Photo by Francis Chung.

The Stadium Club plot thickens: a co-owner of the strip club — which was allegedly built in part with city grant money meant to help house people with HIV/AIDS — was one of the largest donors to Team Thomas, the under-investigation nonprofit run by Ward 5 Councilmember Harry Thomas, Jr.

According to a Washington Times report from June:

Keith Forney, a co-owner of the Stadium Club whose companies have received more than $90 million in D.C. construction funds since 2000, made separate payments to Team Thomas in 2008 and 2009 totaling $6,000, a lawsuit filed Monday against Mr. Thomas by the D.C. Office of the Attorney General states.

Among the more than 30 contributors identified in the lawsuit – organizations that until Monday could not be identified because Mr. Thomas never registered his nonprofit as a 501(c)(3) – only Comcast contributed more, with a $10,000 donation in June 2008, the lawsuit states.

The report also detailed donations Forney made to Thomas’ constituent service fund.

Obviously, there are those out there who find such donations fishy, especially after yesterday’s revelations concerning the gentleman’s club. Thomas, after all, was staunchly against relocating strip clubs displaced by the construction of Nationals Park to Ward 5 in 2007, but then went so far to call such establishments good corporate neighbors earlier this year.

The Councilmember disagreed that the acceptance of the money from Stadium Club influenced his position on strip joints opening their doors in the ward.

“This is a total misrepresentation of my position on strip clubs and not factual [–] my legislation limited the number of strip clubs allowed in our ward,” Thomas wrote, in response to a claim that he “sold out” in exchange for the donations.