In the summer of 2018, when news broke that D.C. United majority owner Erick Thohir had sold his share of the club to minority owner Jason Levien and a collection of other investors, details of the transaction were scant. Surely Thohir made money on the sale — United had just moved into a brand-new stadium and other clubs around MLS were being valued in the hundreds of millions of dollars — but how much did he make?



There was a broader civic question as well. The D.C. government had written language into United’s stadium lease designed to protect the city in the case the team was “flipped,” moved along to new investors quickly after the stadium’s opening. Was the local government of the District of Columbia — the club’s partner on the construction of that new stadium — owed a portion of Thohir’s take?



We now have answers to both of those questions. Documents obtained by The Athletic and...