Reverend Alfred Charles Sharpton Jr. said "I'm not a rat, I'm a cat" when he admitted to being a rat that can't tell the difference between a rat and a cat. A rat that wore a wire on members of the Genovese Family in the 1980s, was caught on camera nodding when a FBI agent offered him a cut of future drug sales, and helped investigate boxing promoter Don King. Sharpton tries to present himself as some kind of victim.
"In my own mind I was not an informant. I was cooperating with investigators." - Al Sharpton
Sharpton claims that he went to the FBI for protection after getting threats from music executives with mob connections. If that is true then Sharpton was clearly in the wrong game. Information provided by Sharpton was credited with bringing down Vincent "The Chin" Gigante and others. Sharpton denied wearing a wire for years, but when confronted with undeniable video evidence Sharpton finally admitted "the conversations were recorded." He then denied having any knowledge of how the recordings were being used and said "I have never met any of these guys." He said he was not embarrassed by anything he did, but that he was embarrassed about how fat he looked back then. It is hard to find a better example of a stone cold rat than that.
Sharpton's ducking and weaving cannot avoid the simple fact that he provided information to law enforcement about people he was associated with for use in criminal prosecutions. Anyone that does that is a rat.