FBI Raids D.C. Council Member’s Home, Leave With BOXES of Evidence!

Here's what NBC Washington had to say about the raid and why it was conducted:

FBI agents searched the home of embattled D.C. Councilmember Jack Evans on Friday morning, eventually taking away boxes.

The FBI Washington Field office confirmed that agents went to Evans' Georgetown home on Friday to conduct "court-authorized law enforcement activity." Evans has faced investigations and allegations for months over whether he used his office for personal gain.

Evans, who represents Ward 2, was at home along with his lawyer, Mark Tuohey, during the search. Federal agents arrived about 6 a.m. and hours later were seen removing boxes from the home and putting them in cars.

Police closed off the entire block for hours as federal agents searched Evans' home and neighbors stepped out to watch.

"This is definitely  not a normal Friday morning in the neighborhood but it's necessary and if there's credence to FBI investigation I welcome it," said neighbor Eric Kmetz.

Evans' attorney said he had no comment on Friday morning. A spokesperson for Evans said that FBI agents did not search his D.C. Council office.

D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson said in a statement that he will appoint an ad hoc committee to investigate Evans. 

“It is imperative that public officials maintain high ethical standards," Mendelson said. "Public trust is critical.  At the same time, it is delicate and precious.  We must now work to regain it.”

Mendelson also said the council will remove Evans as chairman of the Committee on Finance and Revenue. That move must be approved by the full council in early July. Evans was already stripped of many responsibilities in his chairmanship of that committee in March, when the council unanimously voted in favor of a reprimand.

D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser expressed disappointment in Evans' conduct. She said the best next steps are for the council, the Board of Ethics and Government Accountability and federal officials to complete their investigations.

"We are definitely disappointed and very concerned about the very serious allegations that were made this week," Bowser said. "I have definitely encouraged the councilmember to deal with these allegations and address them head on."

Documents in the case are under seal, so it's unclear what exactly the FBI is investigating. However, Evans has faced investigations and allegations of corruption since March when the Washington Post revealed he used his government email address to offer his "relationships and influence" as a councilmember and Metro Board Member to potential business contacts.

Council members are allowed to hold outside jobs, but Evans' use of his government email address raised concerns. Following the Post report, D.C. Council and the Metro Board each launched reviews of Evans' behavior.

The Washington Post has more details:

Federal agents on Friday searched the home of D.C. Council member Jack Evans (D-Ward 2), a day after the disclosure of a confidential memo that says Evans “repeatedly and proactively” used his position as chairman of the Metro board to help a company that was secretly paying him $50,000 per year.

 

Within hours of the conclusion of the FBI search, Council Chairman Phil Mendelson (D) announced that he would seek to strip Evans of his position as chairman of the council’s finance and revenue committee and appoint a panel to investigate him.

 

“It is imperative that public officials maintain high ethical standards,” Mendelson said. “Public trust is critical. At the same time, it is delicate and precious. We must now work to regain it.”

 

Evans has not been charged with a crime, and the council’s investigation could take months. But the federal and local actions signaled a once-unimaginable turning point for the District’s longest-serving elected official.

 

A seasoned retail politician and a powerful ally of developers and the business community, Evans has for decades been a fixture in the turbulent politics of a changing city.

 

For months, Evans has largely deflected questions about conflicts between his consulting business and his role as a lawmaker and head of the regional transit agency’s board.

      

But those defenses began to crumble after The Washington Post on Thursday published a 20-page memo summarizing the findings of an outside law firm hired by the Metro board to investigate those conflicts.

 

Evans, who falsely asserted for days that the ethics probe had cleared him of wrongdoing, said by late afternoon Thursday that he would resign from the Metro board — while keeping the seat he has held for 28 years on the D.C. Council.

 

Among its findings, the Metro investigation said Evans knowingly violated the board’s ethics rules by taking official actions that would benefit his personal friend, Rusty Lindner, and Lindner’s company, Colonial Parking.

 

Evans shared Metro ridership information with Lindner and repeatedly spurred the agency’s inspector general to investigate a rival parking company. At the same time, a consulting firm owned by Evans collected a $50,000 annual consulting fee from Lindner’s company that the council member did not disclose, the investigation found.

 

The probe also determined that Evans took action to benefit another consulting client, Digi Outdoor Media. Digi Outdoor wrote checks worth $50,000 to Evans and issued him 200,000 shares of the company’s stock. Evans said he returned the checks and stock.

 

The Metro board’s four-member ethics committee concluded that Evans committed only one ethics violation — a failure to disclose a conflict of interest related to his work with Colonial Parking.

 

A federal grand jury has subpoenaed documents from Evans and his consulting clients, as well as from the council and office of D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D). But until this week, Evans had largely avoided condemnation by his fellow elected officials.

 

That changed after the findings of the Metro investigation became public.

 

“This is straight-up corruption. I don’t know how else to view it,” said council member Mary M. Cheh (D-Ward 3). Cheh, who has served on the council with Evans for 12 years, said she felt “a deep sense of betrayal” after reading the memo, having given Evans the benefit of the doubt after questions about his alleged conflicts of interest arose.

 

“You sit next to somebody, they tell you things, you believe what they’re telling you, and then you find out it’s not so. It’s very, very demoralizing,” she said. “I’ve known Jack for a long time. I’m real sad about this whole thing.”

 

Council member Charles Allen (D-Ward 6), said Evans should immediately be censured, in addition to losing his committee chairmanship.

 

“The memo and the investigation that’s been released by [Metro] — I think it makes clear that council member Evans has taken advantage of the public’s trust for his own personal gain,” Allen said. “He’s betrayed the council’s trust. He’s done damage not only to the council as a body, but to the District of Columbia, and so I think the council needs to act on that.”

 

The full council must vote to remove Evans as chairman of the finance committee. Mendelson said the earliest that could happen is July. The demotion would be a watershed in District politics, where Evans has for years used his perch on the committee to function as a kind of concierge for Washington’s business community.

 

Among its responsibilities, the finance committee oversees the awarding of lucrative tax abatements. Evans, a centrist Democrat, has championed lower taxes, often bucking the more progressive tendencies of an increasingly left-leaning council.

 

On Friday, 10 of the council’s 13 members said they would vote to strip Evans of the committee leadership. Council members Trayon White Sr. (D-Ward 8) and Kenyan R. McDuffie (D-Ward 5) declined to comment.

 

Lawmakers who spoke to The Post on Friday stopped short of calling for Evans’s resignation from the council, saying their investigation should play out first.

 

Some activist groups and advisory neighborhood commissioners began urging him to step down.

 

Bowser, who has defended Evans and chided the governors of Virginia and Maryland for demanding more information about the Metro board’s ethics probe, said at an unrelated news conference Friday that she was “sad” and “disappointed” about the federal search, but she declined to say whether she supported the council’s new moves to discipline Evans.

 

“Clearly, all of the revelations of this week have been disturbing, with very serious allegations,” she said.

 

Evans and his lawyer, Mark Tuohey, did not return calls or respond to text messages seeking comment Friday.

 

Federal agents arrived at Evans’s 19th-century townhouse on P Street NW in Georgetown around 6 a.m., when Kate Blackwell, who lives nearby, said she heard pounding on a door.

 

“I woke up and I looked out and saw all these cars,” she said, adding that an agent told her Evans was waiting outside in a car while authorities searched his home.

 

Evans walked back into his house about 9:15 a.m. Agents started filing out of Evans’s house, carrying boxes, about 9:20 a.m. Tuohey entered the house at 9:26 a.m. and left after 20 minutes, declining to speak to reporters outside.

If the FBI raid isn't enough, then the fact that Metro has already been subpoenaed twice to speak about Evans's ethics violations shows that there is definitely something big up with it.

Another Washington Post article gave further information:

Metro has received two grand jury subpoenas as part of the federal investigation into Jack Evans, officials said Thursday. It was the first confirmation that the probe extends to Evans’s work as Metro board chairman in addition to his activities as a D.C. Council member.

 

Evans (D-Ward 2) stepped down as Metro chairman Thursday, at his last board meeting. He is resigning from the board after its ethics committee found he violated its conflict-of-interest rules.

 

A subpoena received within the past seven days asked for materials beyond those sought in the fall, when the U.S. attorney’s office first asked the transit agency for documents about Evans, according to four Metro officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the confidential matter.

 

The timing of the new subpoena suggested that it was related to the June 21 FBI search of Evans’s Georgetown home. That search came a day after The Washington Post published a confidential memo from the law firm hired by the Metro board to conduct the ethics investigation of Evans.

 

The 20-page memo said Evans knowingly violated numerous ethics rules, such as by using his position as chairman of the Metro board to help Colonial Parking, which was paying him $50,000 a year as a consultant.

The subpoenas added to Evans’s legal and political troubles. The D.C. Council has formally reprimanded him, and he is set to appear before it Tuesday to try to persuade it not to strip him of his powerful position as chairman of the finance committee.

 

In a flurry of other developments Thursday,Metro board member Paul Smedberg, who represents Virginia, was elected to succeed Evans as chairman. The board also blocked Evans ally Corbett Price from serving as a vice chairman.

 

Separately, the ethics committee recommended reforming its procedures for future investigations, after drawing criticism for its handling of the Evans probe.

 

One of the proposed reforms would increase the number of ethics committee members to five from four, to avoid 2-to-2 standoffs of the sort that hampered the Evans investigation. Another would require the committee to issue written reports of its findings.

In remarks summarizing his legacy after his 4½ -year stint on the board, all but one as chairman, Evans did not mention the ethics controversy that forced his departure. Instead, he offered a “Top 10” list of accomplishments, such as achieving dedicated funding for the agency and picking Paul J. Wiedefeld to be general manager.

 

Smedberg presented him with a plaque to thank him for his service.

 

A Metro official said the new subpoena sought information about the subjects of the ethics investigation. That probe focused on Evans’s dealings with Colonial, a digital sign firm and a business plan Evans used in seeking a job with a law firm.