Under fire: Minuteman Project founder Jim Gilchrist denies allegations of fraud and mismanagement leveled by former allies and high-ranking members of the organization. (Jackie Mercandetti photo)

Its founder, Jim Gilchrist, is locked in a fierce battle for control of the organization with former allies and high-level Minuteman Project members amidst swirling allegations of embezzlement, gross mismanagement and fraud.

The struggle came to light in February, when three members of the Minuteman Project's Board of Directors — Barbara Coe, Deborah Courtney and Marvin Stewart — announced they had fired Gilchrist and seized control of the organization's bank accounts and website.

Coe (who has since resigned from the Minuteman Project) Courtney, and Stewart told the Los Angeles Times in early March that as much as $750,000 is missing from Minuteman Project accounts. Prior to that interview, they publicly accused Gilchrist of embezzling $13,000 from the Minuteman Project to pay his own legal fees and of illegally diverting $400,000 in donations to his failed 2005 Congressional campaign and to promote his book, Minutemen: The Battle to Secure America's Borders, published last year. Proceeds from sales of the book, they note, went to Gilchrist, not the Minuteman Project.

Gilchrist has flatly denied any wrongdoing. "There's no $400,000 of hidden money, there's no hidden bank accounts, there's no hidden P.O. boxes," he told the Associated Press. "I've done 1,000 media interviews and I don't have time to cross every 't' and dot 'every i.'"

There's no indication the power struggle is fueled by ideological disagreements concerning the Minuteman Project's goals and strategy. Gilchrist says his opponents are motivated purely by "a greed for power and a false perception of an endless stream of money."

Barbara Coe (left), resigned from the Minuteman Project two weeks after voting to fire Gilchrist and replace him with Marvin Stewart, shown here basking in the FOX News limelight. (Todd Bigelow photo)

At a recent press conference in Orange County, Calif., Coe, Courtney and Stewart, who Gilchrist has branded "the hijackers," said they had filed a criminal theft report with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, as well as a complaint with the Internal Revenue Service, alleging that Gilchrist illegally received a nonprofit postal discount.

While they offered no proof of their allegations, they said that they had hired a private investigator and that a forensic audit of Minuteman Project financial records is underway.

Meanwhile, Gilchrist has filed a theft complaint with the Orange County Sheriff's Department and a lawsuit in Orange County Superior Court, accusing his former close advisers of libel and slander, and of illegally spending Minuteman Project money, seizing assets and stealing letterhead.

During a March 21 court hearing, Orange County Superior Court Judge Randell Wilkinson urged Gilchrist and the board members to work out their differences. But Gilchrist said those differences are "irreconcilable."

The next day, Wilkinson issued an interim ruling barring the board members from spending Minuteman Project donations until Gilchrist’s lawsuit is resolved. Wilkinson also rejected Gilchrist’s request for a temporary restraining order that would have restored Gilchrist to power until the case is decided.

These rulings effectively immobilized the Minuteman Project.

The judge further ordered both sides to return to court April 25 for a hearing to determine whether the Minuteman Project’s assets will be placed under the control of a neutral, court-appointed trustee pending trial.

Gilchrist’s lawsuit raises the murky issue of who has the legal right to control the Minuteman Project, which has 24 chapters in 20 states and at least 200,000 dues-paying members, according to its fundraising materials.

In the past, Gilchrist has repeatedly identified Coe, Courtney and Stewart as members of the Minuteman Project's board of directors. Now, he says they served in advisory roles only. Coe, Courtney, and Stewart told reporters that Gilchrist invited them to join him on the board as full voting members with oversight power.

"Gilchrist's claim is that there was never a board of directors. However, numerous public documents and e-mails and [several lawsuits filed last year by the Minuteman Project] clearly state that we are members of the Minuteman Project's board of directors," the whistle blowers said in a press release. "Yet-to-be released tape recordings also confirm the fact."

Officially, however, the Minuteman Project has a board of directors of one: Gilchrist.

Public records show that Gilchrist incorporated the Minuteman Project as a nonprofit corporation in Delaware in May 2005 and listed himself as the only board member. In early February, someone filed papers with the state of Delaware identifying Stewart as the new president of the Minuteman Project and Courtney as the new treasurer. However, an official with the Delaware secretary of state's office told the Los Angeles Times that no one but Gilchrist could legally make such changes.

Laws governing corporations in Delaware are notoriously lax and do not require corporations registered in that state as nonprofit to have a board of directors with multiple members and oversight authority.

While the IRS mandates that organizations with federally recognized nonprofit status operate with such a board, the Minuteman Project is not registered with the IRS.

Coe, Courtney, and Stewart initially appeared confused about the Minuteman Project's actual nonprofit status after they maneuvered to assume control of the organization.

First, they stated they were exercising the authority granted them under IRS regulations. Then, they said they were shocked to learn the Minuteman Project was not actually a 501(c)4 organization. They argued that Gilchrist had misled them and his followers about the group's true nonprofit status.

Promotional materials soliciting donations for the Minuteman Project have consistently identified the organization as a "nonprofit group." That assertion appears to be based solely on the Delaware incorporation.

"Under his [Gilchrist's] leadership, the MMP [Minuteman Project] was presented as a nonprofit corporation, when in fact no such status was ever applied," Stewart stated.

Gilchrist's website manager claimed in early March that a 501c4 application was submitted to the IRS earlier this year and is pending.

News of Gilchrist's firing touched off a firestorm of controversy among members of the Minuteman Project and the broader nativist extremist movement.

Some said they'd wait and see what documents the board members produced (so far, none) and what evidence emerged in a court of law.

Many more faithfully rallied to Gilchrist's defense, blasting the so-called hijackers in postings to online forums and barraging them with angry E-mails and phone calls. Gilchrist supporters also hacked the Minuteman Project's website, posting a mock book cover of "Minuteman Hijacking for Dummies," and the warning, "Do not send donations through this website. [The hijackers] have taken control, but we will get it back."

Two weeks into the controversy, on March 5, Barbara Coe abruptly resigned from the Minuteman Project altogether, under intense pressure from pro-Gilchrist members of the California Coalition for Immigration Reform (CCIR), a major anti-immigrant group that Coe founded in 1994 and still leads.

Three days before she announced her resignation, Coe posted a message to the CCIR website praising Gilchrist as a "courageous patriot and a man of honor and integrity," and seeming to suggest that Gilchrist was not personally responsible for the allegedly missing and misspent funds.

"Documented data indicates that certain business transactions were made without Jim being advised of the legalities involved and without knowledge or approval of the MMP board members," Coe wrote. "I consider Jim a victim of those who have actually betrayed his trust."

Courtney and Stewart have not commented publicly on Coe's resignation. They continue to stand their ground and to point fingers at Gilchrist directly.

"We had the opportunity to unite the forces fighting the invasion of illegal aliens, but that chance was squandered by Jim Gilchrist and his underlings," Courtney stated. "Now, they are trying to destroy the organization, because Jim Gilchrist believes that he is more important than the issue, the movement, or the members that placed their trust in him."

In an Intelligence Report interview, Courtney said she was especially angry about the missing money because she personally bankrolled the Minuteman Project.

"I funded Gilchrist," she said. "They owe me a lot of money."

Courtney said she'd loaned the Minuteman Project approximately $40,000. She said she possessed audio recordings of Minuteman Project board meetings that substantiate her claim that the organization is deeply in debt to her. She offered to trade these recordings for tapes of a recent Intelligence Report interview with Gilchrist's national media spokesperson, Tim Bueler. (The Intelligence Report did not accept her offer.)

During his interview with the Intelligence Report, Bueler said he suspects that Courtney launched the takeover because she's behind on her mortgage payments (Bueler and Courtney were housemates last year).

"She's wrong, and [the hijackers] haven't produced one ounce of evidence," maintains Bueler. "The reason she's in debt is this [Minuteman Project] is a nonprofit. You don't make income. You have to have a job like all of us."

In a February press release, Bueler wrote that after months of surviving attacks from "special interests, pro-unrestricted immigration groups, amnesty supporters, drug lords, and others, in and out of government," Gilchrist is now under siege "...from a different sort of terrorist: covert subversives who managed to gain Gilchrist's trust, only to breach that trust by attempting to kidnap the organization he founded."

For now, Gilchrist and Stewart both claim to be the true president of the Minuteman Project.

Stewart, who strapped on a pistol to take part in the original Minuteman Project border patrol operation in Arizona in April 2005, is an African-American minister of My Lord Salvation Ministries in Long Beach, Calif. He has appeared at Gilchrist's side in numerous television interviews and public appearances to deflect accusations that the Minuteman Project is racist. (The vast majority of the group's members are white).

Last October, Stewart was beside Gilchrist during a lecture at Columbia University when student protesters charged the stage. According to Bueler, the ensuing media coverage enthralled Stewart, who was interviewed without Gilchrist by FOX News host Bill O'Reilly. "He changed... He came back after that and he was obsessed with going on FOX News."

Two months before the Columbia incident, Stewart told the Intelligence Report, "I'm a board member. I sit on the board of directors. I'm one of the national leaders. I respect Jim for the love that he has for his nation and the love he has for the people."

Now, that love and respect is gone.

"We know this is hard for many of you to understand, given that Jim is still not coming clean or being truthful in the media," Stewart wrote in a letter to Minuteman Project members. "But we are confident that the truth is on our side, the facts will prove us right, and with God's help, in the end we will prevail, even if Jim does manage to bring down the whole movement."

Susy Buchanan contributed to this report