Usually, when Councilmember Vincent Orange (D-At Large) talks about himself, it’s in the superlative. But today, he’s feeling a bit glum, and for that he blames a report last week by NBC4’s Mark Segraves.
Last Wednesday, like plenty of other local political reporters, Segraves filed a story on Orange’s cooperation in an ongoing federal probe into local campaign finance. Orange gave prosecutors copies of his campaign finance documents; Ron Machen, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, is investigating political donations tied to Jeff Thompson, the mega-donor who is believed to be behind a $653,000 “shadow campaign” waged on behalf of Vince Gray’s 2010 mayoral effort.
Segraves did not hear from Orange directly, though he and other reporters spent a while hovering outside the councilmember’s office. Orange eventually left the John A. Wilson Building without speaking to the media.
“As reporters waited outside Vincent Orange’s office where his staff said he’d be in meetings all day and be unavailable for comment, the councilmember slipped outside a side door, ran out to his car parked here, and sped off before any reporters could ask any questions,” Segraves said in his report taped on the steps of the Wilson Building.
A week later, Orange says in a news release that he took great offense to the story, particularly the part about the side door. “This is an outright falsehood,” he says. “I am very disturbed and distraught over this mean and reckless reporting.”
Orange says Segraves meant to imply that the councilmember sneaked out a side door in his office. But Orange’s office suite has no side door, and Orange says NBC4’s report combined with his office layout has led to a bit of taunting.
“Some are now saying I jumped out of a window realizing there is no side door,” he says in the release. “I am now the butt of jokes.”
Orange is also sending a letter to NBC4 Managing Editor Catherine Snyder, demanding a retraction and offering his version of events. According to Washington City Paper, which obtained the letter, it was not Orange who evaded reporters and sped away, but a staff member who drove his car to the San Antonio Bar & Grill in Brookland, where Orange later arrived.
DCist watched Segraves’ story again this morning, and inferred, as last Wednesday, that when Segraves said “side door,” he clearly meant a side door exiting the Wilson Building. In a phone interview, Segraves says Orange routinely declines to tell his version of events on camera.
“I stand by my reporting,” Segraves says. “We have offered Councilmember Orange multiple opportunties to tell his version of the story. He will not speak to us on camera.”
