Report: Vincent Gray Personally Handled Donations Connected To Jeffrey Thompson

WASHINGTON -- District of Columbia Mayor Vincent Gray personally handled as much as $100,000 in campaign donations linked to a politically-connected fundraiser now under intense scrutiny by federal investigators.

Two sources involved with fundraising for Gray's 2010 mayoral campaign told WRC-TV/NBC4's Tom Sherwood that Gray showed up to his mayoral campaign headquarters in the days before a critical campaign-finance reporting deadline in June 2010 with a stack of contributions.

Reports Sherwood:

The number of $2,000 checks given on deadline created a problem to get them recorded before midnight June 10, sources said.

The fundraiser in question, Jeffrey Thompson, controls the city's largest Medicaid managed care firm, and has raised hundreds of thousands in campaign donations for various local officials.

Federal investigators raided Thompson's home earlier this month as part of its wide-reaching inquiry, though no charges were filed at the time.

This week, federal prosecutors started handing out subpoenas to several members of the D.C. Council who have benefitted from Thompson-connected campaign donations since 2003.

The U.S. attorney's office has been investigating Gray's 2010 campaign for months.

As WAMU-FM reports, a review of Gray's campaign donations turns up "a similar trail of donors and money orders" that appear on campaign records for D.C. Councilmember Vincent Orange (D-At-Large), who recently admitted that some money order donations to his 2011 special election appear to be suspicious.

The D.C. Office of Campaign Finance announced this week that it is auditing Orange's campaign.