Perjury For DNC’s Claire Lucas?

The DNC’s gay discrimination case got stickier this week. Washington Blade reports that gay DNC’s gay board chair Claire Lucas could potentially face perjury charges for lying about her place of residence.

Legal documents filed in D.C. Superior Court this week and obtained by the Blade allege that Claire Lucas, a longtime Democratic National Committee volunteer and National Stonewall Democrats board member, committed perjury when she filed an affidavit asserting that she does not live in Washington.

The affidavit, filed Jan. 4, was part of efforts to quash a subpoena ordering Lucas to sit for a deposition in a lawsuit that alleges the DNC discriminated against a former gay employee.
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D.C. property tax records contradict her assertion in the affidavit seeking to quash Hitchcock’s subpoena that she has been a California resident since 2005. Those records show she claimed the Homestead deduction for the tax years of 2005 through 2007, as well as in prior years, according to Hitchcock’s court filings.

The D.C. law creating the Homestead deduction requires, upon possible penalty of perjury, that homeowners affirm that they live in their home as a condition for obtaining the deduction

Just yesterday the DNC released a statement declaring the contemptuous Lucas a Californian.

Lucas has been a key player in the unfolding drama – the wealthy investor reportedly helped draft the DNC’s public statements following Donald Hitchcock’s 2006 firing. She also had private correspondences with other DNC staffers which have now been made public:

Offered as relevant exhibits are e-mails sent by Lucas that show how she and other DNC figures responded to a letter that Hitchcock wrote criticizing the DNC. The letter was published in the Blade on Feb. 9, 2007.

“Ugh,” Lucas wrote to Finney and others. “What a complete loser (and I am happy to put that in writing).”

Karen Finney, the DNC’s communications director, agreed in her response.

“Ugh,” she wrote. “Yes I just saw it. We’ll regroup this morning and figure out a response.”

In an e-mail to Finney and Bond dated Feb. 12, Lucas said D.C. gay Democratic activist Kurt Vorndran, one of her “political mentors,” advised her that it would be best to publish a direct response “and then come back over a couple of weeks with some pro-DNC editorials.”

“One response to Donald and that is it,” she wrote. “We do not want to give him too many legs. As Kurt said, ‘Donald is self-destructing.’ Again, I am open to anything. Let me know.”

And the mask comes off…