On Friday, speaking exclusively with Breitbart News, Steven Pagones, the assistant district attorney whom Al Sharpton falsely accused of the rape of 15-year-old Tawana Brawley, called for advertisers on Sharpton’s program to drop their support of his MSNBC program, PoliticsNation. “I find it hard to believe that people lend any amount of credibility to Sharpton as a person, as a leader, as an activist, and most of all, as a source of truth,” said Pagones, who sued Sharpton for defamation and won. “I’m dumbfounded at how advertisers accept what he has done not only to me but to so many others in situations involving race – situations that perhaps would have worked out more positively but for the fact that he escalated them through race-baiting.”
Pagones continued, “Essentially, the media, thanks to these different companies who are advertising with him, are allowing him to rehabilitate himself without any accountability or any responsibility. I think that’s wrong and a huge mistake.”
Pagones has also written an op-ed for TruthRevolt.org today, in which he states, “How can any type of commercial advertiser be comfortable with having Al Sharpton as a spokesperson?….I have a hard time viewing Al Sharpton as a civil rights activist. I view Al Sharpton as being nothing more than an opportunist and a race-baiter.”
Ben Shapiro is Editor-At-Large of Breitbart News and author of the New York Times bestseller “Bullies: How the Left’s Culture of Fear and Intimidation Silences America” (Threshold Editions, January 8, 2013).