Friday, June 22, 2012

Ron Weinland: "...was hand-selecting the “leadership” of the church based on how completely gullible and easily manipulated they were."



Juror 215 has posted another tidbit on Mike's blog.  I am still in amazement at the things that Weinland did.    Corruption is nothing new in the leadership of the Churches of God. It has been going on for so long that most are really good at covering their tracks.  But not so in Weinland's case.  He comes across as an incredibly stupid little man.  Apparently, according to this juror, he surrounded himself will a bunch of bumbling idiots. These morons are the ones preaching to the flock every week too.  How sick is that!

Juror#215 says:
Trial tidbit of the day:

Johnny Harrell – Co-conspirator or Clueless?

I believe that there has been some discussion here regarding Johnny Harrell, Mr Weinland’s ‘Senior Evangelist’ and how much he really knows about the chruch’s scams. Mr Harrell took the stand for the defense, but he really didn’t do anything to help Mr Weinland’s case at all. He came across in his testimony as a bumbling fool. For example…

In an attempt to prove that the Swiss bank account was really church money and not the Weinland’s personal money, Ron and Laura flew Johnny and his wife to Switzerland with them (Mr Harrell testified that he paid for their own expenses for this trip) in order to have Johnny sign a Power of Attorney form there, giving him the rights to the account in the case of the Weinland’s death. I believe that this was in 2004 or 2005. Now, this seems like a plausible defense to establish the $400,000 in the Swiss bank as being church money and not personal, until the prosecution began their cross-examination.

Did Mr Harrell know how much money was in the account? No.

Did Mr Harrell know the account number? No.

Did Mr Harrell REALLY know what the Power of Attorney form was that he had signed? No.

The prosecution had Mr Harrell read some of the content on the PoA form aloud for the court. He stumbled over the words, not seeming to understand the relatively simple legal jargon. The prosecution asked him the meaning of what he had read, and he really didn’t know. Johnny came across as just an especially clueless minion, and it appeared to the jury during our deliberations, that based on the church elders that we had seen in the trial, that Mr Weinland was hand-selecting the “leadership” of the church based on how completely gullible and easily manipulated they were. Mr Weinland needed someone who could access that money in the event of an emergency, but he wanted to make sure that the person he chose had no clue what they were doing.

One particularly telling part of his testimony was when the prosecution was trying to ask him questions about Mrs Weinland, and to give some kind of evidence that she had done SOMETHING in the church, other than being Mr Weinland’s wife, that justified Ron declaring her the Second Witness. Mr Harrell’s response back to the attorney was to turn red in the face, get a wild look in his eye, and start screaming, “READ YOUR BIBLE!” It has apparently never occurred to him that other people in the world might read the bible and come up with an entirely different interpretation of it than what has been forced upon them by Ron all of these years.

It was just sad and pathetic.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Some of us had high hopes that when Weinland was convicted, there would be a mass exodus.

While it is so very sad, the imbeciles with less than room temperature IQ seem to be going to stay, be abused and pay for the privilege.

Anonymous said...

Sad, indeed.

Johnny, the witness for the Silent Witness Laura, was able to scream, "READ YOUR BIBLE", while Silent Witness Laura silently rubbed the vast pile of her ill-gained jewelry all over herself.

RUB-A-DUB-DUB!
She's just another Armstrongist schlub!

Norm

Anonymous said...

It is still hard for me to accept that Weinland was 100% in this for the money. I mean, it's obvious now, but still.... to me, the Splinter Leaders, while insane and evil, mainly believe all this stuff. They believe in god, the Sabbath, tithing, the Great Tribulation- all of it.
Yes, the money is great, and they will do anything to keep it coming it, but yet they believe they are doing "God's Work." That was the dividing line between the HWA Clones and the Benny Hinns of the world....the HWA Clones were True Believing Pharisees while the Benny Hinns were actors, nothing more.

But Ron is forcing me to re-think my position.

I've always been disgusted at how they all mimic HWA in everything, but I thought it was because they were obsessed with him and those magical years when HWA was in power and they sat at the head table. When they were the Princes at the feet of the King, lording it over the peasants. But now, at least with Ron (I can't accept that Spanky is faking it), it is clear that it was a sales tactic. They have to build up their "credentials" in the eyes of the sheep.

I was reading "Claudius the God" by Robert Graves in which Herod (who is always in debt) is telling Claudius that when he comes to the last of his money, he spends the rest of it on the finest clothing and rings, because it impresses his creditors when he goes to borrow more.

In the same way, Ron and Flurry (Pack?) do the same...they dress like HWA and take the same HWA photos (posing in a library, or in a leather chair, a globe, etc), have the same ministry programs, the same sort of emblems, everything. It is a sales tactic, nothing more. They are selling the Sheep their old, dead shepherd all over again. They have to present themselves as HWA's successor.

For some reason I find this incredibly disturbing.

Anonymous said...

I think there may be a few True Believing Pharisees. Malm might be one. But I think that HWA was just another Benny Hinn, and I'm not convinced that Flurry, Pack, and Meredith are anything more than Benny Hinn clones. The differnce between HWA clones and Benny Hinn clones is purely superficial.

ED said...

Meredith, Flurry,and Pack should all be investigated for fraud, or atleast forced to disclose in detail how the tithe payers money is spent.

Anonymous said...

Let's think about this for a moment.

OK then.

It isn't how the money is spent.

It's about how stupid the religion is.

Nobody should pay for lies and the privilege to be abused.

It makes no sense.

Anonymous said...

Douglas Becker said...
“It's about It's about how stupid the religion is.”

In viewing these events as they unfold I can agree with much of what is said and DB’s comment about the stupidity of the religion has some merit, but I believe that people involved with these types of religion can be better described as having a faulty or polluted “word processor” for a mind. The religious information they have been receiving may have bits of truth, but the filters that block the corruptive advertisements are not turned on.