Former EDA Board members Biggs, Sealock say no sexual harassment settlement with Jennifer McDonald ever existed

(Editor/writer’s note: In Part 2 of our coverage of former EDA Executive Director Jennifer McDonald’s testimony at a conference call meeting of creditors at her first Bankruptcy hearing we pick up with further exploration of her claim of a $6.5 million settlement and debt to her by the EDA Board of Directors from an alleged 2015 out-of-court Voluntary Settlement Agreement regarding a sexual harassment claim by the then EDA executive director against her board. We believe the claim relates to a post-McDonald resignation social media-circulated document which indicated McDonald was made sexually uncomfortable by initial dealings with a potential EDA business property client. Our recollection of that document’s content was that despite her expressed discomfort, the EDA board allegedly sent her back to the property alone to meet with the client at which time some sort of sexually tinged encounter was claimed to have occurred.)

We ended our first story following EDA lead civil case attorney Cullen Seltzer’s explanation to the creditors meeting that after investigating McDonald’s claim of a sexual harassment settlement agreement with the former EDA board, the EDA’s civil case counsel was of the opinion no such agreement exists.

Following reference to a series of Fifth Amendment pleas in response to questions about that settlement it was noted, “McDonald did respond to an earlier question as to who had negotiated the Voluntary Settlement Agreement with her, citing then-EDA Board Chair Patricia Wines (deceased) and then-Treasurer William “Billy” Biggs.

We first contacted the lone surviving EDA Board of Directors member McDonald cited as negotiating the 2015 Voluntary Settlement Agreement, nearly three-decade EDA Board member and long-time Board Treasurer William “Billy” Biggs. Though dealing with the aftermath of a stroke he suffered in July 2013, Biggs remained on the EDA board for over five more years, eventually leaving for age-related health issues in October 2018.

So, does he recall that alleged sexual harassment negotiation resulting in the EDA board, on his and Wines’ recommendation, awarding McDonald a $6.5 million out-of-court settlement there is no known finalized legal documentation of?

“It’s pathetic. It makes me mad as hell – there’s no truth to it at all,” Biggs began gathering a head of indignant steam. “And she’s relying on a dead person and someone, me, who had a stroke to corroborate her story – it really burns me up.”

Asked if his stroke may have affected his memory of the alleged negotiation and resultant $6.5-million Voluntary Settlement Agreement, as the former EDA executive director and her counsel might eventually try to assert in court, Biggs replied with emphasis, “I remember it NOT happening!!!

Billy Biggs, right foreground light shirt, directly across EDA meeting table from Jennifer McDonald in Sept. 2018, about a month before his retirement and three months before McDonald’s forced resignation. Royal Examiner File Photos by Roger Bianchini

Rather than his perceptions after his stroke, Biggs lamented one example of them years earlier. “You know, Roger, we’ve talked about this, I helped her get that job. I can’t believe I misjudged her like that. But what finally started getting to me was the lies, all the lies – I called her a liar at a (EDA) meeting. And when she started talking about all the money she won gambling, what was it, three years in a row – $600,000 here, $400,000 there, another what, $500,000? Nobody does that,” Biggs concluded of such a gambler’s continued run of luck against odds stacked in the “house’s” favor.

In late January 2018 Jennifer McDonald displays alleged winning slot machine tax receipts in her EDA office for a Royal Examiner story on her ‘gambling luck’ at Charles Town’s Hollywood Casino.

“You know the number of people’s lives she’s affected? – The whole community, not to mention the poor sheriff (then-Sheriff Daniel McEathron) and his family,” Biggs observed of the ripple effect of McDonald’s alleged embezzlement and misdirection of EDA, County and Town assets to her own and others’ benefit. McEathron is believed to have committed suicide not long after retiring after having been implicated as a partner in McDonald’s DaBoyz LLC real estate company allegedly used to move EDA land assets as part of the embezzlement conspiracy at the root of the EDA civil litigation.

In fact, that ripple effect was a topic of conversation at the December 1 Warren County Board of Supervisors work session when $2.8 million in legal fees on EDA civil litigation was mentioned as part of a Strategic Agenda Action Item of reducing the County’s legal fees in the future. Those are county taxpayer dollars paying those legal bills seeking to recover lost EDA assets from McDonald real estate and cash assets. And that ripple effect legal expense has snowballed to include defense of the EDA against the Town’s civil claim against it. And town side ripples, in addition to its EDA civil suit costs, may eventually include operational and debt service costs from the town council’s plan to create a second, independent EDA that will be solely supported by Town taxpayer dollars.

A lot of material was taken by an FBI-led task force from the locked down executive director’s office at EDA headquarters on April 16, 2019 – anybody find a certified copy of a 2015 sexual harassment settlement agreement?

Speaking of the Town of Front Royal, current Vice-Mayor Bill Sealock was a member of the EDA Board of Directors in 2015 when McDonald alleges the sexual harassment claim was negotiated by Biggs and Wines, but approved one would assume, by the entire EDA Board of Directors.

Did he recall signing off on a Voluntary Settlement Agreement payoff of $6.5 million to the then EDA executive director, we asked Sealock.

“I don’t know anything about it – it didn’t happen. I don’t know anyone that knows anything about it. I was flabbergasted she even said it. You’d need the entire board to approve something like that,” Sealock replied, adding, “It reminds me of that time I, the entire (EDA) board had to parade down to the courthouse to say that closed session document she produced in court approving her sale of a piece of property with our signatures on it … was a forgery.”

Former EDA Board member Bill Sealock on the job last month as Front Royal’s Vice-Mayor. He corroborates Biggs’ recollection of no negotiation or board approval of a $6.5 million sexual harassment settlement with Jennifer McDonald.

Now it appears both former and current EDA Board of Directors members, as well as the current EDA’s civil litigation counsel, believe a second document referenced by the former EDA executive director to be a forgery.

Two questions seem particularly pertinent with an online bankruptcy hearing looming mid-month:

1. will that most recent document regarding the alleged 2015 Voluntary Settlement Agreement ever be introduced as evidence in a courtroom? and:
2. will the EDA’s contention the sexual harassment settlement agreement McDonald referenced as an outstanding $6.5-million debt to her is a lie, and any documentation in support of it a forgery, have any impact on the bankruptcy judge’s rulings on motions, particularly the EDA’s motions, for exceptions to McDonald’s bankruptcy filing?

Stay tuned as the only EDA financial scandal court proceeding currently in motion, continues online December 16 from a Harrisonburg Bankruptcy Courtroom.