Sinclair Skinner, the longtime friend and fraternity brother of D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty, angrily confronted his critics Thursday amid allegations that he was a central figure in an expanding D.C. contracting scandal.
In a marathon public deposition peppered often with responses of “I don’t recall,” the one-time Georgia Avenue dry cleaner worker nonetheless vehemently denied that his decades-old friendship with Fenty had anything to do with the hundreds of thousands of public dollars in contracts he has reaped since Fenty became mayor.
“I’ve had to bust my behind to get where I am today,” he said, jabbing his finger and gritting his teeth. “I understand how people are cynical about politics. I’m not that person. I fought against that.”
Skinner has become a focal point of yet another special counsel investigation. Veteran litigator Robert Trout and his staff are probing millions of dollars worth of contracts for the remodeling of D.C.’s parks and playgrounds that were handed out through a semipublic housing agency. Among the big winners of the contracts was companies run by Omar Karim, another longtime mayoral friend. Karim, in turn, handed hundreds of thousands of dollars in subcontracts to a company co-founded by Skinner.
The original contracts were awarded by Fenty aide David Jannarone, a longtime friend of Skinner.
It’s Skinner’s second trip under oath because of city business. After the Fenty administration tried to donate a firetruck and ambulance to a Caribbean resort town of Sosua, Dominican Republic, Skinner emerged as a key player in that drama. He was forced to testify in a closed door deposition.
A partial tape of that deposition was played Thursday, but Skinner refused to answer questions about hundreds of thousands of dollars in payments from a company controlled by Karim to one controlled by Skinner.
Skinner said under oath Thursday that, though he was trained as an engineer, he wasn’t licensed as one, had little practical experience in engineering and his company –Liberty Engineering and Design –did little of the work it was paid for under the parks contracts. Instead, the work was farmed out at much lower rates, allowing Liberty to rake in tens of thousands in profits.
But Skinner said there was nothing improper, let alone illegal, in his work habits. He compared his company’s services with that of a housing general contractor who hands the plumbing, electrical and heating work to specialists.
“We provided great services,” Skinner said. “I would put our record against anyone else’s.”
Councilwoman Mary Cheh, D-Ward 3, a law professor who led the Sosua investigation, said she was unimpressed.
“I don’t buy it,” she said. “To me, it’s like a conspiracy to allow friends of the mayor to defraud the people of the District of Columbia.”
