Washington businessman and political donor Jeffrey Thompson is being investigated by the U.S. Department of Justice in relation to bundled donations from his business associates to several democratic candidates, including Delegate Donna M. Christensen, President Barack Obama, D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray and a handful of other Democrats, according to the Associated Press.
Numerous news outlets, including the AP, reported that Thompson’s office was raided and searched last month as part of the investigation. An April 18 AP story says "people familiar with the probe believe Thompson is suspected of using straw donors to evade contribution limits."
As of April 26, the U.S. Justice Department had not filed charges, filed suit or made any public allegations or comments on the case.
Thompson owns D.C. Chartered Health Plan, which has a $322 million contract to manage health care for D.C.’s Medicaid recipients and his accounting firm, Thompson, Cobb, Bazilio and Associates, has nearly 200 federal contracts worth over $17 million, according to the AP.
More than a third of that total is a single $6.3 million contract with the V.I. government to audit funds for the Education Department.
Christensen has "absolutely no involvement in the D.C. Charter Health Plan issues that have been reported in the media," her office released in a statement.
Her office acknowledged that Thompson did help organize two Christensen fundraisers, the most recent in February 2011.
Christensen is taking no action on the contributions at this time, but will be following the situation and "will take any such action with respect to his contributions as may later prove appropriate," the statement from her office said.
Calls and emails Wednesday and Thursday to the V.I. Property and Procurement Department seeking the documentary record of how Thompson, Cobb, Bazilio and Associates was awarded its $6.3 million contract, to see if it indicated a normal competitive bidding process, were not answered or returned. Other V.I. news outlets have also reported Property and Procurement officials did not returned calls on this matter.
According to the AP, Christensen received at least $37,000 from Thompson and his associates last year, which amounted to more than half of all Christensen’s donations for that year.
A search of campaign donations by each of the 17 persons listed on the Thompson, Cobb, Bazilio and Associates website as principals in the firm did not appear to show the suspicious pattern of identical contributions described by the AP.
According to public interest organization the Center for Responsive Politics, of the 17 principals in Thompson’s firm, one: Lee Calhoun, made similar contributions as Thompson to Obama and Christensen, while the other 16 did not. Thompson may have other associates to which the AP was referring.
While direct contributions to campaigns such as Thompson’s are limited and regulated, since the U.S. Supreme Court decided in Citizen’s United that corporate election spending is constitutionally protected speech there has been fast growth in unregulated, often anonymous, contributions to political action committees.
These PACs and super-PACs may not legally coordinate with campaigns, nor directly endorse particular candidates. But some candidates, notably Republican Newt Gingrich, have gone as far as to announce on television what they would like to see the PAC do. (See related links below)
For comparison and context, while Thompson gave Obama $10,000 before the 2008 election, and his purported associates allegedly gave Christensen $37,000 this past year, the L.A. Times recently reported Las Vegas gambling industry tycoon Sheldon Adelson and his wife and children donated a total of $16.5 million to a single pro-Gingrich super-PAC this year.
Thompson’s contribution to Obama was roughly 1/16 of 1 percent of Adelson’s contribution to the pro-Gingrich super-PAC. And the $37,000 in contributions from many individuals to Christensen that the AP suggests are suspect amount to about a quarter of 1 percent of the Adelson family’s spending just on Gingrich.
