Sure, let’s get totally crazy! Sinclair Skinner, the Adrian Fenty confidant who was a key figure in the D.C. Council’s special investigation into the city’s recreation construction contracts, sent out a long and winding press release this afternoon, calling for an investigation into Jim Graham’s role in the Ted Loza bribery scandal.
In the release, Skinner states that “While many are paying close attention to Mayor Vince Gray’s hiring policies, and the color of Council chair Kwame Brown’s SUV interior, Councilman Jim Graham’s former chief of staff goes to jail for taking a gratuity from a lobby, and no one bats an eye to see if Graham had any criminal involvement in the matter.” [NOTE: We recently received an email from Frederick Butler, Skinner’s spokesperson, with an slightly updated press release. According to Butler, a friend of Skinner “forwarded [the press release we ran this morning] to you without my knowledge,” and that individual “thought he was doing us a favor by letting us use his press contact emails.” As a courtesy, we’ve updated the post-jump blockquote with the new press release but have changed nothing from our original post.] Loza pled guilty to two charges of accepting gratuities and one charge of filing a false statement on February 18, but Graham has never been a target of federal investigators.
“Cash for policy is a slap in the face to the democratic process,” concluded Skinner, “and every citizen deserves to know the truth behind this story.”
Just to refresh your memory, Skinner’s company, Liberty Engineering and Design, pulled in approximately $900,000 in 2009 for work on city parks and recreation centers. His incredibly aloof testimony was one of the lowlights of the Council’s probe into contracts awarded by Mayor Adrian Fenty, specifically a $4.2 million contract awarded to Banneker Ventures, whose owner, Omar Karim, was fraternity brothers with both Skinner and Fenty. Reportedly, Skinner pocketed $37,000 per job under those contracts for doing, well, nothing. So, you know, he’s definitely the kind of person who should be tossing around accusations about “cash for policy.”
You can read Skinner’s entire grammatically-challenged release after the jump.
