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Judge postpones decision on whether Corado should be held while awaiting trial

Former Casa Ruby director charged with bank fraud, money laundering

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Ruby Corado (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

A United States District Court Judge on Friday postponed a decision on whether Ruby Corado, 53, the founder and former executive director of Casa Ruby, should be held in custody while she awaits a trial following her arrest on March 5 on multiple charges related to allegations that she embezzled at least $150,000 from Casa Ruby.

The decision by U.S. District Court Magistrate Judge Robin M. Meriweather to postpone this decision came during a dramatic detention hearing in which Corado’s court appointed Federal Public Defender Service attorney and the lead prosecutor with the Office of the U.S. Attorney for D.C. presented opposing arguments over whether Corado should be held in custody or released while awaiting trial.

Meriweather said she needed more information about a proposal by defense attorney Diane Shrewsbury that Corado, if released, could be placed in the custody of a family member in Maryland. The judge ordered that the detention hearing would resume on Tuesday, March 12, when she expects to issue her final ruling.

The judge ordered that Corado, who has been held in custody since her arrest on March 5, remain in custody until at least the Tuesday hearing.

The Friday hearing came one day after prosecutors with the U.S. Attorney’s Office filed a 12-page Memorandum In Support of Pretrial Detention that called for Corado to be detained on grounds that chances are significant that she would flee to El Salvador if she were to be released.

“Defendant Ruby Corado poses a unique and serious flight risk,” the prosecutors’ memorandum states.

It points out that the charges pending against her include Bank Fraud, Wire Fraud, Laundering of Monetary Instruments, Transportation with Criminally Derived Proceeds, and Failure to File Report of Foreign Bank Account – all related to allegations that she embezzled funds from Casa Ruby that came from at least two federal COVID pandemic relief programs.

The memorandum also states that Corado fled to El Salvador in 2022 shortly after news media reports surfaced that she was being investigated for financial improprieties and the Office of the D.C. Attorney General filed civil charges against her for alleged violations of the DC Nonprofit Corporations Act.

The March 7 memo says prosecutors believe Corado fled to El Salvador in 2022 knowing she would face criminal charges related to absconding with Casa Ruby funds. 

“On February 25, 2024, the defendant returned to the United States from El Salvador,” the prosecutors’ memorandum says. “Law enforcement promptly sought the instant arrest warrant for the defendant, which this Court issued on March 1, 2024,” it says.

“On March 5, 2024, the defendant was arrested on that warrant in a hotel located in Laurel, Maryland. The defendant was alone at the hotel,” it says. “At the time of the arrest, the defendant was in possession of a passport issued by the Republic of El Salvador which had been issued on February 23, 2024.”

Prosecutors have not disclosed whether they know why Corado returned to the U.S. and how the FBI, which is leading the investigation that led to Corado’s arrest, learned of her return and her lodging at the hotel in Laurel, Md.

“Today, the defendant owns no property – not even a vehicle – in the United States,” the memorandum continues. “The defendant has no employment or other source of income,” it says, adding that Corado maintains citizenship in El Salvador. “She has bank accounts of unknown balances in El Salvador which she has failed to disclose to the U.S. government,” it says.

“And her spouse lives and works in El Salvador. The Court simply cannot be confident that the defendant will not flee the country again should the Court release her pending trial,” the memorandum concludes.

But in a court motion she filed on Friday and in her arguments at the Friday hearing, defense attorney Shrewsbury disputed the prosecutors’ claims, saying Corado would absolutely not be a flight risk. Shrewsbury disclosed that Corado returned to the U.S. last week with the intention of remaining in the D.C. area, where she has lived for at least 35 years.

The attorney said Corado came back to the D.C. area to take a job, the details of which Shrewsbury did not disclose. But the attorney said Corado has long standing family ties and many friends in the D.C. area and very much wants to fight the charges against her in court.

One more reason for releasing Corado from jail while she awaits trial is that she has been currently placed in the D.C. Jail’s male residential section under rules, according to Shrewsbury, that require inmates to be placed in a residential section based on their birth gender. This placement has endangered Corado’s safety, the attorney’s court document says.

Corado identifies as a transgender woman and for many years since founding Casa Ruby became known as an outspoken and admired advocate for LGBTQ rights. Under her leadership, Casa Ruby, as a nonprofit organization, among other things, provided transitional housing and related support services to LGBTQ youth with an outreach to transgender women of color.

However, local transgender rights advocates Earline Budd and Jeri Hughes told the Washington Blade the D.C. Jail has changed its policy and now allows transgender inmates to choose which section of the jail they prefer to be placed. Budd and Hughes, who are members of a special jail committee that reviews placement of trans inmates, said Corado was scheduled to come before the committee on Monday, March 11, to present her preferences on where to be placed.

An arrest affidavit filed in court on March 6 says the federal charges pending against Corado came about after FBI investigators learned that Corado received through Casa Ruby more than $1.3 million over a two-year period from the federal Paycheck Protection Program and the Economic Injury Disaster Loan program. Both were COVID-19 pandemic related programs. 

The arrest affidavit says she allegedly stole at least $150,000 of those funds by transferring the money to bank accounts she held in El Salvador that she opened under her birth name.  

Casa Ruby shut down its operations in July 2022 after Corado’s departure to El Salvador and after it failed to pay its employees and was being evicted from its headquarters building and several of its other properties for failing to pay rent.

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District of Columbia

Trans woman attacked, beaten near Lincoln Memorial

D.C. police list June 29 incident as suspected hate crime

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Cayla Calhoun (Photo courtesy GoFundMe)

D.C. police are investigating an incident in which a 43-year-old transgender woman says she was attacked and assaulted by three men around 1:30 a.m. Sunday, June 29, as she was riding her battery powered scooter near the Lincoln Memorial.

District resident Cayla Calhoun, a popular bartender and sommelier at the D.C. restaurant Annabelle, told the Washington Blade she is struggling to recall the details and possible multiple locations of the attack due to the severe head injuries she has suffered.

A police report says Calhoun was found lying on a curb at the intersection of 19th Street and Constitution Avenue around 6 a.m. on June 29.

A GoFundMe appeal posted by her friend Ellen Vaughn, which reports Calhoun was found semiconscious at that time and taken to George Washington University Hospital, says her injuries include two concussions, multiple broken ribs, seven cranial fractures, and a fractured elbow. 

The police report says Calhoun called for an ambulance at the 19th and Constitution Avenue location and told the emergency medical technicians who arrived at the scene that her injuries were caused by her falling off of her skateboard multiple times. 

The police report says three days later, on July 3, while at the hospital, Calhoun told police “that she now remembered being assaulted by three males at 19th and I Street, N.W.,“about three quarters of a mile from where the ambulance technicians found her on Constitution Avenue.

Calhoun told the Blade she believes her memory was faulty at the time she first spoke with the ambulance technicians and police due to her head injuries. She said she is now beginning to recall that the three male attackers, whom she describes as white males, first approached her as she was riding her scooter near the Reflecting Pool close to the Lincoln Memorial.

She said the incident occurred while she was taking her routine after-work scooter ride  shortly after she completed her bartending shift at Annabelle at 11:30 p.m. on Saturday, June 28. She said her sometimes daily after-work scooter ride, which she took on the night of the attack, involves traveling along a bike path on the Rock Creek Parkway past the Kennedy Center to the Lincoln Memorial.

From the Lincoln Memorial she rides along the Reflecting Pool toward the Washington Monument, around which she circles before starting her ride home, heading north on 15th Street to her residence at 15th and R Street, N.W.

She said that on the night of the attack she now recalls passing three men who were also on scooters somewhere near the Lincoln Memorial and the reflecting pool. 

“As I passed them, they yelled faggot and pedophile at me,” she told the Blade. “I was pulling onto the area there by the reflecting pond. And I figured I would ride right away.” 

As best she recalls, the men followed her “and pushed me off my scooter and continued to yell slurs.” She said she recalls trying to ride away from the men and that her interaction with them may have continued in other nearby locations. But due to her head injuries she said she does not recall being assaulted by the attackers, although the multiple injuries to her head and body convinced her they had to have struck her in some way multiple times.

 “I have a space where I can see myself in that moment thinking to myself this is not good,” she said. “Somebody is making fun of you. You need to go as fast as you can and you need to find people. And that’s the last thought that I remember happening until the hospital.”

The D.C. police report lists the incident as an Aggravated Assault and identifies the weapon as “hands/feet.” The report lists the suspected motive as “Hate-Bias” based on the victim’s “Gender identity — anti-transgender/transsexual.”

A D.C. police spokesperson said the case remains under active investigation and that anyone with information about the case should contact police at 202-727-9099.

The attack against Johnson took place six days before another D.C. transgender woman, Dream Johnson, 28, was shot to death around 12:30 a.m. on July 5 in front of an apartment building at 2013 Benning Rd., N.E., according to a D.C. police report.

Police have yet to identify a motive in that case. But one of Johnson’s family members, her aunt, has said she learned through someone who spoke to a witness to the shooting that three men had approached Johnson while she was walking along Benning Road and one of them called her a derogatory name before one of them shot her multiple times.

Police are offering a $25,000 reward for information leading to an arrest and conviction of the person or persons responsible for the murder. Anyone with information about this case is being asked to contact Homicide Detective Natasha Kennedy, the lead investigator, at 202-380-6198.  

Local transgender rights advocate Earline Budd said close to 100 people turned out for a candlelight vigil held in Johnson’s honor on Saturday, July 12, at D.C.’s River Terrace Park. Among those who spoke at the vigil were Japer Bowles, director of D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser’s Office of LGBTQ Affairs.  

Further details about the Cayla Calhoun case can be accessed through her friend’s GoFundMe appeal.

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District of Columbia

Trayon White, ousted by colleagues, wins Ward 8 special election

Indicted Council member expected to regain seat

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Former D.C. Council member Trayon White could return to office despite his indictment. (Washington Blade file photo by Lou Chibbaro, Jr.)

Former D.C. Council member Trayon White (D), who was expelled by his fellow Council members following his indictment on a federal bribery charge, is the projected winner of the July 15 Ward 8 special election.

With nearly all votes counted by around 8:30 p.m. on Election Day except for ballots cast by mail on the 15th or a few days earlier, and a relatively small number of absentee and “special” ballots, the D.C. Board of Elections announced White was ahead of his three Democratic opponents with 1,987 votes or 29.46 percent of the vote.

The vote count released by the Board of Elections showed Democratic rivals Sheila Bunn receiving 1,627 votes or 24.13 percent; Mike Austin receiving 1,584 votes or 23.49 percent; and Salim Adofo with 1,405 votes or 22.17 percent.

White has pleaded not guilty to the bribery charge filed against him by the FBI, and under D.C. law, he can retake his Council seat if he wins the election up until the time he is convicted. His trial is scheduled to begin in January 2026.

Political observers, including LGBTQ activists, have said they believed LGBTQ voters, like most if not all voters in Ward 8, were divided over which of the four candidates to support. Each of the four, including White, has expressed support for LGBTQ-related issues.

The preliminary results show that White was ahead of Bunn, who had the second highest vote count, by 354 votes. He was ahead of Austin by 397 votes and ahead of Adofo by 492 votes.

With White’s three opponents dividing the opposition vote it was unlikely that Bunn or one of the other candidates would capture enough votes to surpass White.

Based on the preliminary vote count released by the election board, White’s three opponents captured  a combined vote of 69.79 percent compared to White’s 29.46 percent.

“The real winner this evening outside of Trayon is the antiquated electoral process where a candidate can win with a small plurality of the vote,” said Ward 8 longtime LGBTQ rights advocate Phil Pannell. “Seventy percent of the people in Ward 8 clearly rejected Trayon White,” Pannell added in referring to a slightly different percentage of the vote reported by the Washington Post.

Pannell noted that the Ward 8 special election outcome would have been far different if the city had put in place a ranked choice voting system approved by D.C. voters in the November 2024 election known as Initiative 83. The D.C. Council this week gave final approval for funding to enable the initiative’s ranked choice voting system to be in place for the city’s 2026 primary and general election.

Among other things, the ranked choice voting system allows voters to indicate who their second choice candidate is and puts in place an automatic runoff election if no candidate receives at least 50 percent of the vote.

In a statement released at 8:45 p.m. Tuesday, the Board of Elections said it would resume its vote count on Wednesday morning, July 16.

“DCBOE will continue to accept ballots sent by USPS until July 25, 2025, as long as they were postmarked by July 15, 2025,” the statement says. “Official election results will not be released until after mail, absentee, and valid special ballots have been processed and tabulated, a post-election audit has been conducted, and DCBOE’s Board had certified the election results,” the statement says.  

It says the post-election audit was scheduled to begin on Aug. 5 and the final certification of the results was tentatively scheduled for Aug. 8.

It couldn’t immediately be determined if members of the D.C. Council will take steps to exercise the Council’s authority to once again expel White from its ranks. If White or one of the other candidates in the special election is officially declared the winner, they would serve the unexpired term that was created by White’s ouster until Jan. 2, 2029.

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District of Columbia

Dive in: a guide to LGBTQ-friendly pools in D.C.

City offers plenty of places to cool off, sometimes with a cocktail

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Rooftop pool at VIDA Fitness at The Yards. (Washington Blade file photo by Michael Key)

As the dog days of summer arrive in Washington, it seems only one thing is on everyone’s mind: Where are the pools? Fret not, the Washington Blade has compiled a list of places where D.C.’s LGBTQ community can wear a Speedo, splash around, and enjoy the summer.

Public Pools: 

To gain access to any public pools in D.C., District residents must first obtain a free membership by creating an account with the D.C. Department of Parks and Recreation and presenting a valid photo ID at the pool. For more information on D.C. public pools, visit dpr.dc.gov/findapool.

Banneker Pool (2500 Georgia Ave NW): Popular with both young adults and families, Banneker Pool features a spacious outdoor swimming area complete with dedicated lap lanes for serious swimmers and a separate shallow kiddie pool designed for children’s safety and fun. The pool often hosts community swim events and is known for its vibrant, welcoming atmosphere.

Francis Pool (2435 N St NW): Located in the Foggy Bottom neighborhood, this outdoor pool is easily accessible via the Foggy Bottom-GWU Metro station. It offers two 25-yard lap lanes ideal for fitness swimmers and open swim times for casual visitors. Its central location makes it a convenient option for downtown residents and workers.

Volta Park Pool (1555 34th St NW): Nestled in the Georgetown neighborhood, Volta Park Pool is a smaller, cozy community pool favored by locals. Due to limited capacity, especially on busy summer days, early arrival is recommended to secure a spot. The pool provides a friendly and relaxed environment, perfect for a quick swim or cooling off on hot days.

Wilson Aquatic Center (4551 Fort Dr., N.W.): Recognized as one of D.C.’s premier indoor aquatic facilities, the Wilson Aquatic Center boasts a large 50-meter by 25-meter competition pool with diving boards suitable for swim meets and advanced training. The facility also includes a leisure pool for recreational swimming, a whirlpool spa, a spacious viewing gallery for spectators, and a multi-purpose room used for classes and community events. Conveniently located in Tenleytown, it is just steps away from the Tenleytown–AU Metro station.

Anacostia Pool (1800 Anacostia Drive SE): Set along the scenic banks of the Anacostia River, this pool offers a peaceful setting for swimmers. The facility provides a variety of programs throughout the summer, including swimming lessons for all ages, water aerobics classes, and other aquatic activities aimed at encouraging fitness and community engagement.

Kenilworth Pool (4321 Ord Street NE): Part of the newly renovated Kenilworth Recreation Center, this large outdoor pool is a centerpiece of the upgraded facility. It features ample swimming space for lap swimmers and recreational users alike, along with modern amenities and well-maintained grounds, making it a popular choice for residents in Northeast D.C.

Private Pools: 

Vida Penthouse Pools; Multiple Locations — (1212 4th St., S.E.), (1612 U St., N.W.), (1845 Reston Row Plaza, Reston, Va.): This fitness club is where many in Washington’s LGBTQ community can be found kiki-ing on sunny weekends, sipping vodka lemonades. The pools offer a unique watering hole experience that can only be described as “Vida” — complete with a full bar and restaurant.

YMCA Anthony Bowen Pool (1325 W St., N.W.): Home to the first African-American chapter of the YMCA, this site features an indoor heated pool — ideal for lap swimming, aqua classes, and lessons.

Viceroy Hotel Pool (1430 Rhode Island Ave., N.W.): This D.C. hotel features a small rooftop pool in Logan Circle, open daily to hotel guests and “daycation” pass holders ($150 for a room from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.), with public access after 7 p.m. Highlights include a full bar with frozen margaritas and the “Pink Pony Club” cocktail, as well as small bites.

Hedy’s Rooftop at Hotel Zena (1155 14th St., N.W.): Offering stunning Thomas Circle views, this rooftop pool and bar is open to hotel guests and locals, with $50 day passes and private cabanas starting at $500 for six people. Dive into poolside movie nights every Wednesday at 9 p.m. with popcorn and cocktails, plus enjoy summer bites. The bar is open Tuesday through Sunday, and the pool operates daily from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m., with service starting at noon.

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