Judge disqualifies Council member from Stockbridge mayor’s hearing
A judge disqualified Stockbridge City Council member LaKeisha Gantt from a panel expected to decide whether to remove Mayor Jayden Williams from office, ruling Gantt has shown bias against the mayor and “animus” toward him.
The retired judge, Gino Brogdon Sr., is presiding over the City Council process that could lead to the mayor’s removal over allegations of inappropriate sexual misconduct through communications with an 18-year-old who met the mayor through the man’s interest in a city-sponsored political mentoring program, along with other accusations that he misused city funds and a city vehicle.
The judge said during a virtual hearing Monday night that he was particularly swayed by a threatening email Gantt sent Williams in April, and by her decision to contact the mayor’s grandmother to tell her Williams should resign because of the allegations.
Gantt told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution she sent Williams the email because she was embarrassed by how he represented Stockbridge in a speech at an event. The contents of the email surfaced Aug. 20, when Williams’ attorney asked Gantt to read it aloud during a hearing related to the matter in Henry County Superior Court.
In the email, she tells Williams “to stop being two-faced” and says: “This is your final warning and reset with me.”
It adds: “I can be your friend or your enemy. Your choice.”
Brogdon said the email was “clearly a threat.”
“I can’t get over it,” he added. “I think it would be patently unfair to Mayor Williams to have her on this panel in light of that stated animus.”
In an interview after the ruling, Gantt acknowledged the email “was definitely threatening” but said it “had nothing to do with the allegations of today.”
“It was more like a mother that just got tired of telling her child to stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop,” Gantt said of the 23-year-old Williams, the youngest mayor ever elected in Stockbridge.
Gantt said she would have been a fair and impartial member of the panel, which includes the city’s four other Council members. They are expected to make a decision about Williams after they hear the findings of an independent investigation of him, and potentially other evidence, at a hearing Sept. 12.
Williams can appeal a vote to remove him from office to the Superior Court. The Sept. 12 hearing will function similar to a trial.
Williams’ attorney, Robert Kenner Jr., urged Brogdon to disqualify Gantt for weighing in publicly about “disputed facts” in Facebook posts, text messages and phone conversations. Kenner had presented evidence of Gantt’s alleged bias at the Aug. 20 court hearing.
Vivian Thomas, the mayor’s grandmother, testified at the Aug. 20 hearing that Gantt called her July 21 — a few days after the council stripped the mayor of some of his powers pending the outcome of the investigation — and advised Thomas to encourage her grandson to resign.
Paraphrasing the 53-second call, Thomas testified that Gantt told her: “We have what we need against him. We don’t want to hurt him, but he needs to resign.”
Gantt disagreed with Thomas’ characterization of the phone call but testified she had texted Thomas hoping to save Williams from public humiliation if all of the evidence against him came out. Though Gantt did not specify in her text messages what evidence she meant, she testified Aug. 20 that she had been referring in part to the sexual misconduct allegation against Williams.
A Stockbridge Police Department report contained sexually explicit text messages allegedly sent between the student and the mayor. The report also said that, according to the student, nude photographs were exchanged between the two, a claim the mayor has denied in an interview with the AJC.
The AJC is not naming the student after considering that he is in high school and the nature of the allegations.
Brogdon said Monday it isn’t the Council members’ job to conduct their own investigation of Williams’ activities.
“They’re not supposed to be contacting family members and dishing out warnings,” Brogdon said. “And I understand she was concerned that it might be embarrassing to Mayor Williams and his family, but she went too far.”
Robbie Ashe, an attorney for the city, argued Monday that Gantt, an attorney, maintains she could sit impartially on the panel. Her actions were an attempt to transparently inform her constituents about the unfolding investigation of their mayor, Ashe told Brogdon.
“Mayor Williams is entitled to a fair process here, but so is Councilwoman Gantt, and so are the roughly 6,000 people who have elected her, time and again, to be their voice and their vote on the Stockbridge City Council,” Ashe said.
Stockbridge City Attorney Quinton Washington said after the hearing that the city will not appeal Brogdon’s decision.
“We want to get the hearing done on Sept. 12,” he told the AJC. “We don’t want to delay it anymore.”