Show Me the Money

How Kirk Menendez's Morgan Stanley letter raises more questions than it answers

Executive summary:

• Kirk distributed an e-blast with the subject line "Setting the Record Straight" about the War Memorial Youth Center Association (WMYCA) finances featuring a Morgan Stanley letter that he portrays as a definitive defense

• The Morgan Stanley letter—far from exonerating Kirk—reveals an anomalous 3.56% total growth over nine years (a negative growth rate when adjusted for inflation), during a period when the S&P 500 grew by 168% and even basic savings accounts would have yielded superior returns

• Despite his claims of transparency, Kirk conspicuously avoided providing actual account statements, instead offering a suspiciously limited letter showing only current balances—a document that conveniently obscures nine years of transaction history while answering precisely none of the pertinent questions about his nonprofit's financial management

• An obscure deed reverter clause—which Kirk himself referenced but curiously failed to fully explain—suggests the City of Coral Gables could potentially lose ownership of the Youth Center property if memorial and youth facility obligations aren't met, with control reverting to a familiar entity

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Last month, when I published my analysis of Kirk's tragic mismanagement of the Coral Gables War Memorial Youth Center Association (WMYCA), I genuinely believed it would be both the first and final time I would address the subject. It's not that I doubted it would become a thing, as it most certainly did, but rather that I expected Kirk to deploy his standard crisis response when caught in a scandal of his own creation: bury his head in the sand and methodically ignore it into oblivion—which, coincidentally, is precisely where his political career appears to be heading.

To his credit, he committed admirably to the ostrich strategy, refusing for nearly two weeks to acknowledge the mounting calls from residents, former city officials, and local media demanding explanations. But, alas, it would appear the story wasn't blowing over as rapidly as Kirk had hoped, leading him to the realization that he had to do something. And boy was that something...well...something.

Last Wednesday, Kirk distributed an e-blast bearing the remarkably confident subject line: "Setting the Record Straight." As expected, it overflowed with the characteristic indignation and self-righteousness we've come to associate with a founding member of KFC. How dare anyone question the legitimacy of a nonprofit that had its 501(c)(3) status revoked five years ago and apparently failed to properly account for over $100,000 in assets for nearly a decade!

But the best part of the email by far was its Exhibit A, the anti-smoking gun of all anti-smoking guns, the single piece of evidence that would exonerate Kirk of any and all wrongdoing once and for all: seven years’ worth of account statements with a detailed list of all transactions, including deposits and withdrawals!

LOL. Just kidding. It was a copy of a letter from Morgan Stanley listing a couple of account balances:

But wait, it gets better. Mere hours after the email landed, Kirk participated in the Gables Good Government candidate forum, where he flashed the Morgan Stanley letter like it was the knife from 12 Angry Men, passionately asserting—in what could only be described as a tour de force performance by his own limited standards—that the letter proves he did not “steal” money from the WMYCA as his “opponents” claim. We’ll unpack all this in a moment, but first…lights, camera, action:

Annnnnd scene! Bravo, Kirk. I haven’t seen a performance that convincing since the time OJ just couldn’t quite fit his triple-latex-gloved, swollen-from-not-taking-his-arthritis-medication hands into those bloody Isotoners. Move over “If the glove doesn’t fit, you must acquit” and make room for “If the money’s still there, then don’t despair!”

Yup, Kirk almost got us. He almost duped us into forgetting his failure to report to the IRS and the resultant revocation of his association’s tax-exempt status and his lack of adequate record keeping and his decision to appoint his wife and daughter as treasurers and his generally woeful stewardship of an 81-year-old nonprofit that plays a more important role in city affairs than most realize.

He almost managed to fully recharacterize what are perfectly reasonable concerns over the status of the nonprofit's assets into wanton and unqualified allegations of theft.

He came this close 🤏

So close that I find I’m eager to play along. Therefore, let’s examine the quality of Kirk’s bombshell evidence to see what, if anything, it proves.

Where’s the paper trail?

There are two almost poetically contrasting issues with Kirk's Morgan Stanley letter: what it reveals and what it doesn't. Let's start with the latter.

First, I assume most of my readers maintain some kind of bank or brokerage account, 401(k), IRA, or similar investment vehicle. I further assume you're familiar with that fundamental financial document called an "account statement"—the record that not only shows your current holdings but details every transaction during the statement period, including purchases, sales, deposits, and withdrawals. The same document your financial institution is legally required to provide periodically.

I begin with these incredibly obvious assumptions only because Kirk, for his part, appears to be unfamiliar with such basic financial documentation. Why else would he bypass sharing actual statements? Why would he specifically request that Morgan Stanley furnish an ad hoc letter showing merely two account balances—figures that represent nothing more than a financial snapshot at a single moment in time? How difficult would it have been for Kirk to simply request "statements" instead of "balances," allowing Morgan Stanley to forward these standardized records that we know exist because federal regulations require them? To be sure, these statements would clearly reveal whether funds entered or exited these accounts over the relevant period.

Think about it, wouldn't account statements be the most obvious and natural form of evidence to provide if your goal was to reassure a community—the same community you're asking to elect you mayor—about the handling of those funds over the past nine years? Isn't it fundamentally inadequate to offer a document whose severely limited scope couldn't even reveal a large deposit made even minutes before it was written? If the central concern is that you may have improperly accessed these funds since ceasing IRS reporting in 2016, isn't it both pointless and disingenuous to parade around brandishing a document that reveals precisely nothing about those accounts prior to March 3, 2025? Wouldn't it have been infinitely more transparent to simply have someone log into your investor portal, select "statements," click "all time," and hit "print"?

I certainly think so.

Where are the gains?

Then there's what the document does reveal—the other, arguably more confounding, side of the proverbial coin. According to Kirk's Morgan Stanley letter, the combined value of the WMYCA's brokerage accounts (including all cash and marketable securities) stood at $117,666.23 as of March 3, 2025.

(Uh oh, Kirk. 666!!!)

Compare that to 2016, when the WMYCA last filed a 990 with the IRS, at which time it reported $113,622 in cash and securities.

That's a whopping increase of $4,044.23 or 3.56%. Over nearly a decade. 🤔

That's a real growth rate (adjusted for inflation) of -4.72%. In other words, the WMYCA lost money during a nine-year period when the S&P 500 grew by 168%. That same money in Treasury bills would have returned approximately 20% over those nine years, while a modest CD would have yielded around 13%. Put simply, had Kirk simply deposited all $113,622 in a basic savings account back in 2016, it would have been worth roughly $130,000 today.

So how did the WMYCA effectively lose money despite being managed by one of the best financial service firms in the world during one of the most bullish decades in history? All kidding aside, I'm left scratching my head trying to figure it out.

The most logical explanation, I suppose, is that the WMYCA continued to engage in charitable activity for at least some period after it stopped filing 990s with the IRS in 2016. This might explain why the nonprofit's assets have remained relatively flat, as it would have continued to distribute investment proceeds through scholarships or donations. But if so, this would likely give rise to potentially serious problems of its own, assuming the nonprofit failed to report to the IRS through some other means after 2016—a solid assumption in light of how it lost its 501(c)(3) status (auto-revocation versus voluntary termination). Had the WMYCA relinquished its 501(c)(3) status voluntarily and migrated to a different reporting scheme, it would not have been placed on the auto-revocation list. Auto-revocation is bad—something any organization, especially one that intends to remain in existence, should avoid at all costs. If this is indeed the reason why the WMYCA's assets haven't appreciated, then it is incumbent upon Kirk to furnish proof of any charitable activity conducted post-2016.

If the above is the most logical explanation, perhaps the most charitable, if least plausible, is that Kirk converted all the assets to cash after reporting ceased. I'm not suggesting this makes financial sense, but it remains possible given that we cannot determine the ratio of cash to marketable securities from that conspicuously vague Morgan Stanley letter. Even then, cash alone would have performed better. Another possibility is that Morgan Stanley mismanaged the funds, but that too seems highly improbable. A $100K investment account barely registers with such a large firm, which suggests they likely maintained the nonprofit's assets in extremely safe, generic market-tracking securities. It's doubtful the WMYCA's assets were decimated by a bond default or similar catastrophe. Indeed, all these scenarios seem incredibly unlikely. By Kirk's own account at the GGG forum, he maintains a completely hands-off approach, allowing Morgan Stanley and his accountant to manage the funds. I see no reason why professional managers would abandon a standard investment strategy that had successfully served their client for decades—a strategy you can catch a tiny glimpse of from some of the WMYCA’s old returns:

Of course, there's always the possibility that there really is something rotten in Denmark. What if Kirk knew exactly what he was doing when he requested this custom-written, minimally informative letter from Morgan Stanley instead of routine, downloadable account statements? What if he deliberately avoided sharing records that would reveal the complete withdrawal and deposit history of each account? What if that $117K represents only what remains of the WMYCA's original assets? What if that $117K includes recently deposited funds, like a loan repayment? What if he wasn’t being entirely sincere when he attempted to convince the more credulous members of the GGG that his brokerage accounts essentially function as a blind trust managed exclusively by Morgan Stanley and his accounting firm? And what if this line in the Morgan Stanley letter, addressed to Kirk directly rather than his accountant, is more significant than it might seem otherwise:

If Kirk genuinely wanted to dispel, once and for all, any notion that he misappropriated nonprofit funds during a period of personal financial stress, that there was nothing questionable about appointing immediate family members as treasurers, that all financial activity in those accounts served legitimate organizational purpose—then sharing this letter was an exercise in futility, because it didn’t do any of that.

It did, however, provide a convenient prop to wave triumphantly before impressionable audiences as though the case were closed. A prop whose strategic value was significantly enhanced by its timely arrival mere hours before a candidate forum and during the same week absentee ballots reached resident mailboxes. Isn't it curious how Kirk waited until March 12^th to share a letter dated March 4^th? If you possessed such supposedly exonerating evidence, wouldn't you share it at the earliest possible moment?

Ultimately, here's where we stand: It’s difficult to imagine Kirk intentionally relinquishing the WMYCA's nonprofit status as part of some deliberate transition to a different tax-exempt classification for three rather obvious reasons. First, auto-revocation is emphatically not the way one goes about that—it's the nonprofit equivalent of having your car repossessed rather than voluntarily selling it. Second, Kirk would have needed board approval for such a transition, and there's zero evidence suggesting any such deliberation occurred. Third, relinquishing 501(c)(3) status would almost certainly violate the WMYCA's charter and potentially trigger dissolution (a topic I'll explore more thoroughly in my next post).

Therefore, given the nonprofit's achievement of negative real growth over the past decade, we are left with two equally troubling possibilities: either the WMYCA continued its charitable activities after it stopped reporting (which would mean Kirk might find himself in hot water with, among others, the IRS). Or, it ceased functioning as a charitable organization altogether, and the reason for its assets' negative real growth is that something either exceedingly foolish or monumentally shady has transpired. Note that he would still have some explaining to do to the IRS, as exempt organizations are generally required to report assets annually whether they’re utilized or not.

Slice it however you like, but "what happened to the money?" remains an eminently reasonable and serious question—one that Kirk's vague Morgan Stanley letter fails to answer.

The case beyond the cash

A couple of thoughts in closing. First, I know many of you think I'm secretly hoping Kirk stole, borrowed, or otherwise misappropriated the WMYCA's money. The best I can do is assure you that's not the case. Don’t get me wrong, I strongly dislike Kirk. I believe he is a weak, lazy, dishonest, and incompetent grifter who shouldn't be allowed within 100 lightyears of the levers of power. I also believe the majority of residents agree with at least some fraction of that assessment, which is why I strongly suspect Kirk is headed for a resounding defeat on April 8th.

Hence why I neither need nor want Kirk to have dipped into those funds. The case against him is devastating enough without his proving to be a crook of the most despicable kind. And while I understand some of you have contracted the Kirkian mind virus and suspect I'm literally Satan incarnate, the truth is I would much prefer that no one was absconding with money meant for a noble cause (although I can’t say I’m exceedingly hopeful in that regard either).

Second, my interest in Kirk's management of the WMYCA extends well beyond it being a generic indicator—or more accurately, a stark reminder—of his pathological ineptitude. It's also about much more than abstract principles or the sanctity of nonprofit work. Bear in mind that Kirk appears to be associated with at least one other nonprofit, one that lacks even an EIN. But I’ve ignored that one, because who cares about some insignificant pseudo-charity that primarily serves as résumé fodder for Kirk and his immediate family?

The WMYCA, however, represents something altogether different. We're not discussing some throwaway, optics-only nonprofit or the Menendez Family Foundation in disguise (despite Kirk’s treating it as such). We're examining an 81-year-old organization whose founding mission was to honor Americans who made the ultimate sacrifice for their country. Moreover, throughout the decades it evolved into something even more substantial—an entity that plays a far more significant role in our community than most realize, with one notable exception: Kirk himself, who at some level clearly understands precisely how significant the WMYCA is, or at least has the potential to be. Pay close attention to what he says here:

True, the City was, in fact, deeded the Youth Center property, and, unbeknownst to most residents, that deed contains something called a reverter clause. Here's the precise text:

So Kirk is correct. Should the City fail to fulfill its obligations to maintain the War Memorial Youth Center as primarily both a war memorial and youth facility, the property could revert back to the grantor. Imagine that.

But there's just one teeny-weeny little detail Kirk omitted from his little history lesson, a seemingly insignificant fact that he apparently forgot to mention to the good people of the GGG: the identity of the grantor.

Who, or more accurately, whose nearly defunct organization, could one day regain full ownership of the Youth Center property?

I'll provide the answer to that question, along with its numerous implications, in my next post. But fear not, I'll leave you with a hint—though I warn you, it's a tough one: