The Secret History of the 116 Club, the Inner Sanctum of the US Political Aristocracy

Part I: Money, Power, and Scandal at a “Headquarters of Subterranean Power.”

The 116 by night. One source said it resembled a “dumpy 1980s dinner club.”

The 116 Club, the most exclusive, least known gathering spot in Washington for the political crème de la crème, operates from an undistinguished red brick townhouse at 234 3rd St NE that’s conveniently located a few minutes walk from the US Capitol. The building is surrounded by tourist attractions and restaurants, but the 116 sits on a quiet residential block and neither visitors to the city nor locals are apt to stumble upon it unless they live there or are looking for it – which is exactly as the Club’s proprietors and members prefer.

The 116 doesn’t have a website or host public events and only dues-paying associates and their guests are allowed on the premises. The membership list, which is said to number in the low hundreds, is guarded under lock and key.

Discretion is a priority at the Club, which was founded in 1965, because its historic membership roll teems with “carousers, skirt chasers, string-pullers and influence peddlers,” as I wrote in a March 14 story for the Daily Mail. Countless associates of the 116 and its predecessor, the Quorum Club, have been implicated in ethics scandals and at least 10 were sentenced to prison on corruption charges.

The membership’s recurrently larcenous activities are related in part to the 116’s basic modus operandi, which incentivizes crime. To take one example, members of congress, staffers, administration officials, and other government employees pay an initiation fee of $100 and $25 in monthly dues, while lobbyists, political operatives, corporate executives and everyone else are billed $1,500 as an initiation fee and $60 in monthly dues.

In short, it’s extremely cheap for influential decision-makers with the power to write and pass legislation to join the 116 because their fees and dues are heavily subsidized by the private sector operators looking to curry favor with them. “Lobbyists were the ones who got hit the hardest, but it was mainly for their benefit,” the late Roy Elson, a former Hill staffer, lobbyist and 116 member, explained in an interview with the Senate Historical Office in 1990.

Only a fraction of what I learned about the 116 was included in the Daily Mail story and another short piece I wrote for Paris-based Intelligence Online. In fact, there was so much additional material, which was added to with additional research over the past few months, that this story will be the first of a multipart series. Only a small number of 116 associates and regulars have previously been reported. I’ll be identifying dozens more in this story and future installments.

The Club is run as a nonprofit and is required to disclose the names of its board of directors – which is dominated by lobbyists – in the organization’s annual 990 tax filings with the Internal Revenue Service, so those were simple to find. Additional names turned up in Federal Election Commission (FEC) records, which showed that several dozen members of congress paid their 116 membership dues and wining and dining charges at the Club from their campaign treasuries.

Additional names turned up in disclosure forms submitted by appointees to senior government positions, who are required to list any private clubs they belong to. Still more were identified during multiple stakeouts of the 116; in obituaries, where Club associates were most prone to break their vows of secrecy about being Club members; and in government ethics investigations and court records that noted the accused parties’ membership status when they were charged or probed on corruption charges, sometimes for crimes committed on the 116’s premises.

The collective list of almost 200 is a mix of brand names and lesser known figures, and amounts to a nutshell Who’s Who of the US ruling class. It includes:

—Joe Biden, who was often spotted at the 116 during his long years in the upper chamber, especially in the 1980s and 1990s when it was referred to as “the Senate Dining Club;” Hunter Biden, the now president’s perpetually scandal-plagued son; and William Oldaker, who for decades was one of Biden’s closest advisors and was a longtime member of the 116’s board until his death three years ago.

—Republican Senators such as Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who lives down the street from the 116 with his wife Elaine Chao, President Donald Trump’s Secretary of Transportation and President George W. Bush’s Secretary of Labor; Katie Britt, the ex-CEO of the Business Council of Alabama and freshmen lawmaker who already made a name for herself with her bizarre response in March to Biden’s State of the Union address, when she cheerfully smiled while talking about meeting a woman who was "sex trafficked by [drug] cartels starting at the age of 12,” a story which was mostly fictitious, as revealed by Jonathan Katz, and who struck again last week with a video that showed her looking similarly sociopathic when announcing her plan to create a national database of pregnant women; and Senator Jerry Moran of Kansas, who holds a seat on the Intelligence Committee and has been diligently paying his $25 monthly dues at the 116 with campaign money for the past seven years.

Katie Britt during her terrifying, sociopathic State of the Union Response.

—Rick Dearborn, White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Trump and a former senior aide to multiple senators, including fellow Club member and Trump administration Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

—In one of many examples of membership being passed on to future generations, the late Lee Williams, a longtime advisor to Arkansas Senator J. William Fulbright, senior vice president at the National Retail Federation, and partner at Public Strategies Washington; and his son Floyd Williams, who worked at the Treasury Department and IRS during Republican and Democratic administrations, and also inherited an executive position at Public Strategies, where he currently has the tile of senior tax counsel.

—Prominent lobbyists and operatives such as current 116 board members Amy Hammer, who has represented ExxonMobil and drone manufacturer General Atomics, and Raymond Bragg, who worked for Georgia Senator Herman Talmadge prior to the latter’s conviction in 1980 for charging $40,000 in personal expenses to his campaign; and former board member Richard “Preacher” Whitner, who for many years was a consultant to weapons manufacturers and spooks, whose clients reportedly included Major General Richard Secord, who worked at the Pentagon under Ronald Reagan and later pleaded guilty to lying to congressional investigators about his knowledge – or more accurately his alleged lack of knowledge – about Oliver North’s covert weapons sales during the Iran/contra affair, which he helped managed as part of his government duties.

The Way Washington Works: A Facebook post by lobbyist Melissa Mejias shows she and her colleague Elizabeth Leoty Craddock, s former staff director for Senator Mary Landrieu, who’s now a lobbyist as well, with Senator Ted Cruz and others.

A GOP operative who’s well acquainted with the 116 described it as the type of place where the tobacco, alcohol, and weapons industry lobbyists called the MOD Squad, for Merchants Of Death, in Christopher Buckley’s novel Thank You for Smoking, would feel right at home. Club managers displayed little interest in monitoring activities at the 116 or generally following the letter of the law for that matter, said the operative, which made the Club a treasured haven during the Covid pandemic because it didn’t enforce health mandates imposed by DC’s local government on restaurants, bars, and other indoor venues. “The 116 is a throwback to the bygone era before ethics rules, which was more fun and more productive than today's,” he added with a palpable pang of nostalgia.

That scrupulous inattention to detail is one of the 116’s unique attributes that elevate its status among insiders above Washington’s many other private establishments, such as the Metropolitan, Cosmos, Capitol Hill and National Democratic Clubs. Its competitors are more prominent and elegant than the 116 – which one source said resembles a “dumpy 1980s dinner club” and another compared to “a motel where you pay hourly rates” – easier to get into (though not cheaper; the initiation fee at the Metropolitan is said to be in the neighborhood of $25,000); and serve superior food than the generally dismal fare at the lunch-only 116.

None of that deters members of the Washington elite from lining up to join the Club, despite a long waiting list for new members, because of a variety of special features that, like the management’s lackadaisical attitude about rules and regulations, are exclusive to the 116. One is its prime location next door to congressional offices, which makes it extremely convenient for House and Senate members, who frequently ask to meet there, a former Hill staffer-turned-lobbyist told me.

A second, which the same source pointed to, are bragging rights that accrue to Club members due to its preeminent standing among Washington insiders. “If you want to impress someone with all the important people you know, it’s a great place to take them and show a little leg,” said the source, who has used the Club to hold intimate conversations with lawmakers, strategize with colleagues, mingle at fundraisers, and pitch clients.

A third and more important lure, and one mentioned by several of those I interviewed, is that the 116’s cloistered atmosphere and small size makes it one of the rare places in Washington where lawmakers and political operatives can meet for drinks without fear of being spotted by problematic individuals, especially journalists, who might disclose they saw them together.

The 116’s preoccupation with preventing leaks about what takes place behind its closed doors was described as “obsessive” by a business executive who had lunch there several years ago with a Club member who previously worked for President Donald Trump. “I was warned not to use my cell phone...or to take pictures and when I left was given a friendly reminder not to talk about being at the Club or saying who I saw there,” said the executive, who, like other inside sources I spoke with, only agreed to be interviewed if our conversation was off the record.

A fourth and final inducement to join the 116 is that it has always attracted top tier lawmakers with the requisite horse trading skills and power needed to get things done. That makes them of great potential value to the lobbyists and operatives who fraternize at the Club, and make up the largest share of the membership, who are happy to provide piles of campaign money to those lawmakers if the things they get done suit the interests of the cash- dispenser.

Former bank executive and 116 member Robert Tillery knew what he was talking about when he succinctly summarized the Club as “the other place where congress meets…by invitation only” in a Facebook post in 2015, four years before he pleaded guilty to bilking a mentally frail military widow out of $83,800.

The 116’s position as a private sanctuary for Washington’s political cream makes it a ripe target for journalists, but despite that – or perhaps because so many prominent national reporters are part of the elite or aspire to be – it’s almost never written about. The New York Times called the Club “a headquarters of subterranean power [where] legislation affecting billions and billions of dollars is discreetly discussed and drafted” back in 1974, but hasn’t published another story about it during the proceeding half-century.

Politico labeled the Club a “physical embodiment” of influence peddling in a good piece seven years ago, but its focus was Sessions, who Trump had just nominated as attorney general. Other than a few scattered media mentions, typically in regional newspapers accounts about this or that area member of congress spending campaign money at the Club, the Politico story was the last time the 116 was covered in the press.

I initially planned to launch Washington Babylon on Substack with a story about another topic, but ultimately decided to go with the 116, in part due to the lack of news coverage about it and minimal public awareness of its existence in general. The primary reason, though, is that revealing its dirty secrets best embodies the highest aim of journalism, which is to expose the world’s most powerful and odious people, who are disproportionately overrepresented in Washington and even more intensely concentrated at the 116.

Part II, Larceny in the Blood: Meet the cast of characters at the Quorum Club, the 116’s predecessor, including the alcoholic, bribe-taking senator who Nancy Pelosi worked for as an intern, and the corrupt military consultant who was later sentenced to prison for laundering money for a Colombian cocaine cartel. Look for it Monday.