VIRGINIA: FBI Investigates Eugene Delgaudio For Multiple Violations Of Campaign & Employment Laws

The Washington Post has published an expose of Eugene Delgaudio in which a former worker in his Virginia office alleges that she was ordered to work on his anti-gay campaigns during county time.  Such work is against the law and the FBI is investigating.

She worked from a spreadsheet that listed more than a thousand names and the political campaigns to which they had contributed. For weeks earlier this year, she said, she sat in a county office, while on county time, and spent hours calling them, one by one. The goal was to arrange meetings with the donors and her boss, four-term Loudoun County Supervisor Eugene A. Delgaudio (R-Sterling), one of the region’s most controversial politicians, who is known for his animated diatribes from the dais. If she was successful, Donna Mateer, a part-time aide, was to list the appointment in a Google calendar titled “Eugene 2012 Campaign Schedule,” she said. Since then, Mateer came to believe that what she was doing was unethical. She filed a complaint with the county’s Human Resources Department that also alleged a hostile work environment. Her accusations add to the controversy surrounding Delgaudio, who has publicly denounced gay people as “perverts” and “freaks” and routinely injected himself into heated political battles across the country through his conservative nonprofit group, Public Advocate of the United States.

Mateer also claims that Delgaudio demanded to know her religious beliefs before he hired her, which is also against the law.

The supervisor wanted to know her views on homosexuality, she said. Was she “pro-marriage,” “pro-life,” “right-wing”? Was she a Christian, a Catholic? How many times had she been married? Where did her children go to school? She suspected he was not supposed to be asking such questions, but she was looking for work, so she put her concerns aside. [snip] In March, less than a year after Mateer had been hired, she was fired. When Delgaudio called Mateer into his office to let her go, he told her the problem was that she was “not political,” she said. Hours before, Mateer had spoken with county human resources officials. At their request, she later filed a lengthy statement detailing her concerns, she said — including the allegation that Delgaudio frequently went on racist and homophobic rants and berated his employees in the workplace. In the days before she was fired, Mateer collected e-mails and documents, including the lists of names used to schedule fundraising appointments. She has since turned many of them over to FBI agents, who interviewed her in late July about Delgaudio’s fundraising practices and his involvement with Public Advocate. Three other former aides have told The Post that they have also been recently questioned about Delgaudio by FBI agents.

Read the full article. (Tipped by JMG reader Gordon)