Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

RICHMOND — Paul Mahoney, interim president at the University of Virginia, defended the school’s entrance into an agreement with the Department of Justice under the Trump administration, saying the deal was preferable to a loss of federal funding and potentially lengthy litigation process.

“Our options were to come to an agreement, or wait for the DOJ to impose sanctions on us and then litigate,” he said Monday before state senators on the Finance and Appropriations Education subcommittee. “By this time, several other universities subject to investigations had already suffered dramatic losses of federal research funds.

“Waiting for an enforcement action and then litigating would have been potentially devastating to the university’s mission and

See Full Page