TIME Magazine reporter who broke corruption scandal: “[The Hogan campaign] didn’t specifically respond to the factual assertions made in this piece”
The fallout continues for Republican Larry Hogan after TIME reported Friday that as governor, Hogan personally approved spending more than $16 million in competitive state funds to develop his own family’s property. Friday’s report came roughly one week after TIME reported that Hogan directed millions in taxpayer dollars to his real estate firm’s listed clients.
Time Magazine reporter Eric Cortellessa joined WJLA to discuss his reporting on Hogan’s mounting conflicts of interests.
Key quotes:
- WJLA Anchor Dave Lucas: This is one of those things that, if you’re in the Hogan campaign, I’m sure there’s a lot of forehead-slapping here.
- Cortellessa: When Governor Hogan took office, he maintained a principal ownership in a real estate brokerage firm that he founded in 1985. He placed his holdings in a trust, which was not a blind trust, that allowed him to be apprised on the firm’s investments, its investors, the locations of its real estate projects. He put his executives at the firm as his trustees, and put his brother in day-to-day charge of the firm.
- Cortellessa: What the first story that came out last week detailed was how 40% of the competitive affordable housing awards granted by the Hogan Administration went to listed clients of Hogan. These are affordable housing developers who had an ongoing business relationship of some kind with Hogan’s firm. He also, on five occasions, voted for additional loans or grants to those same developers from his perch at the Board of Public Works.
- Cortellessa: The follow up story that came out [Friday] details how one of those awards that came out in the fall 2020 competitive round announced by Larry Hogan in January 2021 went to a developer who was building a 60 unit affordable housing complex on property that was currently owned by the Hogan family and had been owned by the Hogan family for nearly four decades. They received $15 million in low income housing tax credits and an additional million in state funds to bring that project to fruition.
- Cortellessa: [The Hogan campaign] didn’t specifically respond to the factual assertions made in this piece. I will say that there are other members who worked in the Hogan administration who say that he was involved in the process in this and in other rounds when they made these awards throughout his tenure.
- Lucas: The charges themselves are, at the very least, troubling and embarrassing.
- Cortellessa: There haven’t been any disputing of the factual assertions made in the piece. There’s no question that this award was granted to Osprey property, which was a client of Hogan, and there’s no question that it was being built on property owned at the time by Alona Hogan, Larry Hogan’s stepmother. It’s also all available in public land records… Those are indisputable facts. They’re not allegations. They’re available to anyone who looks them up in the land records or in the Maryland Department of Community Housing and Development’s public awards announcements for these competitive grants.
- Lucas: No question these are serious allegations.
See also: WBFF: Maryland Dems. Demand Transparency from Senate Candidate Hogan: ‘We Need Accountability’ & Questions Larry Hogan Must Answer Following Breaking News that He Directed Millions of Taxpayer Dollars to Develop Family Property
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