Investigation into Gov. Ralph Northam's yearbook photo proves inconclusive on blackface picture
Law firm investigators fail to identify person in yearbook photo; Ellison Barber reports from Washington.
A probe into Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam's Eastern Virginia Medical School yearbook -- which featured a racist photo of a man in blackface standing next to someone in Ku Klux Klan garb -- revealed that the school's president, who donated to the Democrat's campaign, knew about the image but decided against taking action.
The law firm investigating the origin and content of a racist photo, which appeared on Northam's page inside the 1984 yearbook, said Wednesday that investigators were unable to determine whether the governor is one of the people seen in the photo or has any other direct connection to it.
Fox News obtained a copy of the 1984 yearbook page from the Eastern Virginia Medical School library in Norfolk.
But the EVMS investigation report disclosed that school President Richard Homan -- a donor to Northam's campaign -- had learned about the racist yearbook photo from his staff, raising questions about whether politics was taken into consideration in Homan's decision not to address the matter.
“The staff members were advising the president at the time of the photograph and asking if EVMS had an obligation to or should do something about it, such as notifying Governor Northam about it,” the report read.
“The president of EVMS decided that the school should not take steps to publicly announce the photograph or to call Governor Northam's attention to it.”
“The president of EVMS decided that the school should not take steps to publicly announce the photograph or to call Governor Northam's attention to it.”
Staff members told investigators that they thought the governor would “already be aware of what was on his personal yearbook page,” while Homan insisted on moving forward rather than revisiting photos from the past.
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According to the Washington Free Beacon, Homan has been supporting Northam’s political ambitions since 2013. He donated $1,000 to Northam’s campaign for lieutenant governor. He then contributed another $1,000 when Northam ran for governor and later donated $10,000 to his inaugural committee in 2017.
Working on behalf of EVMS, McGuireWoods investigators said they couldn't “conclusively determine” the identities of either person in the 35-year-old photo – leaving all interested parties exactly where they were when the scandal first broke nearly four months ago.
The photo first gained attention after a conservative blog, Big League Politics, dug it up. The backlash was immediate against the Democratic governor, prompting him to go into damage control, offering conflicting statements within hours.
Northam initially issued two apologies within hours of the publication of the photo. He reversed course the next day and said he wasn’t convinced he was one of the men pictured. He did, however, reveal he wore blackface once, decades ago, to look like Michael Jackson for a dance contest.
The 36-page report found no one “with first-hand knowledge of an actual mistake on any page, including any personal page, within the 1984 yearbook” and no evidence that the photo was placed in error, according to the report.
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The report also identified 10 photographs depicting individuals in blackface based on the law firm’s review of all EVMS yearbooks, according to the school.
Fox News Travis Fedschun contributed to this report.
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