FBI questions ethics lawyer at center of Deal complaint

November 2010: Deal wins the governorship by defeating Democrat Roy Barnes, a former governor.

2011

January-May: The top two staff members of the state ethics commission, Executive Director Stacey Kalberman and her deputy, Sherilyn Streicker, open an investigation into Deal campaign. They meet with federal prosecutors and the FBI concerning their inquiry. The two draw up subpoenas for Deal and others and prepare to serve them.

June: Kalberman and Streicker are gone from their jobs. Streicker’s job is eliminated. Kalberman’s salary is cut from $120,000 to $85,000, and she resigns. The chairman of the ethics commission, Patrick Millsaps, says he needed to cut costs.

2012

June: Kalberman and Streicker file separate whistle-blower lawsuits against the state.

July 23: The state ethics commission clears Deal of major ethics violations while finding he made “technical defects” in a series of personal financial and campaign finance reports. Deal agrees to pay fees totaling $3,350.

Sept. 1: The AJC reports that Kalberman and Streicker held several meetings with federal public corruption authorities to discuss the ethics commission’s investigation into Deal. The U.S. Attorney’s Office would neither confirm nor deny that there had been a federal investigation into Deal. Referring to the meetings, Deal lawyer Randy Evans said “there was never anything to it.”

2013

Sept. 18: The AJC reports on depositions gathered in the whistle-blower lawsuits, which shed new light on the case. In a sworn statement, LaBerge says she was contacted by Deal’s office about the top job at the state ethics commission in May 2012 while Kalberman was still in the post. The AJC later learned it was Ryan Teague, the governor’s executive counsel, who reached out to LaBerge. In a separate deposition, commission lawyer Elisabeth Murray-Obertein said LaBerge bragged of her relationship with Deal and said the governor “owed her” after the most serious complaints against Deal were dismissed.

Sept. 19: Deal says he has done nothing wrong and blasts the AJC’s coverage.

Sept. 30: Members of the ethics commission asks the state attorney general to appoint a special outside counsel to investigate the deepening problems at the agency.

Oct. 4: In a separate affidavit, Murray-Obertein says commission Chairman Kevin Abernethy pressured her to quietly settle complaints against Deal. Abertnethy denies the accusation.

Oct. 9: Computer specialist John Hair say in an interview with the AJC that LaBerge ordered him to alter and remove documents when he worked at the commission. The state Attorney General’s Office said it was informed by the commission that no documents were removed.

Oct. 10: Responding to an open records request filed by the AJC, LaBerge confirms that Murray-Obertein has been questioned by the FBI. The FBI declines to comment.

Unmatched coverage

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has closely followed the goings on at the state ethics commission, including a shake-up at the top and its handling of allegations against Gov. Nathan Deal that he misused campaign funds during the 2010 election cycle. Recent stories, based on court documents and interviews, have reported accusations that the executive secretary of the commission, Holly LaBerge, improperly intervened in Deal’s case; that aides to the governor approached LaBerge about heading the commission a month before the position was open and while the commission was investigating the governor; and that the staff attorney has sworn that the commission’s chairman pressured her to settle the governor’s case. In today’s story, LaBerge reveals that the staff attorney has been questioned by the FBI.

Key players

Nathan Deal

The governor faced complaints that he personally profited from his campaign’s aircraft rentals from a company he partly owned, that he illegally used state campaign funds for legal bills related to a federal ethics investigation when he was a member of Congress and that he accepted campaign contributions that exceeded limits. The state ethics commission cleared Deal of major ethics violations in July 2012 while finding he made “technical defects” in a series of personal financial and campaign finance reports. Deal agreed to pay fees totaling $3,350.

Holly LaBerge

Before her appointment as executive secretary of the state ethics commission in August 2011, she was a lobbyist for the state Public Defenders Standards Council. She reportedly said that the governor owed her after the commission cleared him of major ethics violations in July 2012.

Stacey Kalberman

The former executive secretary of the state ethics commission was forced out of the position in June 2011 after then-Chairman Patrick Millsaps said a looming budget crisis for the commission had required him to cut her salary by 30 percent. Prior to that, Kalberman said she twice asked Millsaps to sign subpoenas involving the commission’s investigation into the complaints against Deal.

Sherilyn Streicker

Streicker was Kalberman’s top assistant and the investigator in the complaints against Deal. Her position was eliminated as a result of the commission’s financial difficulties, Millsaps said.

Patrick Millsaps

Millsaps was appointed to the state ethics commission in February 2009. He was chairman of the commission when it cut Kalberman’s pay from $120,000 to $85,000 and eliminated Streicker’s position. Millsaps resigned from the commission in November 2011 after a dispute arose about whether he had exceeded the legal amount of time on the commission. He later joined the presidential campaign of former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich, eventually rising to the position of chief of staff of the campaign.

Elisabeth Murray-Obertein

Murray-Obertein is a staff attorney with the ethics commission who claims that LaBerge intervened in Deal’s ethics case and repeatedly bragged of her relationship with the governor.

John Hair

Hair is a former information technology specialist with the ethics commission who claims he was fired for “frivolous” reasons after he refused to remove documents from Deal’s ethics case file. He said he “blew the whistle” to reclaim his reputation.

Federal investigators have questioned a state ethics commission attorney who raised concerns about the panel’s investigation into Gov. Nathan Deal, the leader of the embattled agency said Thursday.

The commission’s head, Holly LaBerge, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution after a request under the Open Records Act that her staff attorney, Elisabeth Murray-Obertein, had talked with the FBI. Murray-Obertein’s attorney, Brian Sutherland, also confirmed she had spoken with federal agents but declined to say what was discussed.

Murray-Obertein is a key figure in the allegations lodged in a pair of whistle-blower lawsuits accusing LaBerge of bragging about her relationship with Deal and saying that he “owed her” after the commission dismissed the most serious campaign finance complaints raised in its investigation of the governor.

And a former ethics staffer, ex-computer specialist John Hair, said in an interview that under orders from superiors he altered and removed dozens of documents in the governor’s case file as the review of five complaints accusing Deal of misusing campaign funds in his 2010 election was pending. His attorney, Kim Worth, would not say whether the FBI was also questioning her client.

The allegations made by Murray-Obertein and Hair raised concerns about the independence of the ethics agency charged with holding elected officials accountable in its review of the complaints against Deal.

Who initiated the questioning of Murray-Obertein and the subject of the probe was unclear. Deal attorney Randy Evans said Deal and his aides have not been contacted by federal investigators and they have nothing to hide. He suggested the claims come from “disgruntled employees” seeking legal settlements from the state.

“This has nothing to do with us,” Evans said. “We have been very careful throughout this process.”

Legal analysts said FBI agents typically treat an inquiry the same regardless of whether they are responding to a complaint or they opened a file on their own initiative.

“Federal investigations initially question the person making the complaint and any third-party source,” said Page Pate, a criminal defense attorney who represented former state House Speaker Terry Coleman in a campaign finance probe. “They generally gather as much information as they can from that source before they confront someone who is the target.”

Deal faces new scrutiny after the AJC’s September report that Hair and Murray-Obertein, in sworn testimony, accused LaBerge of interfering with the Deal investigation and ordered documents involved in the investigation removed from the file. She has denied those accusations in sworn testimony, and her attorney said his client welcomed an investigation.

Since then, the newspaper has disclosed legal filings that showed two Republican members of the commission worked with the governor’s office to tap LaBerge as executive director before the position became vacant and a claim by Murray-Obertein that the panel’s chairman pressured her to quietly settle cases against Deal.

Deal’s office said it’s not unusual for a state agency to consult aides over a possible hire, even if the investigation was actively investigating Deal at the time. And Deal said he has no knowledge of the inner workings at the ethics commission, which is fraught with “personal agendas” from employees not under his oversight.

In an interview Thursday, the governor challenged Hair to document what was removed from the case file. Hair has said he didn’t scrutinize the dozens of documents he removed and altered from the file but said he believes some of the data included financial information.

“To my knowledge, no documents were taken out of the record,” Deal said. “I certainly have no reason for anything to be removed. And if somebody did so, they should come forward and tell people what they removed, what they deleted.”