Emails, Jenna White, executive director, Young Conservatives of Texas, April 16 and 25, 2014
10:25 p.m.
April 16, 2014
This is a link to the actual funds on a "Recovery Tracker" site: http://projects.propublica.org/recovery/item/20120630/204379
This is a link to the press release in which the company talked about the money and has Sitton's quotes, including a reference to his reaction to taking federal money. (I believe it's been taken down by the company, but was downloaded first): http://freepdfhosting.com/ce34898eae.pdf
I apologize for the delay and hope this helps.
Best,
Jenna White
--
Jenna White
On Thu, Apr 24, 2014 at 4:16 PM, Selby, Gardner (CMG-Austin) <wgselby@statesman.com> wrote:
Hello again.
I reviewed the items you shared and also interviewed the CFO of PinnacleAIS, Steve Cory, who said the company applied for an SBA loan in advance of its construction project, but ultimately drew on a commercial conventional loan from JPMorgan Chase for financing. That is, the loan was sought, but never funded or closed. Cory also said the ProPublica web post is inaccurate and a correction has been requested. Separately, we looked for Sitton’s company on the federal list of stimulus beneficiaries; PinnacleLLC is not on it.
Do you have other factual backup information?
Thanks.
g.,
W. Gardner Selby
PolitiFact Texas
Austin American-Statesman
5:15 p.m.
April 25, 2014
Thank you for following up. We had taken the claim on ProPublica, coupled with the direct quote on Pinnacle's letterhead that stated "company’s executives decided to take advantage of stimulus funds" at its word when we put out the PR. We had no reason to believe Mr. Sitton would release any inaccuracies, especially ones that would reflect poorly on himself politically. There were no redactions on the matter from Pinnacle AIS on their website.
We are changing the verbiage to "applied for Federal Stimulus dollars" in a corrected Press Release to reflect the new information.
Finally, Sitton's company has accepted $260,000 from the City of Pasadena in 2008 (http://freepdfhosting.com/b2abe10ede.pdf) and did apply for Federal Stimulus Dollars. The wording in our release used all the available information -- without any type of retraction from the company, and if only the company's CFO had the information that the federal government's site didn't, there was no way for us to know otherwise.
Thank you for keep me up to date on this matter.
Best,
Jenna White
Executive Director
Young Conservatives of Texas