Thomas Jr. one of several D.C. politicians marred by scandal

D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray and nearly half of the 13 D.C. Council members have been caught up investigations or scrutinized for potential ethics violations over the last year. » Vincent Gray: Just six weeks after he took office, it was revealed that Gray’s team hired allies and family members of staffers for cushy city jobs, including minor mayoral candidate Sulaimon Brown. After being fired in February from his $110,000-a-year city job, Brown said members of Gray’s mayoral campaign gave him cash-stuffed envelopes and money orders so he would stay in the race and keep up his verbal assault on then-Mayor Adrian Fenty. A federal grand jury was impaneled in April to investigate Gray’s campaign spending, including whether Gray for Mayor funds were used to keep Brown in the race. The Washington Examiner first reported the federal investigation during the summer; this fall it was revealed the FBI had obtained fingerprints from some of Gray’s former advisers.

» Kwame Brown: The council chairman asked city officials to order him a “fully loaded” Lincoln Navigator, which had lease payments of nearly $2,000 a month. He asked for a new Navigator after the first arrived with the wrong interior color; both SUVs were eventually returned after the vehicles’ price tags were reported in the media. Federal investigators are also looking into Brown’s 2008 council campaign after an audit from the Office of Campaign Finance found that he didn’t report hundreds of thousands of dollars in contributions and expenditures.