An angry exchange during an El Paso radio program last month between a talk show host and a member of U.S. Rep. Silvestre Reyes’ staff has raised questions about the relationship between Reyes and the indicted kingpin in a local scandal that helped spark a massive public corruption investigation in El Paso.
The talk show host was Ken Hudnall, a former Army captain and Vietnam veteran who says his military service-connected disability was upped from 60 to 100 percent in May 2002, shortly after he left his position as vice president and general counsel at El Paso’s National Center for Employment of the Disabled, now known as ReadyOne Industries.
NCED’s former president and CEO Robert E. “Bob” Jones, former board member Patrick Woods and the nonprofit’s former chief operating officer, Ernie Lopez, were charged last October with fraud, theft and other crimes involving more than $700 million in federal money in a 37-count indictment.
They could be the first defendants to go to trial in far-reaching public corruption investigation by the FBI that has seen 11 people plead guilty to fraud, conspiracy and bribery charges in the past two years. Jones, Woods and Lopez were the first to be indicted in the investigation.
From a public standpoint, the public corruption investigation began with the April 2006 search warrant raid by three federal agencies on the Eastside headquarters of NCED. The investigation has since reached the county courthouse and El Paso two school districts.
More indictments and guilty pleas stemming from that investigation are expected in coming months.
On Feb. 6, Reyes’ El Paso community liaison, Peter Brock, called Hudnall’s radio show on KHRO upset about comments he said Hudnall had made earlier that day in a personal call to Reyes’ office that concerned his medical condition.
The brief, but heated on-air conversation included this exchange:
Brock: “You’ve got a 100 percent disability, don’t you?”
Hudnall: “Yes”
Brock: “Haven’t you thought you might be the first guy ever to get 120 percent?”
Hudnall: “Why would I want 120 percent?”
Brock: “I don’t know, but you said you deserved it once because that’s what you said. So, we’ve taken care of you. We’ve given you a lot of service.”
Hudnall: “You gave me that service when I used to carry the checks from Mr. Jones to your office. When I quit doing that, you all no longer had time for me.” (Download an audio file of the entire exchange below)
Asked later by NewspaperTree.com about those checks, Hudnall said he took contributions to Reyes from Jones' office and to fund-raising events during his tenure at NCED.
“I worked for Bob for seven years,” Hudnall said. “For the last four, there was a relationship with the congressman’s office. Quite often, things were carried back and forth. I don’t know what was in the envelopes.”
Newspaper Tree submitted written questions to Reyes office twice, on Feb. 26 and again last Thursday, concerning Hudnall’s statement, and Jones’ contributions to Reyes. (See contributions: Click to enlarge the image to the side of page.)
The first response from Reyes’ office came Friday evening and addressed none of Newspaper Tree’s questions.
“Mr. Hudnall’s sensationalistic claims rival those found in his books on UFO abductions and love affairs with the supernatural,” Vincent Perez, Reyes’ press secretary, said in that statement, which also referred questions about the campaign contributions to Reyes' campaign.
Jones children donate to Reyes
From 1999 through 2004, Reyes reported receiving campaign contributions amounting to $19,000 from members of the Jones family, including $11,000 in 10 checks from Jones himself.
Compared to the totals Reyes has raised over those years, that’s not a large amount. Nor is it a large amount compared to Jones’ political donations to local and state candidates. Jones has given more than $100,000 to Gov. Rick Perry, for example.
But among the reported contributions from the Joneses to Reyes in 2001 were seven $1,000 donations on the same day, June 28.
Four were officially reported as coming from three of Jones’ minor children, Rodney, Bobby and Ashley. Ashley Jones was down for two $1,000 donations. In addition, there were two other $1,000 contributions from Bob Jones himself and one from his wife, Ester.
Two weeks later, another of the Joneses’ minor children, Richard, was reported as having made a $500 contribution.
The limit on campaign contributions by an individual to a federal candidate in any election cycle at the time was $2,000.
But in that two week period in 2001, Reyes reported receiving $2,000 from Jones and $4,500 more from his children.
Hudnall, who worked closely with Jones and knew the family well, said the youngest Jones child was Richard Russell Randolph Jones.
County records show Richard was born on July 6, 1998, and that would have made him a few days short of his third birthday at the time he made a $500 donation to Reyes.
Federal Election Commission spokeswoman Mary Brandenberger told Newspaper Tree that minors may contribute to political campaigns, but only under certain conditions.
“In reference to children making campaign contributions, an individual who is 17 years old or younger may make contributions to any candidate or political committee as long as they abide by contribution limits,” she wrote in an e-mail.
“The decision to contribute must be made knowingly and voluntarily by the minor,” she wrote. “Also, the funds, goods, or services contributed must be owned or controlled by the minor, such as income earned, proceeds from a trust, or funds withdrawn by the minor from a financial account opened and maintained in the minor's name.”
Who is responsible for making sure those rules are followed?
“The onus is on the campaign committee to ensure that contributions are made in compliance with the law,” Brandenberger said.
In his brief statement regarding Hudnall, Perez also referred questions about campaign finances to Veronica Cintron, the head of Reyes’ campaign committee.
Later Friday night, Cintron issued a statement from Reyes’ campaign treasurer, Ron Pate, stating that the campaign had given an amount equal to the Jones children’s donations to the U.S. Treasury as a result of Newspaper Tree’s questions.
“Although the contributions were perceived to be legitimate at the time they were received nearly eight years ago, when it was brought to our attention last week that one or more of the contributions from Mr. Jones' children may not be valid, the campaign took immediate steps to resolve the issue,” Pate’s statement read. “In an abundance of caution, the campaign conveyed all funds from the Jones' children to the US Treasury for debt reduction.
“The campaign strictly adheres to federal campaign finance laws, and will take immediate action to resolve any contribution that may be illegitimate."
On Saturday, after the Diario de El Paso newspaper published an early version of this article in Spanish under an agreement with Newspaper Tree and its parent, El Paso Media Group, the Reyes campaign sent another statement disputing the totals of the contributions by the Joneses and their children.
In that statement, Cintron said the Reyes campaign had given $3,500 to the U.S. Treasury. The Federal Election Commission’s website shows five contributions from the Jones children totaling $4,500. In addition, the statement corrected the math from that early version of the story published in Diario de El Paso – the story calculated $22,000 in donations from 1999-2004. Reyes' campaign asserts $16,000, while Newspaper Tree reviewed the figures and came up with a total of $19,000.
Neither Bob Jones nor his lawyer, Joe Spencer, could be reached for comment on this story.
Reyes responds on the radio
In the two weeks following the verbal scuffle between Hudnall and Brock on the radio, Hudnall and callers continued to bash Brock, Reyes and his office about Brock’s Feb. 6 comments. During the on-air conversation, Brock made reference to Hudnall’s medical condition, which Hudnall said he regards as a violation of federal law.
The issue continued to come up on radio until Feb. 17 when Reyes was a guest on Barbara Perez’s KHRO radio show. That morning, another KHRO talk show host had replayed the Feb. 6 exchange several times on the air.
At least two people called Perez’s show to ask Reyes about Brock’s comments. Reyes told them he could not respond because he hadn’t heard and didn’t know what Brock had said Feb. 6.
Newspaper Tree called the show that day and asked Reyes about Jones’ contributions, Hudnall’s statement that the congressman’s office was friendly to him as long as the Jones checks kept coming and Reyes’ relationship with Jones.
“That I know of, he never brought any checks to the office, so I would recommend that you talk to Mr. Hudnall on that,” Reyes said. “I know Bob Jones and, as you probably know, we worked very hard to help with the contracts coming into … NCED at the time until there were issues about the way they were qualifying them as disabled.
“But, I have no idea what Mr. Hudnall is referring to there.”
Asked about the level of Jones’ contributions specifically, Reyes said, “I don’t know. I would have to check my records. That I know of, there’s no relationship between Mr. Hudnall, Mr. Jones and any business he had, Mr. Hudnall, with our office.”
The trouble at NCED
At its peak in 2005, NCED had 4,000 workers and federal production contracts worth $320 million for the manufacture of military chemical warfare protective suits, uniforms and other apparel as well as government boxes.
Three-fourths of the labor at NCED was supposed to be done by severely disabled workers.
But many in El Paso who were close to NCED and the disable community doubted that Jones and his company were complying.
Over the years, Jones often conducted tours of NCED’s main plant that caused people to walk away wondering where all the disabled workers were.
Newspaper Tree asked Reyes if he ever had questions about NCED’s disabled workforce.
“I didn’t because the times I visited … We did a couple of walk-throughs, and, of course, we were taken through the areas where the disabled workers were. So there was no … ,” Reyes said, leaving his last sentence unfinished.
The two agencies responsible for overseeing NCED, the Committee for Purchase from People Who Are Blind and Severely Disabled and the other known as simply as NISH, determined that NCED had been violating the federal rules regarding disabled workers for years.
In 2005, they determined, fewer than 10 percent of NCED’s 4,000 workers were severely disabled as defined by the Javits Wagner O’Day Act that authorized a program to provide qualifying nonprofits with federal, no-bid contracts to provide employment for disabled workers.
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