A nonprofit linked to evangelical lawyer Jay Sekulow, who has argued for conservative causes before the Supreme Court and who represented President Donald Trump in his first impeachment trial, has scored a major haul in Midtown.
The charity Christian Advocates Serving Evangelism, or CASE, has sold the mixed-use townhouse at 34 E. 61st St. for $27.5 million fewer than three years after buying the site for $16.5 million, according to the city register.
The 5-story, 9,800-square-foot, gray-toned building between Madison and Park avenues features two apartments atop a three-level retail berth plus a finished basement, according to Department of Finance records and real estate listings.
CASE, which has been the subject of critical stories by news organizations such as the Guardian over its spending practices, was able to flip the 21-foot-wide site for a nearly 70% profit, a notable achievement at a time of sluggish townhouse sales. The deal’s upside also came despite the fact that No. 34’s storefront has been empty for years. Indeed, its last tenant, an outpost of French furniture retailer Liaigre, which sold Sekulow the property in 2022, shut down there around the start of the pandemic.
It was not immediately clear if the apartments were occupied at the time of the sale.
According to the register, the buyer was shell company 34E61 LLC, which was incorporated in Delaware Feb. 13, about two weeks before the property’s Feb. 25 closing. Signing the deed on the company’s behalf was Albert Sultan, an executive managing director of the commercial brokerage Kassin Sabbagh Realty, whose investment arm, KSR Capital, purchased a 49% stake in 1410 Broadway in 2024.
A phone message left for Sultan at his Garment District office was not returned by press time, and Sultan also did not respond to an email. A message left at the Atlanta office of Christian Advocates Serving Evangelism also went unreturned.
“Dedicated to the ideal that religious freedom and freedom of speech are inalienable, God-given rights,” CASE, which also does business as American Center for Law & Justice, will “educate, promulgate, conciliate and where necessary, litigate, to ensure those rights are protected,” it says in tax filings.
The charity, for which Sekulow serves as president, had net assets of about $91 million in 2023, based on its Form 990 return from that year, the most recent available. That was up from about $82 million in 2022. CASE also employs five other Sekulows, including Sekulow’s son Jordan, who also worked as a lawyer for Trump. It was Jordan Sekulow who signed the deed when CASE purchased 34 E. 61st St. in 2022.
Jay Sekulow has faced allegations that he has unjustly enriched himself and his family members from charitable proceeds through the years. The Guardian, for instance, reported that CASE allegedly steered more than $60 million between 2000 and 2017 to Sekulow, his family and their businesses.
CASE allegedly spent millions to purchase three houses, in Washington, D.C., Virginia and North Carolina, where Sekulow and his family have lived. But Sekulow has claimed his family did not use the properties exclusively and so the investments were reasonable and justified. It’s not known if any Sekulow ever called East 61st Street home.
A Sekulow spokesman told the Associated Press in 2020 that CASE and its related entities “have been reviewed by outside independent experts and are in compliance with all tax laws.”
