Nine days passed between when a D.C. government employee first accused John Falcicchio of sexual harassment and Falcicchio’s quiet resignation. Emails recently released to City Paper show he did not stop working during that period, despite assertions from Mayor Muriel Bowser’s administration to the contrary.
Falcicchio appears to have kept up many of his extensive duties as Bowser’s chief of staff and deputy mayor for planning and economic development until the morning of the day he resigned, hundreds of emails released via a Freedom of Information Act request show. Although Falcicchio delegated some tasks to his subordinates at DMPED and the Executive Office of the Mayor between March 8 (when the first complaint was filed) and March 17 (when he resigned), the emails show Falcicchio discussing Council legislation with agency leaders, liaising with lobbyists, fielding requests for grant money, signing employment contracts and other government documents, chatting with reporters, and managing the minutiae of the mayor’s calendar.
These emails raise new questions about how Bowser and her top deputies responded to the allegations against Falcicchio, widely considered the most powerful official in Bowser’s government and her top political confidant. And they offer a window into the scope of his responsibilities and his importance to Bowser, who has vigorously (yet unsuccessfully) argued against efforts to order an independent investigation into Falcicchio’s actions.
Vanessa Natale, who has led the internal investigations into Falcicchio as deputy director of the Mayor’s Office of Legal Counsel, told reporters in June that Falcicchio was placed on “administrative leave” shortly after a woman employee first leveled accusations against him on the evening of March 8. Yet the emails show Falcicchio operating as usual, with no mention of leave or any change in his employment status. It leaves open the possibility that he could have continued serving as the direct supervisor of the two women who accused him of harassment, even as the investigation into some of those allegations began.
Neither Natale nor the crisis communications firm representing Falcicchio responded to City Paper’s requests for comment about this nine-day period. Debra Katz and Kayla Morin, the prominent attorneys representing some of Falcicchio’s accusers, declined to comment through a spokesperson.
D.C. government employees and other political insiders tell City Paper that there was no hint of any of these allegations against Falcicchio until the sudden news of his resignation, announced on a Friday afternoon at the bottom of a press release, which also spuriously claimed he’d voluntarily resigned to pursue private sector opportunities. One government staffer who worked closely with Falcicchio says they and their colleagues believed he was merely working from home for the nine days in question, as he was replying to emails and texts but wasn’t working in person at the office or at city events.
The MOLC has released two reports substantiating many of the claims made by both of the women, but they’ve only included limited details about the timeline of the unfolding scandal. Bowser has largely resisted questions about her response to the allegations and deferred them to Natale, who once said it was “inappropriate” for reporters to ask what the mayor knew and when.
This much is clear: Bowser’s attorneys first learned of these allegations in the “early evening” of March 8, Natale told reporters in a June 21 press conference, when Katz and Morin sent an email to the MOLC outlining the first woman’s allegations. The Washington Post previously reported that this six-page complaint included examples of sexually explicit messages from Falcicchio and screenshots from a video of him masturbating.
By March 9, Natale said Bowser ordered her office to begin an investigation into Falcicchio’s behavior. A second accuser came forward on March 31, two weeks after Falcicchio’s resignation, while a third accuser outside government detailed her experiences with Falcicchio’s sexually exploitative behavior to City Paper in late June. (Bowser initially told the press that she first learned of the accusations a few days before her first public comments about Falcicchio on March 20, but Natale later said she misspoke.)
Natale added in her June comments that Bowser and her deputies “followed the procedures that are outlined in the mayor’s sexual harassment order” in putting Falcicchio on leave and initiating an investigation. The 2017 order says that any officials facing accusations of “criminal misconduct” should be put on leave while an investigation plays out, but doesn’t otherwise require it. (It also recommends other “interim remedial measures” like transfers or reassignments of duties in lieu of leave.) Bowser and Natale have both repeatedly said that they have not seen evidence of criminal wrongdoing by Falcicchio, and they’ve indicated that federal prosecutors have not expressed interest in pursuing charges against him.
Natale did not say during that June press conference exactly when Falcicchio was placed on leave, but did confirm he was still being paid up until his resignation.
On the evening of March 8, Falcicchio attended a public safety walk in Petworth with Bowser and other officials, which was happening just as his first accuser was coming forward. The emails show Falcicchio corresponding with community members who participated in the event in the hours following. For instance, one man who posed for a photo with Falcicchio during the walk wrote to ask that he remove the picture from Twitter, since it prominently featured his young daughter; Falcicchio quickly agreed. (Falcicchio’s first accuser also told the Post that he continued messaging her on Snapchat through the night of March 8.)
Emails on March 9 don’t betray any hint of the looming scandal. In one typical exchange, he forwarded concerns from a restaurant owner dealing with problems opening a new location to Brandon Todd, the former Ward 4 councilmember and current Washington Gas lobbyist, for a resolution. Falcicchio did, however, send emails to DMPED’s chief of staff, Sharon Carney, suggesting she attend a panel discussion at a transportation industry conference in his place the following weekend (and photos from the event show her doing so).
Subsequent emails show Falcicchio performing some of his more perfunctory duties as deputy mayor, signing offer letters for new employees and an agreement guaranteeing a tax abatement to a small business. Others show his intimate involvement in coordinating Bowser’s public appearances, such as his March 12 communications with the organizers of the Global Inclusive Growth summit, an event backed by the Aspen Institute, Mastercard, and comedian Trevor Noah.
“Seems like you have a lot of great partners, and I know the Mayor is a fan of Mr Noah,” Falcicchio wrote to one of the organizers, pledging to try and find time in the mayor’s schedule for the event. She ultimately did attend the conference on April 13.
Even as March 17 drew nearer, Falcicchio’s emails don’t show any sign that he felt his future with the D.C. government was in jeopardy.
For instance, on March 14, he discussed plans with developers to attend the ribbon cutting of a new headquarters for the Department of General Services, originally scheduled for late March (Bowser would ultimately celebrate the building’s opening on June 5). The same day, he discussed working up a “letter of support” for a “Mid-Atlantic Hydrogen Hub” in the D.C. region, a project of the business group Connected DMV.
“Happy to help with a letter if you have a draft for us to review,” Falcicchio wrote to lobbyist Trey Proctor of G.S. Proctor & Associates.
The emails show Falcicchio continued corresponding with people inside and outside the government until the morning of March 17, when he sent some signed letters authorizing a construction company to fly drones over a section of the C&O Canal in Georgetown. Bowser announced news of his resignation later that afternoon.
The documents released to City Paper are an incomplete record of Falcicchio’s communications, however. The city redacted hundreds of emails in full, claiming exemptions to the District’s Freedom of Information Act that allow for the protection of “information of a personal nature where the public disclosure thereof would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy” and for conversations related to the “deliberative process” of city officials.
The District also did not release any of Falcicchio’s text messages or communications on WhatsApp from this time period, despite City Paper requesting them. Bowser’s inner circle has repeatedly been accused of automatically deleting WhatsApp messages, in particular, prompting efforts from the Council to require the preservation of these communications.
Mitch Ryals contributed reporting.