D.C. attorney general bars officials' testimony in firetruck probe
By: Bill Myers
Examiner Staff Writer
May 6, 2009
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| D.C. Attorney General Peter Nickles has refused to let two city officials testify without private lawyers before a panel investigating the donation of city rescue vehicles. (Examiner file) |
D.C. Attorney General Peter Nickles will refuse to let city officials testify before a council panel investigating the widening scandal surrounding the donation of city rescue vehicles to a Caribbean beach town.
Council members Mary Cheh, D-Ward 3, and Phil Mendelson, D-at large, have subpoenaed contracting official Robin Booth and Deputy Fire Chief Ronald Gill in hopes of finding out how the city came to donate a used firetruck and an ambulance to the city of Sosua, Dominican Republic.
In a letter to the officials sent late Tuesday, Nickles said he wouldn’t make Booth or Gill available unless Cheh and Mendelson secure private lawyers for the pair.
“There are bar ethics rules that anticipate the possibility that the interests of the individual could diverge from the interests of the District,” Nickles told The Examiner. “It frightens the hell out of them, and I’m not going to let them be unprotected.”
Nickles’ letter suggests that the council arrange pro bono representation for Gill and Booth. The council used a similar tack when it commissioned an outside audit of the $48 million property tax refund schedule.
Nickles has publicly condemned Cheh and Mendelson’s investigation. He reaffirmed his condemnation Wednesday.
“The whole thing is crazy,” he said.
City officials used local nonprofit group Peaceoholics as the go-between to arrange the donation. After The Examiner reported the donation, the city ordered the vehicles be turned around.
Last month, it emerged that two of Mayor Adrian Fenty’s top legal advisers urged the city’s contracting office to let the donation go through.
And council members are questioning whether Fenty’s fraternity brother and longtime friend, Sinclair Skinner, played a role in the donation. Cheh and Mendelson said in a letter Wednesday that they were treating Nickles’ rejection as a “request for an extension” but that she expected the city employees to testify. The council members say that they’re worried the donation exposed wider problems in the city’s procurement system.
In 2007, a scathing Government Accountability Office audit found that D.C.’s $1.9 billion procurement program was wide open for corruption.
