Gay Conservative Milo Yiannopoulos Faces Scrutiny on White Men's Scholarship Fund

Milo Yiannopoulos, the gay conservative recently banned from Twitter for racist and sexist tweets, is getting new critiques now for his scholarship fund for white men, which has yet to grant any scholarships.

Yiannopoulos, an editor at Breitbart, set up the fund amid much fanfare in January and said he expected to have an application process in place by spring, with grants made by summer, The Daily Beast reports. But now it's August, and his fund's website says, "Applications are not yet open. Please do not write to us if you are a prospective Grant applicant; instead, keep an eye on the website and on Twitter at @PrivilegeGrant."

Meanwhile, the fund has collected $100,000 in donations and has pledges for $250,000 more, and Yiannopoulos admits that "all of the money is still sitting in his bank account," the Beast reports. Public airing of disputes between Yiannopoulos and fund administrator Margaret MacLennan, who has now been replaced, brought scrutiny to the program, which has recently received substantial criticism on social media, the site notes.

Also, Yiannopoulos and his lawyers have yet to file the documents with the Internal Revenue Service to establish its tax-exempt status. Charitable organizations have 27 months from the month of incorporation to file those forms, but Pace University law professor James Fishman told the Beast, "Given the amount of money raised, I think it is inexcusable" that the filing has not taken place.

Added lawyer Ellis M. Carter, also interviewed by the Beast: "There's state and federal laws against fraud and misrepresentation for declaring a scholarship fund prior to getting an exemption."

Yiannopoulos issued a statement to the Beast Thursday, saying, "The initial flurry of interest in the Privilege Grant, and my skyrocketing media profile, left us behind on logistics."

He set up the scholarship program -- exclusively for poor white men -- partly with an eye to upsetting his liberal critics. "In a move certain to infuriate the left, Breitbart Tech Editor Milo Yiannopoulos has created the Yiannopoulos Privilege Grant, a scholarship exclusively available to white men who wish to pursue their post-secondary education on equal footing with their female, queer and ethnic minority classmates," Breitbart reported January 21.

At that time Yiannopoulos told BuzzFeed News the fund "started off as something that would wind up social justice warriors. All of my very best ideas start as mischievous jokes because they will wind up the right people." His latest effort, the Beast concludes, "may have wound up the wrong ones."