A key finding in the report's executive summary says that Barry would help Watts-Brighthaupt with expenses and even buy her "gifts, including jewelry and a coat." Then, he'd "personally" deliver a city check to her and garner some of the proceeds. Said city check came from a contract that Barry had awarded to Watts-Brighthaupt.

Prosecutable offense? Let the authorities decide. My guess is that they'll leave this alone, given the results of the last attempt to prosecute the councilmember (tax evasion).

Yet it's clear that this conduct is grounds for a romantic indictment. Think about what's going on here: Boyfriend regales girlfriend with gifts and all kinds of generosity, assisting with the payment of utility bills and the like. In the process, boyfriend likely reaps all kinds of fringe benefits from the goodwill generated by such generosity, though we don't have any direct evidence thereof.

Then, when payday comes, boyfriend collects from girlfriend. And not in a civil manner, either. Coercive would be a better characterization. According to the Bennett findings, Barry would wait in the car while Watts-Brighthaupt cashed the check. That's an astounding showing of unboyfriendliness.

Sums matter a great deal in this narrative. If the contract that Barry had arranged for Watts-Brighthaupt had been a whopper—like, say, $150,000 over a year or something of that magnitude—then perhaps a romance could sustain the strain of a boyfriend looking for repayment of his "loans." But the actual sum of the contract was $15,000.

So, to summarize: Barry arranged poverty-level earnings for his girlfriend and used them to woo her. QED: Bad boyfriend.

Well, it sure as hell wasn't a whitewash.

Attorney Bob Bennett this morning presented the findings of a five- seven-month investigation into D.C. Council contracts and earmarks—a probe prompted by the shenanigans of Ward 8 Councilmember Marion Barry this summer. [Download a PDF of the report's executive summary; download the full report.]

The blockbuster finding is that Barry handed council checks to girlfriend Donna Watts-Brighthaupt, then ordered her to go to a bank, cash the checks, and give him part of the proceeds. Barry, in a deposition, protested that any money she handed over was to repay loans Barry had given.

But, Bennett noted today, the "evidence is overwhelming" that Barry illegally took city funds. He called for the council to refer the matter to the U.S. attorney and the D.C. Office of Campaign Finance.

The other part of the Bennett investigation concerned the longstanding council practice of awarding "earmarks"—noncompetitive grants to various nonprofits favored by councilmembers. Bennett and his team, following Washington City Paper's reporting on the matter, found massive irregularities with the process by which several nonprofits, created at Barry's behest, were funded and operated. Like City Paper, Bennett found that incorporation documents were forged, that large amounts of money were steered to political supporters, and that Barry remained in control of the groups.

In testimony before the council today, Bennett pointed to two Barry cronies who personally benefited from the earmarking arrangement—Brenda Richardson, his constituent service director, who made more than $100,000 through the groups, and Anthony Motley, the at-large council candidate, who made more than $50,000.

Aside from the critique of Barry's practices, investigators were just as critical of the earmarking process writ large. Prior to the presentations of the report's findings, Council Chairman Vincent C. Gray announced a number of changes he planned to make to the earmarking process. But Bennett & Co. made clear that any changes to the system would be little more than cosmetic.

Bennett testified that there has been "little transparency, "no competition," and "little or no accountability" in earmarking. Earmarks, another investigator reported, provide "substantial opportunities for waste and abuse"; the official recommendation is that the council "seriously consider ending earmark grantmaking as currently practiced."

Bennett called the earmarks "like a narcotic drug" to politicians. Once they start using them, they can't get enough of them.

Barry's misbehavior didn't end then the contracts and earmarking was exposed. Bennett described a campaign by Barry to obstruct his investigation, in part by minimizing the seriousness of the probe and attacking its legitimacy, and in part by attempting to convince Watts-Brighthaupt not to share key evidence with investigators.

In the end, Bennett concluded, Barry "breached the high ethical standards expected on him" and "breached the public trust."

Bennett, before presenting his findings, explained that over the course of the inquiry, a team of dozens of lawyers spanning two top firms (he moved from Skadden Arps to Hogan & Hartson amid the probe) "collected and reviewed 575,000 pages of documents obtained from numerous sources" since the council authorized the investigation in July.

Barry for his part protested mightily Bennett's investigations and its findings, protesting inquiries into his sexual behavior and noting the lack of "written procedures" for awarding personal service contracts.

Bennett swatted the latter claim away readily: "I wouldn't expect the city council to have written rules—with all due respect, sir—that you should not give [contracts] to people you have a relationship with."

Barry's ultimate defense: "I don't apologize for getting as many resources to the ward as I can." Never mind that the investigation found that most of those resources found their way into the pockets of Barry's political allies rather than his greater constituency.

"We couldn't have been more fair to Mr. Barry," Bennett said before the dais. "We plain and simple found that he did some things wrong."

It's a solution that will sound awfully familiar in the John A. Wilson Building's corridors: Send all the work to Allen Lew!

Certainly the solution preserves the council's prerogatives: It brushes back Mayor Adrian M. Fenty, cuts out his cronies (mainly Omar Karim's Banneker Ventures), and keeps the council in the loop. (Unlike under the previous process, Lew's Office of Public Education Facilities Modernization has sent his million-dollar contracts for council review.) And it keeps hotly anticipated neighborhood projects moving forward, taking political heat off of ward councilmembers who don't want to look like they're obstructionists.

But handing the projects to Lew also makes councilmembers look like collective idiots. Ward 5's Harry Thomas Jr., in particular.

That's because before the Fenty administration–before sending the work to the D.C. Housing Authority and touching off this political frenzy–wanted to hand these parks contracts to Lew's Office of Public Education Facilities Modernization in the first place. That happened last fall; Fenty held a press conference to announce the move, then Thomas led a effort on the council to reject it, citing concerns that Lew already had too much on his plate.

Thomas said, according to the Examiner, that Lew needed to "stay in his lane and do what he’s supposed to do." And he also said: "I'm going to be very vigilant about ensuring the parks and recreation budget maintains autonomy without the mayor going around the process."

His original plan thwarted, Fenty sent the parks work, more than $80 million worth, through his deputy mayor's office to the D.C. Housing Authority—in the process avoiding council review of contracts that sent millions to Banneker and other Fenty-connected firms.

The irony was not lost on at least one councilmember on the dais this evening.

"It seems to me it's a complete 180 in some respects," says Ward 4 Councilmember and Fenty ally Muriel Bowser. "Do we know how that office will support this work with the important school work that they have?"

Gray stepped in to answer Bowser's loaded question, saying "it was really my idea" to send the projects now to Lew, citing "an emergent situation" and a "vigorous debate" with Thomas over whether to proceed this way.

Thomas, however, got his two cents in, and then some. In a combative exchange with Bowser, he said he only agreed to the Lew solution to appease his council colleagues. "Hopes have been built, hopes have been dashed, and hopes, right before Christmas, have been stomped on," Thomas said on the dais. "I think that this is a temporary solution that I have had to sit on my hands to do for the greater good of the community."

In the end, the legislation passed by a voice vote. It requires the city parks and recreation department to enter into an agreement with Lew's shop within 30 days to complete the 10 projects in question. Council inquiries into the propriety of the contracting process will continue in the meantime.

There is some good news for Banneker: The council, as part of the legislation, moved to ratify its project management contracts to complete the Walker-Jones Education Campus and Deanwood Recreation Center.

I guess I didn't get the memo.

Apparently, this is not the time to ask Councilmember Marion Barry or his staff about Sharon Bowen. Barry paid Bowen $50,000 to work on poverty issues in 2007 and 2008. Bowen was another Barry girlfriend.

Why not today? HBO is premiering a documentary on Barry's life. It's either that or he's dead. When asked about Bowen's supposed organizing of a poverty summit, Barry's spokesperson Natalie Williams made it clear that the press should be focusing on more important things—like legacies.

Williams' immediate response to my Bowen question: "All of our interviews are focused now around Barry's legacy."

When I made it clear that I really just wanted some clarification on the Bowen matter, Williams simply hung up on me.

In reporting out our story on Sharon Bowen, a woman linked professionally and personally to Ward 8 Councilmember Marion Barry, it was difficult to figure out what she exactly did for the residents of the District.

Between spring 2007 and spring 2008, Barry had awarded her $50,000 in taxpayer-funded contracts. From our sources, we kept hearing two things: Bowen was a "class act" and Barry's girlfriend. None of our sources could talk with deep knowledge about her actual work. All city records have to show for it are invoices written by Bowen and the Barry-approved personal services contracts.

We are just supposed to know that Bowen worked in the areas of poverty reduction (specifically on organizing a Poverty Summit), working with the Ward 8 Business Council, and to "ensure that the vision of Councilmember Marion Barry is fulfilled."  Does this seem like $50,000 worth of work?

When asked about Bowen's work, Ward 8 Business Council Executive Director James Bunn admitted it wasn't rocket science. He said Bowen essentially went door-to-door to identify Ward 8 businesses. If she made a report on her findings, he didn't see one.

It all feels like work you give an intern. Or something Barry should have delegated to his constituent services office or an elected ANC commissioner or a staffer at the Ward 8 Business Council. This does not feel like $50,000 work you give to a woman who votes in Ohio.

At the time of Bowen's work, poverty in the District was a very real problem, one that hadn't changed since the last recession. According to the DC Fiscal Policy Institute, the gap between high-wage and low-wage workers had reached an all-time high in 2007 and poverty levels were at their highest in more than a decade.

"You all think it is inappropriate to hire a girlfriend. I don't think it is. In fact, there is no law against it," Barry told The Washington Post. When asked whether he would hire another woman he becomes romantically involved with, Barry said, "Unless the law changes, why not?

Maybe he wouldn't have done all of it over again, particularly the Denver hotel room drama. Maybe he wouldn't even have his camp constantly text and call Watts-Brighthaupt throughout this ordeal in an attempt to get her to recant or who knows what. Watts-Brighthaupt was never sure what his people wanted from her post-July 4. Maybe he wouldn't have insisted on labeling her "unstable" and giving her some kind of disorder.

What is so disappointing about the Post story is that the reporter doesn't call Barry's bluff. In fact, Barry had tried to do it all over again. On June 29, the councilmember offered Watts-Brighthaupt a new lucrative contract. And she turned him down in a scathing e-mail response.

"I feel as if I'm selling my soul to you for the tax payer’s dollar,” Watts-Brighthaupt wrote. At least one person in that relationship eventually believed those contract deals were fishy.

While we're on the subject of setting the record straight, the Washington Post printed an error in a previous story on the Watts-Brighthaupt affair. If not an error than a real whopper of a misquote. In Friday's story on the council's probe, the Post writes:

"In an interview yesterday with The Washington Post, Watts-Brighthaupt raised further questions about the contract when she said she was hired to study Barry's political life. That would appear to contradict the terms of the contract, which said she would consult on 'poverty reduction strategies.'"

In interviews with Watts-Brighthaupt, she told us that she was interested in studying Barry and his grasp on local politics. That's what attracted her to him in the first place. But she has always stated to us that she was hired to develop or consult on the Young Emerging Leaders program. She was never paid to study Barry. After the Post piece ran, she called us to complain about the error.