The Minnesota Attorney General’s Office (AGO) is suing the former directors of one of the original “violence interrupter” groups formed in the wake of the George Floyd riots, saying they misused over $6.5 million in charitable funds for personal use and expenses.
Named in the civil lawsuit is “We Push for Peace,” a nonprofit corporation, and two of its former directors, Trahern Pollard and Jaclyn McGuigan, who maintained an intimate relationship with each other, court documents say.
The lawsuit, which does not involve criminal charges, alleges Pollard and McGuigan committed numerous violations of charities laws by misusing over $6.5 million in nonprofit assets, engaging in numerous governance and oversight violations that enabled the rampant abuse of assets, lying to the AGO in the course of its investigation, and ultimately causing the demise of the nonprofit to steal its business for personal gain, a press release from the AGO summarized.
An excerpt from the AGO’s press release said:
“The Attorney General’s lawsuit, filed in Hennepin County, alleges Pollard and McGuigan improperly used non-profit assets for their personal benefit, diverting more than $6.5 million from We Push for Peace. Over $6 million benefitted Pollard personally, who used charitable assets on items like luxury cars, trips to Vegas, child support payments, and funding his for-profit liquor store and car dealership businesses. Additional information on the misused assets is available in Attorney General Ellison’s lawsuit. The Attorney General attempted to work with the non-profit’s new leadership, who cooperated with the Office, to ensure the non-profit’s continuation, but the extent of Pollard and McGuigan’s violations and ongoing attempts to thwart the investigation necessitated legal action.
Pollard and McGuigan also attempted to hide their misuse of non-profit assets from the AGO and other regulators, including from taxing authorities. Pollard provided numerous false statements to AGO investigators under penalty of perjury, including stating that a child support payment was actually for non-profit overhead expenses and that a $35,000 payment to Pollard’s friends was for ‘Chicago Payroll.’ Shortly after We Push for Peace was first contacted by the Attorney General’s Office, Pollard founded ‘We Push for Peace-For Profit Professional Service Corporation.’ Ten days later, Pollard told the Attorney General’s Office that We Push for Peace had a for-profit arm, and that ‘private contracts and/or non-government funds are handled through this entity,’ despite the fact that the for-profit entity was ten days old and the contracts and funds actually belonged to We Push for Peace.
More recently, Pollard formed another new for-profit business, Change Makers, to divert the non-profit’s contracts and workers to himself. Pollard diverted so many contracts from We Push for Peace that it ultimately caused the demise of the organization. In fact, when the City of Minneapolis reached out to We Push for Peace during Operation Metro Surge for community support, the formerly multimillion-dollar organization lacked any capacity to serve its basic function to assist the community.”
Court documents also estimate that We Push for Peace took in revenues of nearly $20 million between 2020 and 2025, and that it also received a Covid-related PPP loan for more than $22,000 that was ultimately forgiven by the federal government. We Push for Peace had numerous “violence interrupter” contracts with stores such as Aldi, Cub, Whole Foods, and Ragstock, as well as similar contracts in other cities like Chicago, Detroit, and Rhode Island.
“We Push for Peace’s former leaders betrayed their basic duties to the non-profit and communities they were supposed to serve,” Attorney General Ellison said. “Instead of helping the community, they helped themselves to millions of dollars that should have gone into the community. During Operation Metro Surge, when we needed non-profits providing social services and community support the most, We Push for Peace was utterly incapable of assisting Minnesotans. When my Office asked questions, Pollard and McGuigan lied about key facts, continued to misuse assets, and ultimately caused the demise of the non-profit. We filed this lawsuit to redress these harms and hold its former leaders accountable.”
History of controversies
Despite being mostly lauded by local media over the years, We Push for Peace has been at the center of a number of controversies during its existence.
In 2021, one of the organization’s violence interrupters was captured on video violently assaulting a homeless man outside a St. Paul grocery store while on duty and was charged with fifth-degree assault.
During the height of the spike in violence that plagued Minneapolis following the 2020 riots, We Push for Peace held office space in the heart of Uptown Minneapolis where numerous shootings and other violent crimes occurred virtually outside its doors.
In 2022, We Push for Peace de facto took over operations of Merwin Liquors in north Minneapolis hours after the AGO’s office announced it had opened a nuisance investigation into the business for drug and weapons activity taking place at the location and nearby Winner Gas. Pollard claimed in a media interview that he knew Keith Ellison “very well.”
In June 2023, Pollard’s son, Trahern Pollard, Jr., who was already a convicted felon while providing “violence interrupter” services to Merwin Liquors under the auspices of We Push for Peace, was charged with third-degree assault on another We Push for Peace employee while at Merwin Liquors. Two months later, Pollard Jr. was charged with domestic assault.
Later in 2023, Pollard Sr. launched a for-profit business seeking a liquor license from the City of Minneapolis in order to take over ownership of Merwin Liquors, while at the same time receiving over $2 million in funding from the city for violence interrupter services, a seeming conflict of interest that few local media seemed interested in reporting at the time.
Pollard Sr. was ultimately approved for the transferred liquor license despite a vocal contingency of opposition from northside residents and community activists.
Merwin Liquors was specifically mentioned in the civil suit, which said that Pollard founded and subsidized his for-profit businesses with nonprofit revenue.
Pollard also admitted to the AGO that he treated the nonprofit’s revenue from the store contracts as his own “private money” and stated: “I treated the money like it was mine.” Pollard admitted that he did not set any rules for himself or the nonprofit on how the store contract revenue was spent and that he took what he wanted. McGuigan also acknowledged that extensive transfers from We Push for Peace served no non-profit purpose.
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Minnesota Crime Watch & Information publishes news, info and commentary about crime, public safety and livability issues in Minneapolis, the Twin Cities and Greater Minnesota.
Crime Watch MN
Minnesota Crime Watch & Information publishes news, info and commentary about crime, public safety and livability issues in Minneapolis, the Twin Cities and Greater Minnesota.
