U.S. Virgin Islands Gov. John de Jongh is accusing The Daily Caller of racial motivations for reporting on allegations that he accepted part of at least $20 million in cash bribes.
In a statement released Tuesday, de Jongh also alleged that TheDC is reporting on the bribery allegations as a way to attack President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder.
“It is a sad, sad day in the life of our territory when gossip and slander wash away reason and truth and fairness and commonsense,” de Jongh said. “It is a sad day in our nation when reckless allegations can be published without substance or verification as part of the smearing of our President or his Attorney General. This kind of broad brush stereotyping was shameful in the days of Jim Crow, and it is more so today.”
A Daily Caller investigation last week unearthed allegations that de Jongh accepted cash bribes in exchange for facilitating the sale of a telecommunications company to a politically embattled U.S. telecommunications cooperative.
According to a knowledgeable government official who served on a Department of Justice team put in place to arrest finance executives close to that telecommunications deal, de Jongh accepted a portion of at least $20 million in cash bribes that floated throughout the U.S. Virgin Islands government.
The U.S. Department of Justice, the source said, never acted on sealed indictments related to a years-long criminal scheme involving bank fraud and other financial crimes.
The bribes, according to the source, were for de Jongh, his attorney general Vincent Frazer and assorted Virgin Islands legislators — all aimed at quashing local concerns about financial irregularities identified on the books of the National Rural Utilities Cooperative Finance Cooperative (CFC).
TheDC is withholding the name of the source, a knowledgeable government official who served on the Justice Department’s arrest team and was involved in the investigation, in order to prevent career retaliation from political figures in the Obama administration.
De Jongh continues claiming the allegations are untrue. “So let me state again — as I did at the time of the first publication of the outrageous accusation that I have taken bribes — that this is totally and absolutely untrue,” de Jongh said in his statement.
Even so, de Jongh contradicts himself by asking anyone who has evidence that he did in fact take bribes to come forward.
“If anyone has evidence to the contrary they have an obligation to us all to deliver such evidence to the proper officials,” de Jongh said. “And in the absence of any such evidence all should know that spreading lies is lying — and they are liars, spreading gossip and rumor makes them gossip and rumor mongers. That is all they are whether they do it on the street or on talk radio.”
The DOJ has not commented on any aspect of this Daily Caller investigation, nor has CFC.
This isn’t the first time embattled Democratic politicians have attacked TheDC for its reporting. Attorney General Eric Holder has accused TheDC of being “behind” the surge in congressional calls for his resignation or firing and begged TheDC to stop reporting the storyline.