The Gwinnett County ethics board has reached a decision on the ethics complaint against Commissioner Tommy Hunter — but isn’t announcing it yet.
After the ethics board deliberated for about 45 minutes Wednesday, chairman David Will said the panel’s attorney will put its decision in writing. The board will then hold another meeting to announce its decision.
That meeting will be scheduled “shortly,” Will said.
The ethics complaint against Hunter was filed Feb. 6, about three weeks after the commissioner's Facebook post calling U.S. Rep. John Lewis a "racist pig" was first reported by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The complaint argues that that Facebook post, which also referred to Democrats as "Demonrats" and a "bunch of idiots," and several others violate tenets of the county's 2011 ethics ordinance.
Hunter had declined to participate in the ethics process whatsoever until Tuesday afternoon, when he hired attorney Dwight Thomas to represent him before the ethics board. Thomas — who recently won a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of DeKalb County's ethics board — filed two legal documents Wednesday morning: an injunction to stop the ethics hearing, and another challenging the constitutionality of the ethics board's existence.
The ethics board voted to proceed despite not having a ruling on either.
Hunter, who has declined to step down amid months of protests and calls for his resignation, appeared during Wednesday morning’s hearing but did not testify. The ethics board had declined to allow Hunter’s attorney, Dwight Thomas, to participate in the proceedings because he was hired less than 24 hours before the long-scheduled hearing.
Hunter was asked several questions but repeatedly cited a Georgia code section that echoes the Fifth Amendment of the United States Constitution.
Christine Koehler, one of the attorneys who filed the ethics complaint, eventually gave up. Hunter and his attorney left before she moved on to Robin Martinelli, who had served Hunter last week with a subpoena to testify at Wednesday’s hearing.
Under oath, Martinelli described Hunter as “gleeful and very talkative” when she presented him with his subpoena. She said Hunter described the ethics process as “childish” and “liberal stuff.”
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