Opinion ID: 2558572
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 37

Heading: Respondent's Embellishment

Text: However, the foregoing is in no way dispositive of the Rule 8.4(b) issue arising from the documents that Respondent submitted to the City Council in support of other, more explicit statements about her knowledge of specific political motivations, or her related testimony, all submitted in an apparent effort to make her a central character in exposing OIG incompetence and uncovering what turned out to be a multi-layered political scandal. In this instance, the evidence of knowing falsity is overwhelming. For whatever reason, which only Respondent knows, the evidence shows that Respondent chose to embellish her prior actions to the point of making perjurious statements and submitting false evidence to the Council in support of such statements. At principal issue are (1) the original memo sent to Deputy Mayor Graham versus the version shared with the Council [BX 34 at 52-87; BX 16 at 2-35]; (2) the November 9, 2001 memo that Respondent allegedly shared with Agent Slay [BX 16 at 36]; (3) the e-mails to OIG that were allegedly sent but never delivered due to fatal address errors [BX 21 at 6]; and (4) the alleged March 15, 2001 memo detailing Respondent's objections and criticisms of CLA [BX 16 at 45]. All of Respondent's testimony regarding these documents at the March 27, 2003 D.C. Council hearing is also of great concern because it is false. a. The Graham memo submitted to the Council: The Committee fully credited the testimony by Agent Grimes [27] related to the OIG's investigation (with the assistance of OCTO and the U.S. Secret Service) of the Graham memo. In great detail, the OIG analysis demonstrated numerous differences between the original 36-page memo created in 2001 and emailed to Ms. Graham [BX 34 at 52-87] and the 34-page version provided to Mr. Orange and the D.C. Council in 2003. BX 16 at 2-35; Tr. at 492-93, 498-505, 527-30, 539-41. b. The November 9, 2001 memo: During the March 7, 2003 D.C. Council hearing, Respondent discussed in great detail the memo that she allegedly gave to Agent Slay on November 9, 2001. BX 20 at 89. The Committee, however, has concluded that there is clear and convincing evidence that no such meeting took place on that date between Agent Slay and Respondent. Moreover, the evidence showed that respondent never transmitted the November 9 memo to OIG, but that she in fact created the memo solely for the purpose of embellishing her testimony at the hearing. c. The emails to OIG: The OCTO analysis of Respondent's hard drives along with the corroborating testimony from Mr. Mancini, the current OCTO program manager in charge of all emails for the D.C. Government (whose professional expertise and knowledge were un-assailed during the proceedings), leave no doubt in the Committee's view that, with the exception of the March 12, 2001 email from Mr. Holman to Respondent (BX 21 at 2), the e-mails Respondent submitted to Bar Counsel were never attempted to be sent to the OIG on the dates that Respondent alleges/presents in her exhibits. Tr. 1528-39; RX 4, RX 16, RX 18, RX 21 at 4. Had Respondent sent them to the wrong email addresses, as reflected in the exhibit documents themselves, they would have been returned as undeliverable almost immediately. As Mr. Mancini testified, a non-delivery error would have generated a response to the Respondent within seconds, informing her almost instantly that her transmission was not received. See Tr. at 1489. Without any evidence to show that the error message function of her email system was not operational when she purportedly sent the emails, the Committee concludes that she fabricated evidence and perjured herself in relation to it. d. The alleged March 15, 2001 memo: Nothing about the March 15, 2001 memo in which Respondent allegedly submitted detailed criticisms of CLA in order to oppose the initial contract grant to CLA was credible. The Committee first observed the memorandum's header, which inexplicably indicates that the document should not be placed in any Personnel folder or among any D.C. Government files. BX 16 at 45. There is no logic or reason why this is the only document in the entire record that bears this type of disclaimer, except that Respondent outwitted herself in trying to create a pre-emptive explanation of why it was neither contained in nor referenced in any of the contemporaneous files, except hers. From this suspicious starting point, the Committee's review ended with the fact that the memo contradicted the more succinct, signed (initialed) and contemporaneous/sequentially dated memo of recommendation that Respondent provided to Mr. Holman on March 27, 2001, which he quoted in his contemporaneous report to the Mayor's office. In sum, the Committee believes that the March 15, 2001 memo (RX 24) is a complete fiction. Tr. at 113 (quoting Holman).