Jamaican at Center of Washington DC Scandal

[Peasie]

The rise of Jeffrey E. Thompson and the fall that has rattled District politics

This story broke a couple of weeks ago in the Washington Post. You can watch the video which is about 2.5 minutes. Fascinating!

As investigators looked more closely, they uncovered additional layers of alleged political deception by the man who publicly supported one candidate while apparently funding another in secret. Court documents that cite an unnamed person fitting Thompson’s profile describe a kingmaker running an operation that delivered hundreds of thousands of dollars in illegal “straw donor” campaign contributions to sway elections in the city and beyond.

Thompson’s rise and fall have upended D.C. politics, reordering political alliances and affecting everything from how candidates raise money to who might be the city’s next mayor.

This account is based on thousands of pages of court and city documents and more than 100 interviews, including more than a dozen with close associates and relatives of Thompson, some in his ancestral home in Jamaica.

Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/inv...vernor-of-d-c/

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[kia027]

wow! I wondered what did he have to gain by doing what he did

[Peasie]

From the WP article

He came from working-class beginnings in Bull Savannah, a small, hilly town in Jamaica’s St. Elizabeth parish. Aunt Pearl Elliott Dunkley remembered him being a bit sickly, or “fragile.” His friends recalled a shoeless boy running the dirt roads reddened by bauxite, swimming, catching crabs and shooting birds with slingshots.

He was the youngest of 11 children born to Myrtle and Charles C. Thompson. His father was a farmer, a worker at the local bauxite factory and a truck driver who was well respected for being one of the first in town to travel long distances, friends and relatives said.

“It was a firetruck, an ambulance, a taxi,” Bull Savannah’s Beverton “Teddy” Roye, who remains one of Thompson’s best friends, said of his father’s truck. “If anybody got sick, you had to call Master Charlie.”
Derrick Rochester, Thompson’s cousin, said the elder Thompson drove workers each morning to the bauxite factory.

“He would drive out at 5 a.m. to come pick us up, and he would never be late,” said Rochester, a highly decorated, retired member of Parliament and trade unionist.

Jeffrey Thompson’s love of numbers began when he was a young boy working in the shop of his maternal grandparents, Wintworth and Edith Elliott. “He was a young grandson, so he got a lot of attention, a lot of nurturing,” Dunkley said of Thompson. The Elliotts operated the shop like a general store, extending credit to their customers. “Nothing written down,” said Dunkley, 79. “There was a lady who had 24 children. Every Christmas I couldn’t wait to hear if she had a new baby.” People could repay them a year or more later, Dunkley said. Other relatives said some people went to their graves owing the Elliotts.

Thompson’s eventual journey to the United States was a necessity, friends and family said. Bull Savannah, which currently has a population of about 7,000, did not yet have a public secondary school that students could easily attend for free. Entrance into the local boarding schools — Munro College for boys and Hampton School for girls — was an impossible feat for children of Thompson’s background, friends and relatives said.

“No fault of ours, we didn’t make it,” Roye said. “You made it if you were able to pay your way in.’”

Thompson, Roye and Levi Lewis — classmates who faced a premature end to their education — were saved by a program that Rochester started. In two classrooms with glassless windows and cement floors at Junction Secondary School, the boys took accounting while most girls took secretary courses.

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Pearl Elliott Dunkley is the aunt of D.C. businessman Jeffrey E. Thompson. She returned to Bull Savannah, Jamaica, their home town, after living for years in the United States, where she earned a doctorate in education from Columbia University. At 79, she acts as an informal historian of the Elliott family and of the town. She said Thompson has shielded the family from the scandal in the District touched off by revelations about an illegal $653,000 “shadow campaign” to help elect Vincent C. Gray as mayor in 2010. "He's protected us. He doesn't want us to be worried," Dunkley said of Thompson

[kia027]

He came from working-class beginnings in Bull Savannah, a small, hilly town in Jamaica’s St. Elizabeth parish.

[Tropicana]

I wonder if some of his people came from Clarendon.

[j-kid]

Power, and influence.

wow! I wondered what did he have to gain by doing what he did

[Peasie]

Power, and influence.

and over $600K in kickbacks.

But, is how him so fool? That is so not like Jeffrey

[kia027]

I wonder if some of his people came from Clarendon.

No.. St Bess people into royalty

[Peasie]

This story fascinates me

Jeffrey has been described as "the flamboyant rags-to-riches D.C. businessman implicated in underwriting an illegal shadow campaign for Mayor Vincent Gray. Did you know he used to date former Labor Secretary Alexis Herman? And refer to himself, in the third person, as “The Governor”? “If you didn't know him,” another associate told Stewart, “you would think it was ego-maniacal.” He’s like a character from a novel, so go read the whole thing.."

Here's the WP illustration of Jeffrey connecting to four of DC's mayors.

[j-kid]

Sound like yuh know him. Old boyfriend?

But, is how him so fool? That is so not like Jeffrey