What an irony that my old boss, Mark Warner, joined the No Kings protest in Woodstock on [Oct. 18]. If Virginia ever had an authoritarian, it would be my one-time friend Mark. In the spring of 1989, I volunteered for the Wilder for Governor campaign in Northern Virginia. Mark was running that office. When Mark was hired to run the campaign from Richmond, he took me with him.
In 2001, when Mark was running for Governor as a Democrat, I was running for the House of Delegates as an independent. We attended a fundraiser together in Shenandoah County. Although the corruption in Shenandoah County is what prompted me to run that year, I soon learned of a much bigger scandal in Page County. The mafia had bought the Board of Supervisors there and set up a landfill to take massive amounts of hazardous waste from New York and New Jersey. When the FBI got involved, the mafia wisely sold the landfill to Marvin Bush, the favorite brother of then-President George W. Bush.
Marvin was friends with his fellow multimillionaire, newly elected Governor Mark Warner, who hired the manager of the Page County Landfill as his Director of Environmental Quality. So much for Warner’s care for rural Virginia.
After Warner took office, he appointed me to the Virginia Waste Management Board. Very soon, however, Mark’s mobster friends told him that I was the last guy they wanted on the Waste Management Board, so Warner removed me. For the next three years, U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Virginia John Brownlee investigated the criminal activity surrounding the landfill. Brownlee told me that he didn’t care that his boss’s brother Marvin was involved.
In early 2005, Brownlee sent out target letters, including to Bush and Warner. That prompted a grand deal to be cut and the entire felony investigation was buried. Brownlee was given a couple of massive civil forfeiture cases, one involving Oxycontin and Purdue Pharma, which was represented by Rudy Giuliani. Brownlee also was given Establishment support for his 2009 run for Attorney General.
Over the next few years, I tried to get the records from the Justice Department, to no avail. Earlier this year, when Delegate Todd Gilbert (who got his seat in 2005 because his predecessor, then-Delegate Allen Louderback, received a target letter), resigned and his seat opened up, my interest in Page County corruption was reignited, particularly considering President Trump’s determination to expose corruption in the Justice Department.
So, I renewed my request for records, received written confirmation that they had the Bush-Warner files, and was hoping to soon receive them. Unfortunately, the records have not been forthcoming, so I filed a complaint for them in U.S. District Court in Harrisonburg.
Although the Northern Virginia Daily asked Warner about overpass protest cases he was not involved in, the NVD chose not to ask Warner about a case pending in U.S. District Court for criminal records involving Warner himself. If the NVD were to do so, it might lead to a Pulitzer Prize.
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Remember when Warner promised to only do 2 terms but now is attending a “No Kings” rally. I’m absolutely sure Dems don’t recognize the hypocrisy.