RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — A Virginia special prosecutor has found no wrongdoing in the awarding of a $1.8 million contract for the removal of Richmond’s Confederate statues last summer.
Timothy Martin, the elected prosecutor in Augusta County who was appointed to handle the matter, said in a news release Wednesday that he had reviewed the findings of a state police investigation and found no criminal activity.
The investigation into the contract, which was awarded to the owner of a construction firm who had made modest political donations to Democratic Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney, was initiated after complaints from a political rival of Stoney’s in the middle of an election season.
Jeffrey Breit, an attorney for Stoney, said Thursday the mayor is pleased with the findings.
“It is exactly what I said in July of last year,” Breit said, calling the investigation an attempt to “throw a political bullet in the middle of a campaign.”
The investigation found that Stoney did not suggest the contractor, Devon Henry of Newport News-based Team Henry Enterprises, Martin wrote.
The investigation also affirmed the mayor’s previous assertions that the city reached out to a number of contractors to do the work, all of whom refused, according to Martin. Some either personally objected to the statue removal or feared that removing the monument posed a security risk, he said.
Martin noted that the high value of the contract also attracted scrutiny. He said that while the lack of competition likely drove up the price, taking a profit in a transaction with a government entity is not criminal.
Stoney’s administration initially declined to answer questions from reporters about who was behind a shell company, NAH LLC, that records showed the city had contracted with for the removal of the statues. News outlets later uncovered through public records requests that NAH was linked to Henry.
Martin wrote that while the concealment of the contractor’s identity led to suspicion “as to whether this was done in order to conceal an improper transaction” the facts don’t support such a conclusion.
“Because tensions were running so high at the time, and many people expressed passionate opinions about the proposed removal, the contractor chose to keep his identity hidden, which is not a crime,” Martin wrote.
In a statement, Henry said he was pleased the investigation had concluded and “this politically generated dark cloud can be removed.”
Henry — whose firm recently handled the removal of several monuments in Charlottesville, including the equestrian statue of Robert E. Lee at the center of the violent Unite the Right rally in 2017 — said he was proud of his team’s work in Richmond on “a complex and potentially dangerous job.”