Fenty friend, aide linked to Sosua donation
By: Michael Neibauer
Examiner Staff Writer
June 26, 2009
The co-founder of Peaceoholics on Thursday used an unusual public deposition to directly link Mayor Adrian Fenty’s top aides and a close friend to the peculiar donation of emergency vehicles to a Dominican Republic beach resort town.
Key players
» Sinclair Skinner, Fenty friend and confidante
» Ronald Moten, co-founder of Peaceoholics
» David Jannarone, D.C. development director
» Robin Booth, property disposal specialist
» Andrew “Chip” Richardson, general counsel
» Deputy Fire Chief Ronnie Gill
The deposition of Ronald Moten before D.C. Council members Mary Cheh and Phil Mendelson quickly devolved into a circus, as Moten randomly asserted his Fifth Amendment rights, ranted about the council’s “thirst for political blood,” and accused his inquisitors of “treating me like a criminal” while his friends and family cheered him on.
But there were answers, too: Moten testified that Sinclair Skinner, Fenty’s controversial fraternity buddy and confidante, and David Jannarone, the city’s development director, were key players in the donation of a firetruck and ambulance to Sosua on the north Dominican coast.
Peaceoholics, an anti-youth-violence nonprofit, was used as an intermediary to take title of the vehicles and have them shipped internationally. Moten said he was “contacted” by both Skinner and Jannarone early this year to take part.
“We agreed that I would join them in a good deed on donating a firetruck and ambulance to Sosua,” Moten said.
Jannarone and Skinner set up virtually every aspect of the deal, Moten said, with the aid of Fenty general counsel Andrew “Chip” Richardson and some lower-level city employees, two of whom have been deposed. Skinner, through his firm Liberty Industries LLC, gave $11,630 to the Peaceoholics to have the vehicles transported, Moten said.
“Peaceoholics became a vessel for a donation engineered out of the executive branch,” Cheh, chairwoman of the government operations committee, said after the deposition.
Why Skinner and Jannarone? That is a question still to be answered. But Attorney General Peter Nickles on Wednesday said there would be no more questioning of D.C. employees until issues of representation, access to transcripts and executive privilege were resolved.
The Examiner first reported the Sosua gift March 27 after an obscure emergency rule authorizing it was published in the D.C. Register. The surplus vehicles were shipped days later, but Nickles soon ordered them returned.
Nickles released a report in early April that found all was “legal and totally proper.” The report made no mention of Skinner or Jannarone, only “those in the District government.” On Thursday, Nickles reiterated that his review revealed no legal issues.
