Son of fallen Bush aide suspected in Washington gay-bash Nick Langewis

Published: Saturday September 29, 2007



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Print This Email This (via PageOneQ)--A Georgetown University sophomore, implicated in a gay-bashing by a fellow student, has ties to the Bush Administration, RAW STORY has learned. 19-year-old Philip Anderton Cooney, pictured here in the spring of 2005, is the son of fallen Bush aide and American Petroleum Institute oil lobbyist Phil Cooney. Phil Cooney was appointed chief of staff with the White House Council on Environmental Quality, suffering criticism for his lack of environmental experience. After his resignation and subsequent hire to a position with ExxonMobil, it was found that Cooney had reportedly tampered with data to support the Bush line on climate change. Philip Anderton Cooney was identified by the victim and reported to police thanks to his Facebook profile, which contained a photograph. He is being charged with simple assault, which, as a hate crime, carries a jail sentence of up to 270 days, the Washington Post reports. On the morning of September 9, the victim says, he was attacked physically and verbally, including with anti-gay slurs, by Cooney while walking near 36th and O Streets in northwest Washington, DC. According to a WRC report, including video, the victim made it a point to "etch the suspect's face in his mind" with hopes of discovering his identity and reporting him to police. After overhearing that a student was talking about the incident to others, a friend gave him the student's initials, which were monogrammed on his bag, and the victim used them to narrow down his Facebook search. "The police investigation was nothing," argues Cooney's attorney, Danny Onorato. "You have a complaining witness who said he saw somebody who he think (sic) might have attacked him vis-a-vis the Web. That's the investigation. Did they try to talk to Mr. Cooney before they arrested him? No. Would you expect the police to do that? Yes."



