This evening, City Desk reached Donna Watts-Brighthaupt to get her reaction to the U.S. Attorney's Office announcement that it has declined to prosecute the stalking case against Marion Barry. As everyone knows by now, Barry had quite the obsession with her. The obsession culminated in the councilmember getting locked up over the July 4 weekend [...]
6:42 p.m. Update: When asked whether the U.S. Attorney's Office is looking into the allegations surrounding Barry's payments to Donna Watts-Brighthaupt, spokesperson Benjamin Friedman issued this statement:
"I cannot confirm or deny the existence of an on-going investigation."
The U.S. Attorney's Office has announced that it will not be pursing the stalking charge against Councilmember Marion Barry. [...]
The U.S. Attorney's Office plans on releasing a statement concerning Marion Barry's pending stalking case. I have been told that the statement will be released "shortly."
Barry is scheduled to be arraigned tomorrow morning in D.C. Superior Court.
Barry, drama, a hotel room. Sound familiar?
LL has the tape recordings (with transcripts) detailing the depths of Councilmember Marion Barry's obsessive relationship with former girlfriend Donna Watts-Brighthaupt. You will also find a the complex story of their on-again, off-again relationship. This involves:
Barry kicking Watts-Brighthaupt out of his Denver hotel room during the Democratic National Convention [...]
"I'm just listening," she said quietly.
She was dressed in jeans, a thin sweater, t-shirt, and dark glasses. In her left hand, she held a drink from McDonald's. In the other, she held a cellphone.
She had found the cameras and the reporters and the microphones in front of the Wilson Building, and felt she needed to [...]
Natalie Williams, spokesperson for Marion Barry, called a late-night press conference in front of the Wilson Building in order to respond to a Washington Post story today saying that he had given a city contract to alleged stalkee Donna Watts-Brighthaupt. Before the nightly news reporters and a few print reporters, Williams said that due to [...]
Tim Craig at the Washington Post counts $10,000 in council money headed to Donna Watts-Brighthaupt, the woman Marion Barry is accused of stalking.
According to LL's perusal of city purchase orders, she got $20,000:
$5,000 on Nov. 20 for "consulting services";
$10,000 on Feb. 19 for "consulting services"; and
$5,000 of May 27 for "computer hardware consulting"
Marion Barry appeared in front of cameras this morning for the first time since his Saturday-night arrest, but that's about all he did. Longtime lawyer Fred Cooke did virtually all the talking, while Barry stood behind him in a gray suit, fedora, and paisley tie, remaining mute save for an occasional whisper in Cooke's ear.
In [...]
Yesterday evening, in an interview with LL, Donna Watts-Brighthaupt—the woman Marion Barry is alleged to have stalked—said that the events leading to Barry's arrest began with a memo Barry had written Tuesday. That memo instructed D.C. Council secretary's office to bar her ex-husband, Delonta Brighthaupt, from a city hall event that night.
LL has obtained the [...]
LL spoke this evening with Donna Watts-Brighthaupt, the 40-year-old woman whom Marion Barry has been charged with stalking.
She does not support the charge: "He does not stalk," she says. "He does what I allow him to do."
Watts-Brighthaupt says she spent some six months in a relationship with Barry, from August, when she traveled with him [...]
