DC Power Politics

My biggest scoop didn’t land a corrupt DC councilman in jail, but maybe it should have.

It was May 2016 and I had a big story on my hands. I also had nowhere to publish it.

For a half-dozen years I’d tried desperately to interest local DC outlets in the blatant corruption of a powerful DC councilman named Jack Evans. But to no avail.

This time, though, I had Evans dead to rights, even more so than usual. Still, I knew there was no point in doubling back to the same outlets that would only reject me again.

So on a lark I reached out to HuffPost’s then-DC bureau chief Ryan Grim (who this week launched a new outlet). While Grim’s beat was national, I knew he’d previously reported for Washington City Paper. And with that background, I was hoping he knew of Evans’ corruption, which was an open secret, and be willing to publish my piece.

After countless rejections I had no expectation of hearing anything back. Yet three hours after I hit send, Grim replied to my out-of-the-blue email, writing, “Good stuff.” A week later my story — with its not-so-subtle headline, “Some go to Jail – Not Jack Evans” — was published at HuffPost.

While local reporters carefully read my story, they didn’t do follow ups of their own. So the story caused a murmur but little more, and Evans carried on as if nothing had happened. Only it had.

Three months before the FBI raided Evans’ Georgetown home in June 2019, the agency requested documents from DC Mayor Muriel Bowser and Evans’ DC Council colleagues related to Evans’ dealings with a number of companies, including those I’d written about: Exelon, Pepco and Manatt Phelps & Phillips.

To be clear it wasn’t my reporting, but Jeffrey Anderson’s at District Dig that prompted public outcry over Evans’ corruption, and then a federal investigation. Still, it was encouraging to see the companies I’d reported on in the mix of what looked to be the start of a sprawling federal investigation.

Evans’ Power Play

In 2014, nuclear power giant Exelon, and Pepco, the regional power utility, announced they were merging. While regulators in four states and the federal government signed off on the $6.8 billion deal, DC’s Public Service Commission unanimously opposed it, single-handedly blocking the merger in 2015.

Evans, the longtime chairman of the powerful finance committee, called on the commission to reverse course. And the following year it did, enabling the merger to go through. What Evans didn’t tell commissioners was that he’d recently started working for Manatt, the lobbying firm representing both Pepco and Exelon, a clear conflict of interest. That was just one of the official acts Evans took to benefit his new firm’s clients. This is what I exposed at HuffPost.

It’s been four-and-a-half years since Evans resigned in disgrace over his other suspect dealings, but I’m periodically reminded of my HuffPost story as I read about nuclear power executives and state legislators in other states, such as Ohio and Illinois, being prosecuted for pay-to-play scandals.

Meanwhile, here in the nation’s capital, despite an FBI investigation that once looked promising, Jack Evans has never been charged.

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