This aspect might be{no might be about it}the least looked at angle of the Franklin Scandal. This chapter also has a creepy contemporary feel to it that is hard to miss given the headlines of Pravda over the last month.

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....In February 1989, Vinson claims, Spence wanted him to participate in a creative financing scheme involving government monies that Vinson felt was a tad too shady —he balked at Spence’s idea. This time, however, Spence didn’t send Tony over to Vinson’s house: He summoned Vinson to his condominium on Massachusetts Avenue—he had sold his Kalorama home the previous year. An uneasy Vinson showed up at Spence’s condo to find only Spence and an extremely high-ranking official in the Department of Justice—Spence had previously disclosed to Vinson that he provided this official with adolescent boys.

According to Vinson, the Justice Department official attempted to intimidate him into joining Spence’s scheme, and Vinson continued to balk. Finally, the official dispensed an overt threat: “I can withstand a background check. Can you?” Those words apparently rang in Vinson’s ears for a very long time, because shortly after their meeting, Vinson told me, he started to encounter considerable federal difficulties: “The Secret Service served a search and seizure on my house within seventy-two hours—I assumed the Secret Service was used because they also worked with Craig Spence.”

Vinson’s escort service was initially raided on February 28, 1989. The US Attorney for DC, Jay Stephens, impaneled a federal grand jury to investigate the escort service in June of 1989. Stephens said that “credit card” fraud would be the focus of the grand jury, and the Washington Times reported that the Secret Service was the primary investigative entity behind the investigation, but a Secret Service spokesmen declined to discuss the case with reporters—saying they were ordered to refer all inquiries to DC’s Assistant US Attorney Alan Strasser, who was assigned to present evidence to the grand jury. Strasser wasn’t very talkative either: “There is nothing I care to say to you about this at this time.”

After the grand jury commenced, the Washington Times’ Rodriguez questioned Vinson about the federal investigation. “Somebody set us up because they were scared about what we knew about high government officials,” said Vinson. “I think it’s because they wanted to get our files. We had some very big-name clients in all walks of life—on Capitol Hill, the military, and even the White House. You’d be surprised. Barney Frank isn’t the only one in a high-powered job that uses such services.” (Frank Gobie, the hooker who carried out services for Congressman Frank, had been employed by Vinson’s escort service.) Vinson also dispensed a quote that suggested he was the man who knew too much, and the feds wouldn’t dare come after him: “And anyways, if they do try to indict me, I’ll have some good stories to tell.”

In a July 1989 Washington Times article, Rodriguez reported that six plain clothes Secret Service agents kicked in the front door of a Vinson relative who lived in West Virginia. The relative said that the Secret Service agents didn’t even bother to knock before smashing the door open, and they held a gun on her husband. After ransacking the house for well over two hours, the agents left with “small scraps of paper.” The relative told Rodriguez that the agents warned her “not to tell anybody about the raid.” The Secret Service also descended on the dwelling of Vinson’s mother.

Meanwhile, back in DC, Washington Times reporters discovered that the federal grand jury prosecutors had been rather lackadaisical: “The Times, in contacting a number of principal witnesses and active participants in the case, discovered that few of them had been interviewed and only a handful asked to testify before the grand jury. Several key figures had not been contacted at all.” The Washington Times would report that Vinson and his cohorts in the escort service hadn’t been called before the grand jury—nor had Craig Spence, even though it had issued him a subpoena.
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https://exploringrealhistory.blogspot.com/2019/08/part-5the-franklin-scandala-story-of.html