Exclusive: Jedidiah Jenkins Responds To TMZ Video

Posted on March 27th, 2012 at 9:21 am

Jedidiah Jenkins, the Director of Ideology for Jason Russell’s Invisible Children organization, is laughing off a video obtained by TMZ that appears to show him swigging from a Vodka bottle and boasting about pocketing charity money for himself.

In the video, Jenkins can be heard slurring into the camera, “I don’t know if you heard this or not … but we won a … we won a million dollars so … pretty rad … a hundred thousand for Haiti and $900,000 in extra for me.”

PICTURES: Jedidiah Jenkins Random Photos

TMZ claims that the footage was shot in 2010, “right after Invisible Children won the $1 million grand prize in the Chase Community Giving Facebook competition.” The website claims that Invisible Children promised to give $100k to Haitian relief efforts if they won the prize, but there’s no account of how the remaining $900,000 was spent.

RumorFix spoke with Jedidiah moments ago who didn’t’ seem to bothered by the video surfacing. “TMZ can’t ruin my reputation,” he laughed. “I’m not worried.”

Jedidiah tells us that the video was intended as a joke, and the vodka bottle was “clearly filled with water.”

“I was joking. It was made for my co-worker who was out of town when we won the prize. I made it for her to make her laugh and let her know we were thinking of her in the office. It’s hilarious that anyone would think it anything other than a joke. I mean, who can drink that much Vodka? Definitely not me. I’d die. It’s clearly water. I’m not gonna apologize for being a human that jokes with his friends. I’m just sad that bottom feeders like TMZ get pay checks for manufacturing controversy in real people’s lives.”

As for the $900,000 donation, Jenkins tells us, “We used it to fund school construction and scholarships in northern Uganda.”

You can watch the video below and see what all the controversy is about.

Hailey12

He is awesome and CLEARLY joking. His statement is perfect.
Charlie

LOL i wonder who sold this video to TMZ, what a scum bag! Jedidiah, you might wanna check your friends!
Chantalle

I love Jedediah and we should go drinking together to save the children
J3dLvr

JEDIDIAH RULZ
TheRealDealSanchez

Joke or not, id like for some proof that he spent the 900k on schools and didnt keep any for himself. Calling BS on that, this guy is as shady as a tree
- Sailormoon
  
  The schools were shown in Kony 2012 dude
  - Achilles
    
    Lol those tax forms are audited by themselves. Ren do your research before you jump on the Kony2012 band wagon like all the other high schoolers. They don’t need to cause controversy when these guys are causing it themselves. They are frauds and there are plenty of different organizations that would give more than 20 cents of your dollar to the African Children.
    - Ren
      
      I’ve been working with the organization for 6 years now, which isn’t exactly anything you can call bandwagoning, but nice try at pegging down my background, lol.
      
      Also, I’m pretty sure you either haven’t looked at the financial information or tried to but are blind, because there are INDEPENDENT AUDITOR’S REPORTS for each year, done by an outside firm that has an excellent reputation (Considine Considine) – see here: http://c2052482.r82.cf0.rackcdn.com/images/737/original/FY11-Audited%20Financial%20Statements.pdf?1320205055. I’d say nice try again, but it really wasn’t.
      - Shine a Light on Them
        
        Have you been called to testify before a grand jury yet?
        
        If you work for this fraudulent organization devoted to tricking vulnerable and naive young people into sending you money, can you tell us why IC hid their evangelical Christian roots from almost everyone? Can you explain why they are so linked in to Right Wing extremist organizations and support the violently oppressive government of Uganda?
      - Ren
        
        Ok, first of all, worked WITH – not FOR. Just to be clear. I am not employed by the organization. I’ve worked WITH them because I did enough research beforehand to know that they use their money well.
        
        IC doesn’t have evangelical Christian roots. Their founders are Christians but this has no impact whatsoever on the organization itself – that’s like saying if they were atheists or anything else that it had atheist roots. That’s just dumb.
        
        As for being “so liked in to right wing extremist organizations”…again, completely stupid and false. Some right wing organizations HAVE DONATED MONEY TO THEM, but said money has had no effect on how programs are implemented. It would be different if they had given money donated to them to those organizations, but that’s not the case. Unlike many nonprofits, IC doesn’t accept funding from the US government, which allows them far more flexibility in their programs. That means they need to raise all their money from private donors. If some reprehensible right wing groups decide to actually do something good for once and give money to a good cause, is the organization REALLY supposed to say, “Well, those thousands of dollars could save a lot of lives, but your organization is icky, so we don’t want your money”? That’s ridiculous. And anyway, if the right wing groups give this money to IC, that means that money isn’t being used for their right wing causes. Which is a really GOOD thing if you ask me.
        
        They also DON’T support the Ugandan government. None of their money goes to the government or to support it and they have numerous times made statements that they don’t support it. That’s just a blatant falsehood, there is nothing else I can say in response.
      - Shine a Light on Them
        
        Totally laughable – These people are fundamentalist Christian extremists who are taking big money from extremist organizations and who are aligned with extremist US politicians and the authoritarian, evangelical, anti-Gay government of Uganda. The evangelicals use Uganda as their sick playpen and the world will find out exactly what IC has been up to.
        
        Lobbying to send American soldiers to train the bloodthirsty Ugandan government isn’t “supporting” them?
        
        Why did they target children who know nothing about politics and take their money? Why did they hide their fanatical religious practices and connections to anti-gay extremist funding sources? Why are they speaking at Liberty University? What is the connection to anti-gay “gay conversion” therapy?
        
        Why did they misrepresent Joseph Kony’s location and activities?
        
        Why did the Acholi people finally able to see their film throw stones at the screen?
        
        Why has every reputable, non-fundamentalist Christian expert on the region to publish asserted that IC is misrepresenting the facts and doing harm??
        
        The truth is coming out – maybe not fast enough to stop your friends in congress and their plans to steal Africa’s resources, but at least people will know the truth about people like you.
        
        http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=29919
      - anon098765
        
        I must say whether or not this is a sincere organization, there is a lot of controversy around you and from what I’ve read in the media, all your members respond in a very hostile or aggressive manner. Its very unbecoming. Just some food for thought.
- Ren
  
  Invisible Children’s tax forms as well as independent audits of their finances are available here: http://www.invisiblechildren.com/financials.html
  
  Feel free to take a few minutes to do the research the scum at TMZ clearly didn’t take the time to do (for obvious reasons – if they had, their story wouldn’t have sounded nearly as scandalous).
  - ner
    
    that just proves they are scums, look at the small amount spent on ‘direct services in all the years combined/ the amount they had… thanks for the links..
Anonymous

This guy and Jason Russel are scumbags and they should be ashamed for diverting donation dollars away from legitimate causes and into their own pockets. Between this video and the masturbation scandal I.C. has ZERO integrity remaining.
- Noelle
  
  if by “their pockets” you mean this http://www.invisiblechildren.com/financials.html then you are correct
  - Achilles
    
    no he means their pockets douche. These guys only give about 20 cents for every dollar to the schools/kids if that! Most of the money goes to them then to ugandan army, which is hilarious because he hasn’t been in Uganda for 6 years i think? do your research before you follow a blind cause that is a AWARENESS program not a charity, charities actually help the people get better not just film them.
    - seeslim1
      
      Question.. aside from whether the financials are accurate.. how much of YOUR money goes to the “schools/kids”? 20 cents on the dollar? or NOcents on the dollar? point is.. ppl hate when its not them thats doing some good.
      - Jane
        
        i totally believe jedidiah was joking.. but your statement is clearly irrelevant. first off, i’m sure achilles is not the director of a charity organization.. who knows if jedidiah is actually donating his OWN money to these schools/kids.. he might be donating a small amount through what IC gets from DONATIONS. soooo yea ur statement is just stupid. it just doesn’t seem right that 20% of the donations goes to the children and 80% for the organization.. not okay.
Boston George

BURR
Boston George

FAWK UGANDA! AND FAWK THIS CRACKA
Lily13

So….how is this joke even funny? The “joke” is just as offensive as the idea of him being drunk. IC once again shows it is not an organization capable of handling any type of responsibility. It seems they continually offend people with their pop videos that are suppose to represent Uganda and their false information in campaigns. They ALWAYS have an excuse. When are they going to learn? This type of organization does not deserve donations. FYI – the pop video I am referring to is an old ad video and worth a laugh although painful to watch cuz you actually are embarrassed for the guys. That is a much funnier video, in a this is awful type of way, than the above “joke”. Bit of advice to IC…..just keep quiet. People are not buying your lies: Number of LRA, exhaustion & dehydration, Evelyn (former LRA victim) is cool with us, and this was a joke. Thanks independent media for exposing this organization. If their false information, outdated campaign didn’t convince people they are not legit, the footage should.
Disgusted

Wow…..Let’s hope the feds are moving to indict him and Russell and the rest. So sleazy….
OMG

Oh my god, how can you guys even fall for this ??? this was a private recording from years back, a goof vid for one of his friends and tmz stole it and are misusing it. Who doesnt “joke” around with their friends. Tmz has hit a new low here…
Matt

It’s really becoming hard to decide whether we should donate money to these clowns or people who know what they’re doing, like War Child.
Zach T.

To me it really isn’t a matter of whether it was a joke or not! The point is it was extremely inappropriate and unbecoming of the Director of Ideology. If he wants to lash out at any and everyone that didn’t ‘get it’, that’s so disappointing.

Hypothetical case. If an ‘invisible child’ saw the video, and didn’t get it, what would the response be then? I think that response is what Mr. Jenkins should have issued, and not this irreverent ‘you didn’t get it so whatever’.

Joke or fact. Vodka or water. NY Times or TMZ. This was very inappropriate of Mr. Jenkins, plain and simple. I really wish this organization and its supporters would stop being so aggressive.

The image of this organization is forever tarnished in my opinion, what with Mr. Russell’s antics and of course Mr. Inappropriate and his awful sense of humor.

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