Why did OJJDP Admin Michele DeKonty plead the 5th?

Youth Today gives highlights of Oversight Committee hearing last week with J. Robert Flores. The newspaper sheds some insights of DeKonty's involvement in the grantmaking scandal.

From Youth Today:

The chief of staff, Michele DeKonty, cited "her Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination" in refusing to speak with investigators about whether the agency awarded competitive grants based on favoritism, according to a memorandum by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, which held a hearing about the grants on Thursday.

World Golf Foundation - $500,000 for one year. Scored 47th.

* Flores met with foundation President Joe Louis Barrow Jr. in early 2007, and he and DeKonty met with Barrow again in June that year - at a time when the grant application process was under way, according to a memo summarizing the committee's investigation. Barrow later e-mailed DeKonty to say that if not for the meeting "we might have completely missed the deadline. ... I would ask you to determine how you might assist us in the initial effort."

* Flores and DeKonty asked Jeff Slowikoski, a veteran OJJDP staffer, why he had not "personally informed the World Golf Foundation" about the National Program grants solicitation. Slowikowski told the committee that Flores and

DeKonty "then directed program staff to help the World Golf Foundation in preparing its application. "It was made clear to me that we had to ... work with World Golf and make sure that they got their application in," he told the committee, according to the memo.

* Before the OJJDP staff began scoring the bids, Slowikowski wrote a memo to another staffer stating that the foundation was "requesting $3.0 million which I am certain we are funding because Michele [DeKonty] has said as much."

Best Friends Foundation - $1.1 million over three years. Scored 51st.

Scott Peterson, a former OJJDP program manager who scored some of the bids, told committee investigators that the president of Best Friends, Elayne Bennett, called him that month to say she had recently had lunch with Flores and "he advised her to apply for funding from OJJDP," according to the committee memo. Peterson has said he informed Bennett about the grants that would be available.

In May, Flores "invited Ms. Bennett to a meeting with Michele DeKonty, his chief of staff," the memo states. When the committee sought to interview DeKonty about that meeting, she invoked her Fifth Amendment right, according to the committee memo.