Federal prosecutors have siezed the cell phone of the wife of the former top financial officer for the City of Atlanta, summoned his step-daughter to testify before the grand jury and issued subpoenas for his bank records, according to a recent motion filed in federal court.
The motion, filed by Jim Beard's lawyer, acknowledges that the former chief financial officer is one of "numerous apparent subjects" of an ongoing U.S. Department of Justice corruption investigation into the administration of former Mayor Kasim Reed.
At its core, the 23-page filing involves a legal dispute over attorney-client privilege, but it also gives a rare glimpse inside the government's intense investigaiton of a man who once oversaw how the city spent billions of dollars — some of which Beard used to purchase fully automatic assualt rifles and other firearms.
The motion, filed by attorney Scott Grubman, claims the government sent FBI agents to the home of Beard’s minor son in Gainsville, Florida, to ask if Beard paid child support.
The document also says agents have questioned many of Beard’s friends and acquaintances “at their homes or places of employment to ask completely irrelevant questions regarding Mr. Beard’s personal relationships.”
It also says that the FBI issued a subpoena to Facebook for Beard’s social media posts.
In the motion, Grubman asks for a court order barring prosecutors from reviewing emails from Beard’s private AOL account during his time in office. He also seeks to disqualify the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Northern District of Georgia from investigating Beard.
“Despite not having been charged with, let alone convicted of, a crime, the government has engaged in a campaign of repeated harassment and intimidation that has caused Mr. Beard great financial and personal harm,” the motion said.
Grubman argues that the justice department’s subpoena to AOL for all of Beard’s emails from August 1, 2015 to April 1, 2018 could have captured privileged emails between Beard and his attorney.
The time period for the emails would cover instances where Beard used the Atlanta Police Department to help him purchase machine guns and had police issue Glock handguns to him, as The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported last year.
According to court filings, the Justice Department has employed a separate “filtering team” to separate emails that may be privileged before handing them over to prosecutors involved in the case.
In its response to the motion, federal prosecutors said that they used a filter team at Beard’s request and that Beard hadn’t hired Grubman to defend him during that time period. Investigators also said that the City of Atlanta had no objection to the review of emails on Beard’s private account between Beard and attorneys the city had hired on other matters.
Over the past two years, the federal investigators have issued subpoenas to the city regarding Beard's city credit card purchases and for records involving the weapons.
Caren Morrison, a former federal prosecutor who now teaches law at Georgia State University, said being the subject of a federal investigation can be painful, but investigators want to cover all their bases.
Grubman’s motion shows they are looking at numerous sources of information involving Beard, she said.
“I think they are just doing their job,” Morrison said. “It’s a criminal investigation, and it’s a tough business.”
