The Dig looks back at 2019
By Jeffrey Anderson
Let’s face it: The story of the year in D.C. politics and government–certainly in District Dig–was the collapse of the decades-long reign of Jack Evans.
The perennial Ward 2 boss and former chairman of the Committee on Finance and Revenue faces an expulsion vote by the D.C. Council on January 21, if he doesn’t resign first.
In some ways, 2019 was on a continuum for The Dig, having unearthed a pile of stories throughout 2018 that prompted The Washington Post to invest in the task of investigating Evans’s shady business and political dealings–a civic embarrassment that has paraded in the collective face of the D.C. political and media establishment for years.
It was about this time last year when Post investigative reporter Steve Thompson reported that Evans had received 200,000 shares of stock from a digital sign operator named Donald MacCord just prior to promoting legislation that would help the company.
By that time, The Dig was 10-months into an investigative series that has roots back to late 2016, as a freelancer for Washington City Paper. The consultancy at Evans’s Georgetown home set up for him by lawyer-lobbyist-developer and crony Bill Jarvis, and irregularities in Evans’s ethics disclosures became subjects of a Board of Ethics and Government Accountability investigation that soon yielded to a federal grand jury investigation.
The overlapping efforts bore fruit. Evans’s self-dealings, with MacCord and his company, Digi Outdoor Media, and others, came tumbling out of some unexamined crypt. A District Dig FOIA request informed a story in the Post that showed Evans using Council staff and resources to distribute business proposals to law firms around town, offering to serve as an inside man at the John A. Wilson Building.
His world started to unravel. Yet there still was a sense he was too powerful, too entrenched, too possessed of other people’s secrets, to fall. That is, until Robert McCartney of the Post obtained an explosive internal investigation by the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, where Evans served as chairman of the board. Evans was forced to resign, and the focus shifted to the Council.
For Evans, it had to feel like death by a thousand cuts, as challenges to his tenure piled up. The U.S. Attorney’s Office has yet to signal whether it has concluded its investigation, and a recall effort ultimately fell short; but a group of D.C. Democrats declaring “Sack Jack” remained vocal, and six candidates have stepped up to run against him in the Democratic primary in June.
Council Chairman Phil Mendelson eventually had no choice but to initiate a process to determine what if any sanctions should apply to his longtime colleague.
Comparisons to Donald Trump were inevitable. As with Trump, Evans has exploited privilege and stature for personal gain. The Dig examined the city contractor that counted Evans as one of its residential customers; took a dive into mortgage loan activity that required a special agreement with his ex-wife to retire an $850,000 debt–after he had taken out two other loans absent any public record of her consent; and exposed a mortgage loan against his second home in Florida, issued by Eagle Bank, his one-time client and a local community bank that has grown its reserves with District funds on his watch.
By the time Mendelson ordered up a taxpayer-funded outside investigation by O’Melveny & Myers, it was looking as though Evans’s days on the Council were numbered. The big moment came just recently, after the firm dropped a voluminous report and a 12-member, ad hoc Council committee voted unanimously to take away his seat.
It seems incredible now that it took three years since first breaking stories on Evans and his relationship with MacCord–who is serving time in federal prison for wire fraud in connection with a tangential scheme to bilk digital sign investors–for Evans to be held accountable. They say “It takes a village,” but the truth is that sometimes the “village” just has to consist of The Washington Post, which followed The Dig‘s FOIA activity, cited its work, and persisted in forging new ground of its own.
Evans himself has placed either blame or credit–or both–where he feels it’s due:
“So he started writing these articles about me back in–two years ago, or whatever it is, and frankly, that’s what started all this,” Evans told lawyers from O’Melveny, according to a transcript of one of his interviews with city-paid investigators, during which he cast various aspersions against yours truly.
When not pursuing Evans or related stories, The Dig reported on the District’s foray into sports betting via D.C. Lottery contract extension. The initiative was so tainted that Mendelson had to leverage key committee assignments to entice support from two centrist holdouts on the Council: Ward 5 Member Kenyan McDuffie, who assumed much of Evans’s financial oversight responsibility in a Council committee shakeup; and At-Large Member Robert White, who wears his mayoral ambitions on his sleeve.
Having covered a scandalous lottery contract a decade ago for The Washington Times, I would have thought contracting irregularities, questionable procurement practices, and issues regarding the solvency and legitimacy of the awardees of a no-bid, sole source contract would give lawmakers pause. But alas, the stakes were too high, the lobbying too intense, and Mendelson too deft.
The initiative to set aside D.C. procurement law and award the no-bid contract, conceived and promoted by Chief Financial Officer Jeffrey DeWitt, with Evans by his side, passed on the last day of the legislative session. The victory gave Evans hope: As the Council approved the lottery contract to include sports betting, it also voted to allow him to hang on to a couple of his remaining committee seats.
In 2019, The Dig also wrote about the Mayor’s hollow sexual harassment reform proposals amid the #MeToo era; interviewed a Street Sense vendor, a Certified Peer Recovery Specialist skeptical of regional strategies on homelessness; went behind the scenes of a sweetheart deal involving political insiders who are developing the D.C. Housing Authority’s headquarters; and explained how McDuffie is now the member to watch on city development and finance.
Investigations that eventually lead to consequences such as those Evans now faces do not happen very often in the careers of most journalists, if they happen at all. Nor do they come free of cost.
For 2020, The Dig will set its sights on agencies in need of scrutiny, political races involving upstart candidates, tales of persistence and success, issues of importance to everyday Washingtonians, and hopefully, stories that bring a little light into the world.
Happy New Year.
*Photo Credit: Bill Rice
