Ahead of ICON, PRSA’s Law Firm Venable LLP Faces Doug Emhoff PR Crisis
For years, a large share of my public relations ethics advocacy has involved taking the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) U.S. PR trade association to task for its ethics code abuses, legal noncompliance, and unexplained financial discrepancies.
Now, PRSA’s longtime law firm, Venable LLP, finds itself in just as much legal and reputational hot water as its long-embattled client.
If Venable still represents PRSA (Assembly minutes of 2023 indicate it did, then), the law firm may have trouble reconciling its bad advice and close political allegiances alongside PRSA’s insistence that it’s a “nonpartisan” association.
I’ve documented since 2020 PRSA’s violations of New York’s Not-for-Profit Corporation Law – a set of statutes that require the NY-chartered PRSA to report specific financial disclosures at its annual meeting (PRSA Assembly).
PRSA has ignored these laws as well as New York’s legal prohibitions on retaliatory behaviors against whistleblowers, which, in my personal experience, PRSA flouts with abandon.
Despite PRSA’s massive losses of member dollars (well into the millions), PRSA’s executive staff and Board leadership have forked over hundreds of thousands of dollars they scarcely even have to their politically connected law firm of record, Venable LLP.
Venable’s job mandate from PRSA:
Help deflect PRSA members’ demands for accountability tied not only to financial losses but also PRSA’s unexplained financial reporting discrepancies, amid obvious governance failures, ineptitude, and conflicts of interest.
In fact, PRSA had leaned so heavily on Venable for its legal deflections that over multiple years, PRSA has listed Venable LLP in its IRS Form 990 tax filings among the PR association’s top-paid “contractors,” despite the fact that Venable provides little to no discernible value to PRSA’s own members as a so-called “learning community”:
2021:
2020:
For the record, I have personally been dealt significant, inexcusable disrespect, persistent gaslighting, and excessive emotional abuse not only from PRSA but also directly from Venable LLP personnel working on PRSA’s paid behalf. My e-mail record bears out this fact.
Consequently, I hold no respect or professional regard for either PRSA or Venable LLP, so this post reflects that reality, in full candor.
As PRSA approaches its voting Assembly within days, Venable LLP simultaneously finds itself at the center of a separate, nationwide political scandal involving Vice President and POTUS nominee Kamala Harris’ husband, Douglas Emhoff, who Venable named managing director of its West Coast office in Los Angeles, in 2015.
According to court filings and media reports, Mr. Emhoff has been accused by either current or former Venable staff of “misogyny” and “inappropriate” behavior. I won’t go into all the allegations, but suffice to say, when The New York Times reported four years ago the headline, “Will Doug Emhoff’s Legal Career Be an Issue for the Biden-Harris Ticket?” their editorial team apparently didn’t even know the half of it.
Even after he left Venable, news reports claim that Mr. Emhoff did not divest himself of a Venable ownership stake / financial interest, so his potential ongoing affiliation with the firm remains concerning — particularly the notion of whether heavily compromised Venable clients like PRSA have used or are currently using the political clout of the Emhoff connection, without disclosure, for their own political or legal gain.
Now, the Venable law firm’s new PR problems may eclipse its client’s, PRSA’s, legal problems. And that’s saying something.
I presume PRSA is still using Venable for legal services in 2024.
PRSA’s governance Assembly voting delegates can soon confirm that affiliation themselves, when they show up in Anaheim in coming days for the #PRSAICON / #PRSAICON2024 International Conference.
During the Assembly, PRSA leadership customarily places its paid legal counsel — a Venable LLP attorney — right up on the dais beside PRSA’s separately contracted Parliamentarian, to help tell PRSA’s National Chair what on earth to do.
Even with a detailed agenda and script, most PRSA Chairs are challenged on even rudimentary basics of Robert’s Rules of Order. I don’t expect this year to fare much better, particularly given PRSA’s sad state — plus the fact that there is reportedly a contested slate for the national Chairmanship.
This year, PRSA’s National Chair is Joseph Abreu.
In his prior job paid for by Florida taxpayers, Mr. Abreu served as “Emergency Management Director” for the community of St. Lucie County.
An open records request this year produced evidence that when a hurricane was bearing down on St. Lucie, Florida, in July 2020, Mr. Abreu took it upon himself to prioritize a non-urgent chat with PRSA CFO Philip Bonaventura, in order to further advance Mr. Abreu’s own PRSA leadership career, instead of prioritizing his paid job with hurricane disaster comms in urgent service to St. Lucie taxpayers:
So much for “ethics.”
(Ironically, at this writing at 3 p.m. Eastern on October 9, 2024, Hurricane Milton is now tragically bearing down on Lee County – Ft. Myers – Florida, where Mr. Abreu is now employed under a different taxpayer-funded court clerk government agency. I certainly hope and pray for no fatalities or serious injuries.)
In January 2021 – months after hastily engaging Mr. Bonaventura’s ill-timed offer to chat – Mr. Abreu was named “Grievance Panel Chair” to weaponize a PRSA National “complaint” against me personally.
With PRSA’s expensive assist from Venable LLP to overrule my objections of rampant conflicts of interest and to Mr. Abreu’s failure to follow PRSA’s own written “grievance” procedure, Mr. Abreu facilitated this attack in Q1 2021, after I had registered in 2019 and 2020 complaints against PRSA for 1) unexplained financial losses of member dollars, 2) reporting discrepancies (including unexplained retroactive changes to PRSA’s so-called “audited” financial statements), and 3) personal / political retaliation by PRSA leadership against me – all of which ran afoul of New York State law.
When Mr. Abreu was coronated “Grievance Panel Chair” in January 2021, Mr. Abreu signed his publicly discoverable e-mail of acknowledgement as “Sacrificial Lamb,” underscoring – with a wink and a smile – his expectation of being rewarded later.
Then-Venable attorney to PRSA, Andrew Steinberg, subsequently took it upon himself in following months to exchange with his client, Mr. Abreu, as well as with PRSA CEO Linda Thomas Brooks, extensive PRSA legal-counsel e-mails, via Mr. Abreu’s taxpayer-funded, publicly discoverable government e-mail server.
In May 2021, following Mr. Abreu’s and Venable’s retaliation against me on PRSA’s behalf, my attorney registered a formal complaint to NY AG Letitia James’ office. The 15-page complaint documented millions in PRSA’s as-yet-unexplained financial losses and reporting discrepancies (Page 1 of the complaint, below):
Within tranches of compromising Venable LLP / PRSA client e-mails that turned up only in recent months in 2024, it has been discovered that Venable sent in June 2021 to the NY AG false and misleading written correspondence (via attachment as noted below).
Venable’s “Response” attachment to AG James not only defamed me by name, but it also entirely mischaracterized and omitted mention of multiple whistleblower reports about PRSA misconduct, about which my records prove Venable LLP had first-hand knowledge, pre-dating 2021.
Among PRSA’s misconduct purposely omitted by Venable in its letter to New York’s highest-ranking state government law enforcement agency was a report I registered directly to Venable’s Andrew Steinberg in December 2020, about a past PRSA College of Fellows chair who threatened me verbally and via texts from her documented cell phone number, telling me she would “end it” at my “peril” if I did not support 2021 PRSA Chair Michelle Olson.
Throughout the intervening years, having faced no consequences as of yet from the AG’s Office, PRSA has continued with business-as-usual in deceiving its voting delegation with full-on disinformation about its financials – with zero accountability for this repeated misconduct.
As but one example, while PRSA Treasurer in 2022, Joseph Abreu himself falsely assured otherwise-ignorant PRSA Assembly delegates that PRSA would only suffer a “small operating deficit” for 2022 (see Page 2, below).
(Ashleigh Allione, Esq., was noted in PRSA’s Assembly minutes as “Legal Counsel” present during PRSA’s legally noncompliant financial report to members in 2022; Venable’s website documents her role at the firm).
In February 2023, however – only three months later – CFO Philip Bonaventura reported only privately within the PRSA National Board inner sanctum “a projected net loss of $1.07M.”
That’s more than ONE MILLION in PRSA member dollars – lost… and with no explanation.
PRSA also failed to post to its member-only website its 2022 full, 12-month financial packet in 2023. Instead, leadership only posted a balance sheet – not the P&L to show net losses. In 2024, PRSA posted its 2023 financials with P&L, which finally revealed its 2022 comparison column.
As it turns out, Mr. Abreu’s disinformation of a “small operating deficit” actually turned up as a $466,053 “loss from operations.” Even with a + $919,503 “PPP loan forgiveness” via a taxpayer-funded pandemic loan, PRSA still managed a net loss of member dollars for 2022 of $906,300.
Not exactly “small,” given PRSA’s modest means and prior, seven-figure losses since 2018.
What’s more, the dire nature of this situation was never corrected for the record with a memorandum to Assembly delegates, who had proceeded in their ignorance of his false report, to vote Mr. Abreu in as PRSA National Chair-Elect in October 2022.
They didn’t know Mr. Abreu had just fed to them a new batch of PRSA Financial Fairy Tales – whether due to Mr. Abreu’s own financial ignorance / incompetence or his possible intent to mislead the voting delegation for his own benefit. (Mr. Abreu went to great lengths in January 2024 to posture and tout that he has “always excelled in math,” a stunning claim which followed PRSA’s $5.4 million in math errors to its own “year in review” financials in December 2023.)
Immediately after giving his false financial report as Treasurer in November 2022, Mr. Abreu marched his way into the PRSA National chairmanship, thanks to Assembly delegates not knowing any better:
If Venable LLP had only done its proper legal-advisory job in service to PRSA members while perched on that Assembly dais in 2022 – as opposed to kowtowing to PRSA’s corrupt leaders who are bankrupting the organization into slow-motion insolvency – then Ms. Allione would have ante-upped with on-the-spot legal guidance to PRSA leadership.
She should have urged Mr. Abreu to follow New York State law with a full 12-month year-over-year financial report, instead of Mr. Abreu’s false speculations and wishful thinking.
In PRSA’s Internal Revenue Service (IRS) 990 tax filing for 2022 filed in Q4 2023, the Venable bill for 2022 “legal services” rendered was $142,881 – ranking third, only after PRSA’s Conference hotel venue and AV contractor:
There’s no telling what PRSA has subsequently forked over in 2023 and 2024 to Venable LLP or whomever else for deflecting accountability on PRSA’s shambolic lies. PRSA won’t file its 2023 IRS 990 until later this month or even into November 2024.
Consequently, PRSA’s 2024 Assembly voting delegation continues to operate in the dark — clueless as ever.
Nonetheless, God works in mysterious ways.
I find the Venable LLP / Doug Emhoff story an interesting and astoundingly timed revelation into Venable’s seemingly toxic law firm culture … products of which have aided and abetted the ethically bankrupt PRSA, Inc. All evidence I’ve observed points to PRSA having apparently sought out Venable for these specific character traits to match its own.
PRSA may yet face metaphorical hurricanes of other sorts, falling under the weight of its own years of lies and corruption.