The flap over Ward 1 councilmember Brianne Nadeau‘s condo loan sparked one of the greatest showdowns in District politics, but it probably won’t do much more than that. According to a letter from the Office of the Inspector General, the investigation requested by one-time Nadeau rival Jim Graham into the loan didn’t find any evidence that Nadeau did anything wrong.

The investigation centered on whether Nadeau misstated her income in an attempt to get an interest-free loan to buy a condo. That allegation, floated towards the end of the Ward 1 primary campaign last year and trumpeted by Graham, already had pretty flimsy evidence behind it. Graham requested an OIG investigation of, prompting Nadeau to accuse him in a Starbucks showdown of misusing his D.C. Council office. The kerfuffle became even more complicated because Graham only knew about the loan because, before they became political rivals, she had approached him for help getting it.

According to the OIG, though, there’s not much to the claim. In a letter sent last August—but only obtained by LL today—then-inspector general Blanche L. Bruce writes that OIG’s investigation “found no evidence of wrongdoing on [Nadeau]’s part.”

“The accusations got enough coverage that we wanted to make sure that people understood that in the end they were baseless,” says Nadeau spokesman Tom Fazzini.

[documentcloud url=”https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1701528-nadeau-ig-letter.html”]
Photo by Darrow Montgomery