Marion Barry

Marion Barry      (politician)
Born	Marion Barry Jr March 6, 1936 Itta Bena, Mississippi, U.S.
Died	November 23, 2014 (Age 78) Washington, D.C., U.S.
Nationality	US
Party	Democrat
Black Washington DC mayor convicted of drug possession after intense, multi-year FBI sting operation.  Washington DC/Mayor  In office January 2, 1995 - January 2, 1999  Washington DC/Mayor  In office January 2, 1979 - January 2, 1991

Marion Shepilov Barry was an American politician and mayor of the District of Columbia from 1979 to 1991 and 1995 to 1999. He was arrested, convicted and imprisoned for using cocaine in an FBI entrapment operation. After six months in prison, he was later re-elected as Washington DC/Mayor.

Career

In the 1960s, he was involved in the civil rights movement, first as a member of the Nashville Student Movement and as the first chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Barry came to national prominence as mayor of the national capital, the first prominent civil rights activist to become chief executive of a major American city. He gave the presidential nomination speech for Jesse Jackson at the 1984 Democratic National Convention.

His celebrity was transformed into international notoriety in January 1990, when he was videotaped during a sting operation smoking crack cocaine and was arrested by Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) officials on drug charges. The campaign against Barry that resulted in his arrest, conviction and sentencing was led by US Attorney Joseph diGenova, with assistance from DA Jay Stephens.

The arrest and subsequent trial precluded Barry from seeking re-election, and he served six months in a federal prison. After his release, he was elected to the Council of the District of Columbia in 1992. He was elected again as mayor in 1994, sitting from 1995 to 1999.

Hunter Biden

In a leaked conversation, Hunter Biden said that he "smoked crack with Marion Barry...And I was a sophomore I guess, I was a junior when that happened...But he used to come there and drink like late, late. And I would be there, and he would go to the bathroom." The timeline of Barry's and Hunter's drug use matches up, as Hunter was a student at Georgetown in 1990, the same year Barry was caught smoking crack in an FBI sting.

Prosecution

The Washington Post wrote: "You do not have to be a member of the 'Re-elect Marion Barry Mayor' campaign to have some heavy, nagging doubts about the manner of Mayor Barry's investigation and prosecution. Not only were his conduct of office and his personal life the object of intense, probing official scrutiny for years -- long past the time that a dry-hole investigation of someone else might have been dropped. The actual circumstances of his arrest, when it finally came, involved an almost embarrassingly abundant measure of federal artfulness and contrivance, not to say a troublesome element of a trap. On the latter score, some of the mayor's sympathizers believe he has a good legal defense of entrapment to the charge of drug possession. Others, including many with no brief for the mayor, speak in more general terms of trickery, disproportionality and unfairness; they are uneasy about the overbearing, almost obsessive way the authorities pursued him for what turns out to be only an alleged misdemeanor."

In the obituary, Marsha Coleman-Adebayo wrote: "Barry was a four-term mayor despite FBI stings and US government tactics that violated every moral and ethical barrier. There was clearly a target on his back and those in high places made the destruction of Marion Barry a priority. But every time the system thought they had destroyed him, he found an extraordinary inner strength to push back. No doubt, his indiscipline and recklessness provided ample opportunities for his enemies to strike but his courage to fight and his stamina provided the fortitude to prevail."

Many thanks to our Patrons who cover ~2/3 of our hosting bill. Please join them if you can.