AG lawsuit alleges push for profit

At a community meeting in 2023, Trahern Pollard told attendees that buying the former Merwin Liquors would transform the property and benefit the community. Photo by Azhae’la Hanson

By David Pierini, Editor

Two former leaders of We Push for Peace siphoned more than $6.5 million in nonprofit funds and assets for personal use and created a for-profit company that depleted the organization's charitable funds, according to a lawsuit filed earlier this month.

The lawsuit, filed by the state Attorney General’s Office, alleges rampant abuse orchestrated by former leaders, Trahern Pollard and Jaclyn McGuigan. Pollard used more than $6 million to buy luxury cars, make trips to Las Vegas, pay child support, and fund a car dealership and a liquor store, the former Merwyn Liquors on West Broadway Avenue, the lawsuit said.

“We Push for Peace’s former leaders betrayed their basic duties to the nonprofit and communities they were supposed to serve,” Attorney General Keith Ellison said in a statement. “Instead of helping the community, they helped themselves to millions of dollars that should have gone into the community.

As investigators from the AG’s Charities Division zeroed in on the alleged abuse, Pollard and McGuigan tried to cover up the abuses. Pollard formed a for-profit security organization and funneled so many non-profit contracts to the new company that it led to the demise of We Push for Peace, the lawsuit said.

According to the complaint, investigators discovered that Pollard labeled one $35,000 payment to friends as “Chicago Payroll.” North News could not reach Pollard for comment.

Ellison said his office tried working with new leaders to salvage the organization, which raised its profile as a violence de-escalator during the unrest that followed the police murder of George Floyd. We Push for Peace had several community safety contracts.

The organization was so depleted at the start of this year that it could not support the City of Minneapolis' request to help quell unrest during Operation Metro Surge.

“The former leaders of We Push for Peace lined their pockets with charitable dollars meant for their community,” said AGO spokesman Brian Evans. “Attorney General Ellison filed this lawsuit because he refused to sit back and allow Trahern Pollard and Jaclyn McGuigan to steal from the people they claimed to be helping.”

A letter to the AGO last month from the nonprofit's board said We Push for Peace’s offices are “essentially sitting vacant” and the nonprofit “simply has no funding to support the services the organization was providing or to pay any employees or contractors.”