Opinion: The effort to ban lying in the state Capitol

“I just want people to realize that they’re subject to getting in trouble if they’re lying. It’ll be a deterrent if nothing else,” Mullis said. “If we’re going to make laws, we need to get the correct information, and not somebody that’s trying to beat the system.”

Members of the House and Senate would not be covered under Mullis’ legislation. Their speech is constitutionally protected, whether true, false or anywhere in between.

This truth push is bipartisan. The second signature on the measure belongs to state Sen. Zahra Karinshak, D-Duluth, who is also a candidate for the Seventh District congressional seat.

SR 459 was introduced by Mullis last year, but received its first hearing on Tuesday before the Senate Ethics Committee.

The north Georgia senator insists that his legislation has nothing to do with the fact-free climate now roiling the nation’s capital. In fact, a bobble-headed President Donald Trump, with a red MAGA cap, is on prominent display in Mullis’ fourth-floor Capitol office.

That said, Mullis and I spoke one day before Roger Stone, a longtime Trump friend and ally, was sentenced to three years and four months in a federal prison for lying to Congress and tampering with a witness. One day before a U.S. District Judge, whom Stone stood before, found it necessary to say, “The truth still exists. The truth still matters.

“Roger Stone’s insistence that it doesn’t, his belligerence, his pride in his own lies are a threat to our most fundamental institutions, to the foundations of our democracy,” the judge said.

It is illegal to tell lies in the U.S. Capitol, and when the machinery is oiled properly, there is an entire U.S. Justice Department that will hunt you down when you do.

It is not illegal to tell lies in your state Capitol, which is far more vulnerable to those who peddle untruths. The 236 lawmakers gathered inside each winter are part-timers — with skeletal, often part-time and underpaid staffs. Generally speaking, legislators have three primary sources of information: An administration run by the governor, lobbyists, and regular citizens.

“I think when you come to testify before a committee, you should be aware that you should be telling the truth. As a former federal prosecutor, I think that’s important,” said Karinshak, the measure’s Democratic sponsor. “Because we do make decisions based on what we hear.”

Reputation is the current enforcement mechanism. Neither Karinshak nor Mullis were willing to name names when it comes to known liars at the Capitol. Karinshak, elected to the Legislature in 2018, would only speak of “suspicious” instances she’s witnessed.

Yet truth-telling is an issue that state lawmakers have wrestled with for decades. Even now, skeptics argue that the only way to ban lying in the state Capitol is to also outlaw breathing.

Back in the early ‘00s, Tom Bordeaux of Savannah, the Democratic chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, began swearing in every witness who appeared before him. Senate Democrats were incensed, accusing him of character assassination. Retaliation was threatened. The practice ended.

In 2009, state Sen. Ed Tarver of Augusta, who would go on to become a federal prosecutor and is now a Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate, introduced a bill that would have made lying to the Legislature a felony. It passed the GOP-controlled Senate with only a single dissenting vote, and was promptly gutted in the Republican-led House.

Mullis said he began pushing for legislation to require truth-telling “three or four years ago.” But he could never get the green light from Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle.

In fact, some lawmakers – then and now — have raised legitimate concerns. Intimidation is one. “We want to encourage people to come forward and talk,” one told me. Connected to that worry is the question of who determines what is and isn’t a lie.

Mullis’ bill does not exactly criminalize prevarication, so law enforcement would not be involved. One possibility is that a bipartisan subcommittee of the Senate Ethics Committee, which is now considering the legislation, could act as the chamber’s lie detector.

One assumes that such a panel would ignore the pro forma fibbing that goes on in the Capitol, such as:

— “This bill will do one thing and one thing only.”

— “The trial lawyers are okay with this.”

— “This is a compromise.”

Instead, there is the hope that any policing would concentrate on lies of substance. But even this has its hazards.

One of the few lobbyists to speak up for Mullis’ legislation last week was Neill Herring, lobbyist for the Georgia chapter of the Sierra Club. He supports the aim of the resolution, but cautions that some witnesses at the Capitol are not wholly responsible for what they say.

“At budget subcommittee hearings, when agency people are presenting their cases, there’s a lot of fiction, misrepresentation, significant omission, and some outright lying,” Herring said. “But it’s all at the direction of their superiors. They’re just following orders.

“We need an exception for these people. They’re being sent over here to do it, and they lose their jobs if they don’t,” Herring said. “I want to participate in the bill-writing, and I want to go after the people who are directing people to misrepresent facts to the Legislature. They need to be upbraided.”

Mullis anticipates that his anti-lying legislation will come out of committee next week. As rules chairman, Mullis determines what measures get to the chamber floor. Which greatly increases the odds that SR 459 will come to a vote by the full Senate.

What comes out of the Legislature is completely dependent upon what lawmakers are told during their 40-day session, the senator said.

“Right or wrong, good or bad, that’s a fact. What we don’t know is the problem. We ask the question – they need to give us the answer, or they need to say, ‘I don’t know that answer,’ instead of making it up,” Mullis said. “I want us to have the most clear, precise, correct information we can get. And I think if we get somebody testifying under oath, it’ll be close to that.”