A reporter is trying to get GoFundMe to release bank account numbers and the personal information of donors, says Lawrence B. Jones, the man who set up the GoFundMe page that raised over $840k last week for the Indiana pizzeria at the center of the gay marriage storm.
Yahoo news writer Dan Tynan tried to pressure GoFundMe to release private information, Jones says he learned from GoFundMe.
“He wanted all the accounts, he wanted the numbers, basically, he wanted our bank accounts,” Jones charged in an interview with Dan Loesch.
Jones explains the controversy here:
Jones and Loesch both work for The Blaze. An email from GoFundMe said that the Yahoo reporter was “threatening to undermine Lawrence Jones’ credibility,” the credibility of the pizzeria, and the credibility of GoFundMe itself, according to Loesch.
For his part, Tynan requested that Jones private message him instead of starting a Twitter war. Tynan repeatedly refused to be interviewed by Dana Loesch or to respond to Jones' accusations. He then responded to the controversy with this tweet:
Tynan had previously tweeted an article called: “Memories Pizza vs. Gay Rights: the Fight That Ate the Internet” along with the comment: “Later we will learn Memories Pizza set this whole thing up.” Other reporters have accused The Blaze of fraud, implying that the many anonymous donations are not truly from several thousand donors.
GoFundMe never released the details Loesch and Jones claim he requested. Tynan’s eventual story for Yahoo was titled: “The $800,000 Windfall for Memories Pizza: it Started as a Joke.”