Fauntroy

After more than four years abroad, the Civil Rights leader and former District congressional delegate Walter Fauntroy returned home—and was promptly arrested at the airport.

The 83-year-old returned to Dulles a week after telling the Washington Post that he was coming home after years in the United Arab Emirates.

Fauntroy left the country in 2012 after a judge in Prince George’s County issued a bench warrant for failing to appear for a court hearing related to a charge that he wrote a bad check for $55,000. Even his family was confused by his absence, which eventually left his wife in a dire financial situation. Dorothy Fauntroy continued to support him, but had to file for bankruptcy and turn to friends for help in his absence.

In speaking to the Post last week:

[Fauntroy] dismissed the criminal charge against him and his mounting debts as part of a conspiracy to undermine his reputation.
“That whole effort was a determined effort to discredit me as I moved around the world to organize people. You read the news on the Internet that ‘nobody knows where he is’ and ‘when he comes home, he’s going to be arrested’? Well, see if I get arrested. It is disinformation which you can dispense easily when you control the media.”
When pressed on whether he paid the $55,000 he owed for the 2009 inauguration ball he planned, Fauntroy insisted that the issue was “resolved” and pointed to shadowy powers orchestrating his downfall.
“The charge is a false flag. . . . That is a tactic of intelligence institutions, the KGB, the CIA.”