Get over it: Harry Thomas Jr., is not resigning from the city council. Nor should he. Last time I checked, the United States was still a nation of laws, not men. You know: Innocent until proven guilty and all that. As of this writing, Harry “Tommy” Thomas has not been charged with any criminal wrongdoing in a court of law, let alone been convicted. Nor has he broken any specific rules or regulations.
Attorney General Irvin Nathan settled his complaint against Thomas. He had accused the Ward 5 council member of diverting public funds intended for youth sporting activities to his personal use. Nathan’s civil suit asked for repayment of $300,000 and $1 million in penalties.
Thomas offered to pay the $300,000; Nathan took it. It was a deal: neither an indictment nor an admission of wrongdoing.
If Nathan had wanted to play hard ball, he could have made Thomas’ resignation part of the deal. He didn’t. Nor did Nathan include a clause, standard in most civil settlements, instructing the person settling to avoid discussing whether or not he did anything wrong. Nathan didn’t get the gag order, which has allowed Harry Thomas to deny he did anything wrong.
If I were Harry Thomas, I would hold fast and head to the beach. Resigning would be an admission of guilt. Why do that, when he says he did nothing wrong, broke no rules, violated no laws?
For those of you gnashing your teeth at the moment — council members David Catania and Mary Cheh, who called for Thomas to quit — permit me to point you to the underlying problem. The District has lax rules and loopholes as large as Marion Barry’s unpaid tax bill when it comes to ethics.
Thus, Nathan punted any potential criminal case against Tommy Thomas to the feds. Now U.S. Attorney Ronald Machen’s investigators and assistant prosecutors are combing records Nathan passed along to see if the council member broke any laws. Ultimately, Machen will decide to prosecute, or not.
Which raises a question: will the fact that Machen and Thomas are brothers in the Omega Psi Phi fraternity come into play when Machen sits in judgment of the Thomas case? Machen’s deputy, Vincent Cohen, is a brother, too.
Granted, Machen and Thomas didn’t party together: Machen graduated from Stanford in 1991; Thomas came out of Bowie State about 10 years earlier. Still, they share a fraternal bond.
I bring frats up because so much was made of former Mayor Adrian Fenty’s “frat brothers,” Sinclair Skinner and Omar Karim, in the investigation of city contracts that went to the pair while Fenty was mayor. I recall Thomas using “frat brothers” as a weapon in his diatribes against Fenty, a member of Kappa Alpha Psi.
This weekend the Omegas are in D.C. celebrating their 100th anniversary. I suspect Machen and Thomas will join the festivities. They might even encounter one another in a brotherly moment.
Machen might not even know of the frat ties; he’ll barely acknowledge he’s investigating Thomas.
But even if Tommy Thomas is indicted by his frat brother, I doubt he will resign — innocent until proven guilty and all that rot.
Harry Jaffe’s column appears on Tuesday and Friday. He can be contacted at [email protected].
