapply
30:22
for the parsonage exemption uses the same exact mechanism.
30:25
Every reapplication is a chance for the county to ask for documents.
30:31
The second clear case is the Senate investigation,
30:33
at least as far as the two ministries that cooperated were concerned.
30:37
Joyce Meyer ministries and Benny Hinn ministries changed how they set
30:40
pay and run their organizations.
30:42
The scrutiny did that without a single subpoena.
30:44
The four that refused face refused,
30:47
the other ministries faced no consequence,
30:50
and Grassley's own staff said why.
30:52
They lacked the quote time or resources to issue subpoenas.
30:55
The power existed, and the committee chose not to spend it.
30:59
And then, of course, the third is the IRS's bank records route.
31:02
So the the appeals court ruling means church records held by a bank
31:07
are breachable without the 1984 notice and meeting process.
31:12
An agency that wanted to look at where a ministry's money went actually
31:17
has a mechanism to do it. The audit numbers,
31:19
one examination in fiscal 2014 and 14 across two years more recently.
31:26
Show how rarely the agency has actually decided to look with or without that power.
31:32
And the fourth investigation is the ~ public project G six fifty.
31:37
Project G six fifty died
31:39
Yeah.
31:39
within days. Duplantis ended up using buying a used plane for twenty
31:43
one million dollars. And I mean,
31:44
come on, let's pour one out for our boy,
31:46
Jesse Duplantis, because having to take a twenty one million dollar plane when
31:49
you're hoping for a fifty four million dollar plane,
31:51
that's just rough.
31:52
It just hurts.
31:53
~ yeah, that's just me, man. ~ Inside Edition put a camera in front
31:57
of Copeland and got the quotes,
31:59
tube full of demons.
32:01
Which let's talk about that. I mean,
32:02
does he warn his ~ his followers of that?
32:05
~ but he got two
32:06
No, I do you remember
32:07
that interview when it blew up though?
32:08
You can pull it.
32:09
I I don't I I somehow missed that one.
32:11
~ it's on YouTube. He basically says that he can't
32:14
fly commercial because commercial airplanes are essentially there's just
32:21
tubes full of demons. And demons who come and go have the opportunity
32:26
to attach themselves to him while he's in those public airplanes.
32:31
it's a good thing the demons can't fly at the same level or can't get
32:34
on the ~ citations or the Gulf Streams or any those.
32:35
I didn't know demons could fly,
32:37
so that was new to me.
32:39
Yeah, man, they have all kinds of powers.
32:40
Just read this present darkness.
32:42
Right.
32:43
~ all right, so we got those quotes,
32:47
He also said I'm a very wealthy man.
32:48
yeah.
32:50
Right, yeah, his his other quote was I'm a very wealthy man,
32:52
~ which isn't a rare bit of honesty there,
32:55
but attention has has changed the behavior at the edges in this case.
32:58
At least the pressure got to him,
32:59
~ maybe in more ways than one.
33:01
But the truth is it does it hasn't really touch parts that never
33:04
get their own newspaper article or headline or podcast or whatever.
33:08
The parsonage on the lake, right?
33:11
Avoids ~ what is it, $150,000 in property taxes every year?
33:16
I mean, that's like
33:17
Right.
33:17
I mean, i in five years you could build a school.
33:20
Like you know what I mean? Like you if you gave the library and it
33:22
Right. Or pay some teachers finally.
33:25
exactly. Or or if you gave the library $150,000 a year.
33:28
~
33:29
Imagine what we could do with a library,
33:31
right? The 15 members, family members that just as staff drew one
33:37
and a half million dollars. John Copeland's $73,000 purchase of land that just
33:44
so happened to be sitting on an oil and gas field,
33:46
right? Eddie Long's $30,000 a month lease of his own company.
33:52
He created a company to rent a part of the company back to himself for a profit.
33:58
Like
33:59
It's literally just capitalism between two corporations owned and controlled
34:02
by the same person, where the person in the middle is just making
34:05
the money between the two organizations.
34:06
The Gulfstream,
34:07
I think that's called a shell game.
34:09
I I think that's exactly what a shell game is.
34:11
The Gulfstream flight to the the Oz rally in Palm Beach,
34:15
right? None of those produced any consequence whatsoever that any of
34:21
us have been able to find. And under the Privacy Act,
34:24
any, you know.
34:26
Perjury, penalty, default, whatever,
34:29
it would stay completely sealed and completely off the books from us.
34:33
And look, I I Sorry.
34:35
Sorry.
34:36
~ I I I just wanted to to toss in here.
34:38
This isn't this has nothing to do with with you know your faith.
34:41
If you if you believe in this in in Christianity or if you believe
34:45
in these ministries, that's fine.
34:47
You know, there's no there's no harm in it,
34:49
but there is real harm when they're using it as a methodology for A for them
34:54
to get rich, which directly goes against what it says in the Bible.
34:58
It's easier for a camel to fit through the eye of a needle than it is for
35:01
a rich man to get into heaven.
35:03
And I mean this was kind of started by Oral Roberts,
35:07
if we're being honest anyway, about the whole prosperity gospel theology.
35:11
But also it's hurting real people because they're taking your money
35:15
and and telling you that you'll have blessings for it and then just using
35:20
it to buy airplanes.
35:22
And unfortunately, after the handful of investigations and the lack of any kind
35:25
of ~ consequences at all, we're back with Bonnie Parker's family right where they
35:30
started. They asked the Copelands for an accounting of what Ms.
35:33
Miss Parker gave, and the ministry declined interviews and pointed
35:36
to an accounting firm statement.
35:38
No senator, no county appraiser,
35:40
and no IRS examiner has ever been in a position to give them the number they asked
35:43
for, and the ministry's never offered it.
35:46
And that's pretty much it, right?
35:47
Like that's the real issue here is that that nothing would compel them just
35:51
to tell them how much money their mother had donated through the years
35:55
to the ministry. Now to be fair,
35:58
you know, the sh probably could have pulled bank records and and gotten
36:02
it all together. But wouldn't it be at least kind to just give her,
36:09
you know, family a a statement of of all of the giving that she had given
36:13
to the ministry over the years?
36:15
But sh they don't have to, right?
36:16
I mean there's no law that makes them.
36:18
Right, I guess the other thing she asked for was an accounting of what
36:21
the how they spent the money or the family asked for how they spent
36:23
the money as well. But even that they could have just released some portion
36:27
of it and said 'cause it's not as if every dollar's tracked,
36:29
right? And
36:30
Right.
36:30
once it goes into an account, it just becomes ~ you know,
36:34
~ commoditized with the rest of with every other dollar.
36:37
So ~ if you take that away, you know,
36:40
it's not like they're gonna told her something to give a little peace of mind,
36:43
like, hey, we spent you know, tell her at least about how they saved
36:46
a hundred and twenty million people and what they spent that money on.
36:48
Right.
36:49
That would that would give her some peace of mind,
36:51
perhaps.
36:52
Exactly. And I think I think at all of this though,
36:55
it's not it's not just churches.
36:57
Companies play this exact game,
36:59
even and especially non profits.
37:02
It's why we will be doing a future episode on how the rich use non profits
37:08
to funnel money back to their own family members without having to pay actual taxes
37:12
So for for profit then.
37:14
on them. Yes, for profit.
37:16
But this was just an expose of private jets for Jesus
37:22
The Tax Free Prosperity Gospel Racket.
37:25
That's the episode.
37:26
Amen.
37:27
I'm Joshua.
37:29
I'm Will. See you next week.
37:30
Make sure to check
37:30
us out on FOF.foundation, on Apple Podcasts,
37:35
on Spotify. Give us a rating, five stars,
37:38
or you can send us an email at the overlap at FOF.foundation.
37:42
That's theOverlap at FOF.foundation.
37:46
Shoot us a text over there. We'll be happy to respond.
37:48
Otherwise, that's it. Take care of each other.
37:52
Help where you can. And like we always say,
37:55
bye.