Bell, a Goldsboro Republican, is both president of the Nash County-based hemp company Asterra Labs and chairman of the powerful House Rules Committee. During Asterra’s falling-out with MC (as the company sometimes refers to itself in court filings), Bell was working behind the scenes on bills to regulate the hemp industry.
Asterra is a subsidiary of Rise Capital, a private equity fund founded and run by former University of North Carolina Board of Governors chairman Harry Smith. Smith was once an ally of Senate leader Phil Berger, but their relationship soured after Smith’s rocky tenure on the board ended in 2020. Legislative sources say Smith’s employment of Bell has created tension between the state House and Senate.
Alicia Jurney, the attorney representing Asterra and Rise, previously represented former Apex Town Council Member Scott Lassiter in his 2023 alienation of affection lawsuit against then-House Speaker Tim Moore. […]
MC founder Bret Worley, meanwhile, appears to have a “personal relationship” with the daughter of President Donald Trump’s chief of staff, according to a July 1 letter from Asterra to MC, obtained by The Assembly and Axios Raleigh. The letter suggests that Worley has said he could leverage the relationship to “influence President Trump and/or the Trump administration.”
Finally, Jonah Garson, the Chapel Hill attorney Worley hired to sue Asterra and Rise, is the first vice chair of the North Carolina Democratic Party.
Politics is also partly responsible for MC and Asterra’s relationship and breakup, according to the complaint.
MC says it approached Asterra in December 2024 because of “Rep. Bell and Mr. Smith’s powerful political networks.” By June 2025, however, the complaint says Bell and Smith threatened to use their “positions of power and influence” to throw the Worleys in jail over a $1.6 million debt.
Bell and Smith “embarked on a campaign to squeeze MC out so that [Asterra and Rise] could convert MC’s inventory and personnel for themselves,” the complaint alleges.
Asterra has not filed its legal responses to the allegations. But documents Jurney provided to The Assembly and Axios Raleigh paint a different picture of the dispute. In an early June email, for example, the Worleys promised to make daily $50,000 payments to Asterra to rectify their debt, which they then failed to do. In later emails, Jurney accused MC of “mismanagement” and acting in bad faith.
A pitched legal battle could embarrass everyone involved. MC’s inability to pay a relatively small debt—the company says in the complaint that it grossed $48 million in 2024—raises questions about its standing as an industry leader. MC’s portrayal of Asterra, meanwhile, casts Bell as a failing businessman propped up by Smith’s money and desperate for help from associates he now considers unscrupulous.
All the while, Bell has championed his industry in the General Assembly, where lawmakers debate how to regulate a marketplace that Bell has called the “Wild Wild West.” In North Carolina, companies can manufacture, distribute, and sell intoxicating products to residents of any age, almost entirely unchecked. Most lawmakers say that needs to change. But they haven’t agreed on how.
“I have an advantage because I’m in the room when all these decisions get made,” Bell told a panel at a CHAMPS Trade Show in May 2024. “Which is not a bad place to be, by the way.”
The moderator for that panel: Bret Worley.
Bell had led Asterra, which manufactures and distributes gummies and other hemp-derived products, for less than a year when that panel took place. But his inclusion was a signal that some of the industry’s biggest players respected him. Worley joked about how cool it was to call him “leader”—Bell was then the House majority leader—and applauded him for “listening to his constituents and also trying to push policy that’s informed and good for the consumer.”
Jurney told The Assembly and Axios Raleigh that Bell met Worley just before that panel. Within a year, their apparent camaraderie had unraveled.
In the lawsuit, MC says Asterra was on the brink of collapse in late 2024. Despite the $10 million Rise had invested and Asterra’s “powerful political North Carolina network,” Bell’s hemp company “had failed to develop basic competencies.”
At its “high water mark” that year, Asterra was grossing about $100,000 a month in revenue, but was losing $70,000 a month, according to MC’s complaint.
Worley and his father, MC chief financial officer Jeffrey Worley, saw an opportunity. In December 2024, they approached Bell about forming a partnership to “help Asterra find its footing,” the complaint says. Under the agreement, MC would source and market products to its more established consumer base. Asterra would finance and manage the inventory and fulfill orders for ingredients. Asterra purchased inventory on MC’s behalf, then invoiced MC for that amount. MC had 30 days to pay.
They started working together in February 2025, though the agreement wasn’t signed until May. According to the complaint, MC quickly realized that “Asterra was in breach of its performance obligations.”Asterra failed to fund and fulfill orders promptly or keep accurate records and could not account for inventory, the complaint says.
In February, MC sent its senior account manager, Ryan McConnell, to North Carolina to “salvage Asterra’s product fulfillment program,” according to the complaint. MC dispatched another employee to help with Asterra’s inventory.
Thanks to what MC’s complaint describes as its “herculean efforts,” Asterra’s revenues doubled. But MC says it faced industry headwinds in May. The Texas legislature passed asweeping ban on hemp-derived THC products, and national hemp revenues plummeted.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott eventually vetoed the bill—“thanks in part to the advocacy of [MC] officers,” the lawsuit notes—but the uncertainty led to what MC called a “cash flow disruption.”
Around Memorial Day, MC missed a payment of more than $1 million to Asterra. In its complaint, the company framed it as a temporary setback. […]
But Asterra declared that it would not accept late payments from MC, according to the complaint. Asterra also refused to credit MC for what the complaint describes as at least $100,000 in missing inventory.
To make matters worse, the lawsuit says that Asterra poached McConnell, the senior account manager on loan from MC, despite a non-solicitation clause in his employment contract. The complaint accuses Bell and Smith of engaging in a conspiracy “to take what they could from MC, including trade secrets, personnel, and inventory, and drive MC out of North Carolina to establish [Asterra and Rise’s] desired position as captains of the North Carolina cannabinoid industry.”
Asterra insisted that MC pay $50,000 a day to keep the agreement going and refused to release the MC-owned products it had in its possession. It said MC owed about $1.58 million in total.
When the Worleys didn’t pay, they received what the complaint calls “baseless and improper” threats of criminal prosecution. “MC refuses to capitulate to these improper demands.”[…]
In a statement, Jurney rejected MC’s contention that it rescued Asterra. She insisted that the company was on an “upward trajectory” under Bell’s leadership.
“MC reportedly needed Asterra, because MC’s market position had declined, and it hoped that by working with Asterra as a supplier, it could regain its industry standing,” Jurney told The Assembly and Axios Raleigh. “Although Asterra was unaware of it at the time it began doing business with MC, MC appears to have been in poor financial condition and had a negative cash flow for several months before it began working with Asterra.”
The correspondence Jurney provided to The Assembly and Axios Raleigh begins in early June and sheds light on what happened after MC slipped into arrears. […]
There was no dispute that MC owed Asterra money. On June 2, John Worley emailed Bell to say he had just sent $50,000. On June 5, the Worleys agreed in writing to make $50,000 daily payments until their account was cleared.
Rise president Brooke Smith—Harry Smith’s daughter—responded, “We really appreciate the constructive dialogue and are looking forward to what’s ahead between our current business and the soon-to-start co-manufacturing work!”
In that email thread, Jeffrey Worley also told Brooke Smith that she was “free to meet with [Ryan McConnell] to discuss his employment.” That statement appears to undercut MC’s claim that Asterra poached McConnell, the account manager.
By June 10, the good feelings had vanished.
“Given the lack of the minimum $50k payment made today, we are terminating the [MC] and Asterra relationship,” Brooke Smith told the Worleys. “You have both continued to mislead and lie to us.” […]
According to the complaint, on June 16, Harry Smith fired off a text message to Jeffrey Worley promising “to put you and your son in jail—hitting [sic] private investigators and opposition research teams today. You buckle up, Jeff—I will see you and your unstable son in a court room.”
The next day, Asterra sent the Worleys a formal demand letter insisting that they pay about $1.58 million by June 22. Three days later, on June 20, Harry Smith sent Jeffrey Worley a conciliatory email. “We don’t want to hurt you or Bret and further we want nothing more than to see you guys have enormous success,” he said.
But the June 22 deadline passed, and on June 24, Harry Smith fired off another angry text to Jeffrey Worley: “We have more than enough to get BOTH of you criminally charged and we are going to do that—pay us or go to prison right here in the great state of NC Jeff.” Later, he sent one more: “I’m beyond confidant [sic] that you both get convicted of a felony(s) and I’m beyond convinced we will be able to come after you both personally on the civil side. Pay your bills or I can’t help you.”
During the last week of June, Jeffrey Worley questioned the amount MC owed. On July 1, Jurney accused the Worleys of stalling and pointed out that, with interest, they now owed more than $1.6 million.
Jeffrey Worley responded that he was “willing to continue to talk about amounts allegedly owed,” but MC wanted Asterra to return more than $500,000 worth of inventory first.
Jurney called his offer “insulting” and said Asterra had already scheduled a meeting with a police detective.
MC’s complaint and the correspondence Asterra provided make clear that Smith and Jurney—although not necessarily Bell—said they planned to pursue criminal charges. But nowhere in the documents is there evidence, or even an example, supporting the complaint’s most salacious allegation: that Smith and Bell threatened to leverage their political connections to imprison their former business partners. […]
“I want you to take a step back and look at how far this industry has come,” Bell told the audience during the hemp panel in 2024. “I remember when I was in the General Assembly as a freshman member [in 2013]. I walked outside and there was a guy wearing tie-dye with big-ole’ cargo shorts on, and he’s playing hacky-sack and looked at me and said, ‘So, bro, where you at on this?’
“And I look today,” he continued, “and you’ve got entrepreneurs, you’ve got chemists, you’ve got scientists, you’ve got attorneys, you’ve got bankers.”
The industry began growing exponentially after the U.S. Congress decriminalized hemp-derived cannabis in the 2018 Farm Bill, so long as it contains only a small amount of THC. Regulations for hemp products vary across the country, and both the hemp industry and organizations seeking to restrain it have spent millions of dollars lobbying legislatures across the country.
North Carolina, where marijuana remains illegal for recreational or medicinal use, has not imposed any regulations on hemp-derived products. This has created a problem for Bell’s business. […]
“I’m very blessed to work with an entity that has put millions of dollars into a facility to do it the right way,” he told the panel in 2024, referring to Rise. “And our retail product and the folks that we make products for are competing for the same shelf space as the guy that’s making it in his backyard in a barn in an unsanitary environment and frankly doesn’t know what’s in the product he’s put on the shelf.”
Bell joined Rise’s board of directors in 2020, when the firm owned Asterra, but before he took over as the hemp company’s president in 2023. As House majority leader in 2022, Bell backed an effort to remove hemp from North Carolina’s list of illegal drugs, which became law days before a deadline that would have put the industry in limbo.
In 2023, Bell supported a bill that required buyers to be at least 18 years old, made it illegal to distribute products on sidewalks or in parks, and required all hemp products to be tested before distribution. The House unanimously passed the bill, but it died after the Senate tacked on a medical marijuana provision.
In a post on LinkedIn, Bret Worley blamed the bill’s demise on a “strategy employed by large, multi-state marijuana companies and their lobbyists,” whom he believes work against the interests of the hemp industry. “They leveraged a well-crafted hemp bill, filled with responsible regulations, as a Trojan horse to advance their agenda,” he said.
This year, Bell has pushed for legislation that one cannabis industry advocate called “one of the best—if not the very best—hemp bills in the country.” Like the 2023 bill, it set age and dosage limits, as well as licensing requirements. The legislation has stalled since a group of state senators introduced it in March.
Instead, in the waning weeks of the legislative session, the Senate pushed through a bill that Bell said would force him to close Asterra and lay off his employees. The legislation proposed a ban on most hemp-derived THC products, including CBD. […]
The day the Senate bill cleared a Senate committee, June 17, Asterra sent demand letters to the Worleys. In a sense, Bell was fighting a war on two fronts for his company’s future.
On the legislative front, at least, Bell holds a trump card. The House routed the Senate bill to his Rules Committee, a black hole from which it might never escape.
In an interview with Axios Raleigh in June, Bell denied having a conflict of interest. “As long as I’m not doing something exactly for Asterra Labs and my business, there’s no ethical challenges there,” he said.
Bell argued that his work on hemp legislation was no different than a teacher weighing in on an education bill. He viewed himself as adding an informed perspective that would otherwise be missing from legislative debates.
“We’ve got a car dealer [bill] that’s going on right now, back and forth. How many car dealers do we have in the General Assembly?” he asked. “Does anybody say shit about that?” […]
There was speaker-turned-congressman Timmy Moore and all that turmoil over Biscuitville and a divorce. There’s an on-going courtroom drama involving the Senate president pro tem’s son and several of his political operatives. And now, we have another legal drama featuring House Rules chairman John Bell and his attempt to capitalize on the state’s burgeoning legal marijuana and weed-related products market. 
