Lawmaker Indictments ??? The noose is tightening in Greater Carolina probe
Yes, ladies and gents, things in and around our halls of government are officially turning hairier and
even more disgusting than ever:
More charges are expected in a criminal investigation into influence-buying at the state legislature, Wake County District Attorney Lorrin Freeman said Tuesday — a day after WRAL first reported on a newly released search warrant highlighting questionable spending by a politically connected nonprofit group at strip clubs, beach vacation rentals and sports outings.
Four lobbyists active in the state legislature already face charges over separate trips Greater Carolina organized, with lobbyists and state lawmakers traveling together on tours to Kentucky bourbon distilleries. All have pleaded not guilty.
Freeman indicated she doesn’t expect more charges against those four. However, she said she does anticipate others will be charged soon. She declined to say who those charges could be against, citing the ongoing investigation.
An advocate for government ethics reform, Brooks Fuller of the group Common Cause North Carolina, believes it could include elected officials.
“If these allegations in these indictments are accurate, then I would not be surprised to see indictments against lawmakers not far behind,” Fuller said in an interview.
No elected officials are named in this new search warrant, but several were identified in past warrants connected to the Kentucky bourbon trail trips. […]
This is all being looked at as a creative way to get around state ethics and lobbying laws. Check out what lawmakers got treated to on these trips:
[…] The new search warrant indicates specific spending by the Greater Carolina treasurer that is under the microscope. It includes:
· $15,128.80 spent at strip clubs in Clearwater, FL and North Myrtle Beach, SC
· $26,602.84 on a beach vacation rental on Emerald Isle
· $26,454 with the Carolina Panthers
· $10,981.14 at an Atlanta-area TopGolf
The Greater Carolina treasurer is also named in a past warrant with questionable spending, including:
· $7,920.12 on at least five trips to the Boca Raton Resort
· $7,660.58 at Giorgio Armani in Beverly Hills
· $4,079 at Carolina Men’s Clinic […]
Carolina Men’s Clinic ????? Is THIS what they’re talking about? (If so, holy cow. Lobbying has certainly taken a peculiar turn.)
MORE:
[…] Fuller says 501(C)(4) nonprofit organizations have very strict rules about what they can spend money on.
This newest search warrant says nonprofits, including Greater Carolina, are legally obligated to “further the common good and general welfare of the people of the community” because of their nonprofit status.
The SBI agent in charge wrote, “there is probable cause to believe that information contained in the bank records… may be evidence of conduct and activities constituting the crime of obtaining property by false pretense by individuals associated with Greater Carolina, Inc.”
Greater Carolina’s official purpose as a nonprofit was to support pro-business causes, one of the group’s leaders told the SBI, an agent wrote in the warrant, and specifically to educate the public and members of the state legislature on sports betting.
The legislature voted in 2023 to legalize sports betting, and several tweaks to the law have been approved since then, including in the most recent state budget. Most of the trips detailed in the warrants happened in 2022, 2023 and 2024.
“What it’s showing you is that for a relatively paltry sum, you can get a pretty cozy relationship with lawmakers,” Fuller said. “Lawmakers who are going to have the votes in the General Assembly to get your policy preferences across the finish line.” […]
What is this telling us? A simple switch in party control won’t fix it. We threw out crooked Dems in 2010, and look at what we have NOW. Something worse.
It’s going to be a matter of getting people of better character into party offices and elected offices. We have a long fight ahead of us. Is the future of our state important enough to you to engage in this fight for change?
When I stood up against Jason Saine’s bill to allow sports betting in 2022, and we defeated it in the NC House by a one vote margin, he offered a motion to send it back to the Rules Committee to have it reconsidered. We defeated that motion by a pretty strong margin. The next day, he joked about the opponents of his bill as wearing “tin foil hats.” I went up to his seat and told him he owed us all an apology, and he scoffed at me, saying that his remark was just a private joke between Rep. Brent Jomes and himself. I repeated the demand for an apology and went back to my desk. He came back to my desk with his chest puffed out, acting like a Mafia enforcer, trying to intimidate me. That never works with me. I got up and stood up to him until our argument got a little too loud and we each went back to our seats. His Mafia-style behavior has always made me wonder if he was acting that way because the people who wanted that bill were putting similar pressure on him for failing to get it done. This is just a small sample of the corruption I witnessed and resisted when I served in Raleigh. I did not run for reelection in 2022, not because I wasn’t willing to continue the fight, but because I had made a promise not to serve more than five full terms after completing Jeff Barnhart’s unexpired term, and I keep my promises. It saddened me greatly that with me not there to fight it, Saine got his bill passed in 2023. It infuriates me to see how the corruption has continued to grow. Please, citizens, let’s be more careful what kind of people we send to Raleigh. Just having an R by their names does not mean they are fit to be there.
I meant Rep. Brenden jones, not Jomes.
I remember sitting directly behind that guy on that infamous day at NC State’s McKimmon Center when he and a few legislators showed up to help oust the only African-American ever elected as NCGOP State Chairman. Told me all I need to know about him and most of your former colleagues.
Hasan Harnett is a good friend of mine, which is probably part of the reason he got removed. He even came to my house to talk to me about it and make sure he had my support before he ran for the position. The night he was elected, I was with him as he got phone calls informing him that there would be an effort to remove him. The night before he was removed, my friend, Robin Hayes, whom my wife and I worked very hard to get him elected to the NC House and the US House, and who had also supported me in my elections to the NC House, called me and told me what they were going to do to Hassan, and that he would be elected to replace him. I told Robin I could not support that. When I went up to Robin to try to talk to him about it at the meeting of the Executive Committee, he said, “You show wisdom, you get support. You don’t show wisdom, you don’t get support.” After they voted Hassan out, and put forward the nomination of Robin to replace him, I was deeply shocked and disappointed when Robin got up and said, “I didn’t come here to be elected chairman,” and then pulled out of his pocket a prepared speech for the occasion, after telling me the night before what was going to happen. I was shocked because it was the first time I ever heard Robin say something I knew was not true. You just never know some people like you think you do. I would not have revealed this without being asked, except that this current line of discussion just seemed to me to make it necessary. We in the NCGOP need to be very careful to whom we entrust leadership positions.
Well, at least in some cases, justice has been served to Hassan’s persecutors. District chairs of CD-13 and more recently Cd-1 have been unceremoniously booted from their offices.
Gambling? Alcohol? Strip Clubs? That has got to mean NCGOP leader Larry Shaheen has to be the head party animal. I mean a few dui’s, a resisting arrest, and domestic violence. Larry learned from the best, his father. Why does the NCGOP let these people hang around? Did the learn from the Harvey West molesting a teenage girl fiasco? NCGOP is doomed. No way Whatley wins. No way Stevens wins. And NCGOP is still performing as it did after MKR’s fiasco. Wake up.