Ethics commission Chairman Kevin Abernethy pressured the agency’s attorney to quietly settle cases against Gov. Nathan Deal, the attorney said in a sworn statement obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Abernethy vigorously denied the claims made by Elisabeth Murray-Obertein, the commission’s staff attorney. She made the accusation in an affidavit filed Friday in a lawsuit brought by the commission’s former deputy director, Sherilyn Streicker.
The commission in 2012 was set to consider five cases accusing Deal of misusing campaign funds in his 2010 election. In the weeks leading up to the commission’s July 23 meeting, where the major violations were dismissed, Murray-Obertein said Abernethy called her several times to discuss the cases.
“Commissioner Abernethy attempted in each phone conversation to pressure me into settling the complaint,” Murray-Obertein says in the affidavit. “In fact, Commissioner Abernethy informed me that the commissioners would vote to dismiss the complaints (and that I should settle the complaints because there was no point in having hearings).”
She later said Abernethy pressured her “into settling the complaints quickly and favorably to Governor Deal.”
Deal was cleared of major charges and paid $3,350 in administrative fees for “technical defects” to his campaign reports. Murray-Obertein had recommended $70,000 in fines.
The accusations continue to cast doubt upon the independence of the supposedly impartial agency charged with keeping tabs on the state’s elected officials. The affidavit comes after weeks of revelations and accusations about what led to the departures of Streicker and her then-boss, former commission Executive Director Stacey Kalberman, and how the Deal investigation was settled.
Muray-Obertein’s affidavit will also likely be used in a Kalberman’s separate lawsuit. She and Streicker both claim they were forced from their jobs over their investigation into Deal’s campaign.
In the affidavit, Murray-Obertein says the commission’s current executive director, Holly LaBerge, told her that Abernethy interfered with Kalberman’s application to become the ethics officer for the city of Atlanta.
“When Ms. Kalberman was in the running to become the ethics officer, Commissioner Abernethy contacted Mayor Kasim Reed and told him not to hire Ms. Kalberman,” the affidavit says.
Murray-Obertein said LaBerge told her Abernethy contacted Reed regarding Kalberman. Efforts to reach LaBerge through her attorney were unsuccessful. LaBerge has previously declined to comment on the lawsuits and the testimony of her current and former employees.
Murray-Obertein, who has already given sworn testimony in the Kalberman lawsuit, said she didn’t mention Abernethy’s alleged interference with the Deal case before because she wasn’t asked about it. She also said she feared angering Abernethy after LaBerge told her he meddled in Kalberman’s search for a new job.
Abernethy said there’s no truth to her affidavit.
“I deny everything that is being said,” Abernethy said. “I resent it. It’s false.”
Abernethy pointed the AJC to the July 23, 2012, meeting in which Murray-Obertein agreed with the commission’s decision to dismiss the complaint related to how Deal’s campaign paid for airfare on a plane his company partly owned. Murray-Obertein said the commission’s investigation was “very thorough.”
“I actually do not object to the motion to dismiss this particular complaint,” she said in a video of the meeting.
But at the same meeting, Murray-Obertein objected to dismissing a separate complaint related to Deal’s use of state campaign funds to pay for his defense in a congressional probe.
Like Abernethy, Reed, too, said Murray-Obertein is wrong in her affidavit. Reed said he had no contact with Abernethy or any other state official about Kalberman and that he has no relationship with Abernethy.
Streicker’s attorney, Cheryl B. Legare, a partner at Buckley & Klein, said her client struggled to find a job after she was forced out at the commission.
“There’s no question that her career was totally derailed by the commission’s retaliation,” Legare said.
Legare’s associate, Brian J. Sutherland, said the state’s whistle-blower act requires them to show that Streicker disclosed wrongdoing.
"We have to show pretext. In other words, that the reasons the commission gave for terminating her are false, and that the true reason is that she revealed Governor Deal's campaign finance violations," Sutherland said.
Murray-Obertein and John Hair, a former computer specialist at the ethics commission, have both said LaBerge bragged about her relationship with Deal.
Hair also testified that LaBerge wanted him to make changes to documents in the Deal case file. Deal has said he received no special treatment from the commission and blasted the AJC for its coverage of the issue.
LaBerge has given a sworn statement in the Kalberman case that she was contacted by someone at the governor’s office to gauge her interest in becoming the ethics commission’s executive director more than a month before the job was open. Deal’s office confirmed to the AJC that it was Ryan Teague, the governor’s official state lawyer, who called her.
Deal spokesman Brian Robinson said several ethics commission members reached out to Deal’s staff for suggestions on who might replace Kalberman. It’s not unusual, Robinson said, for an agency to contact the governor’s office for possible new hires.
In this case, however, the commission was actively investigating Deal at the time.
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