At first blush, the move in Cobb County to dig up emails on Braves stadium opponents and a couple of commissioners who are not on Chairman Tim Lee’s “team” seems a bit like Dick Nixon’s enemies list.
A local private investigator is fishing for 10,000-plus emails between some county officials and a list of characters who have supporting roles in the long-running Atlanta Braves stadium saga.
The Acworth private eye, who is representing a secret client, filed a massive open records request seeking the emails of two of the five commissioners, the county’s spokesman and two residents, Susan McCoy, who filed a federal securities complaint over the $400 million public financing plan, and Tom Cheek, who filed an ethics complaint against Lee. McCoy, incidentally, is the lawyer who had a late-night visitor pour gasoline all over her front-yard fence and light it up just days after she castigated Lee at a Cobb County Commission meeting.
The private eye also seeks emails between those county officials and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The request seems like an effort to give this newspaper a bit of its own medicine. My guess is it’s to see if reporter Dan Klepal, who has acted like a terrier with a mouthful of Tim Lee’s pant leg, has been up to no good as he has continually poked holes in the chairman’s version of how the negotiations with the Braves transpired.
One could suppose someone wants to determine whether Klepal is engaged in some Lee-bashing or Braves-hating conspiracy with commissioners Bob Ott and Lisa Cupid or even Robert Quigley, who has been scooped up in this fishing net. It seems odd Quigley is included here. He’s a straight-laced former cop who has served as the county’s spokesman since the 1990s, back when Lee was still in the political feeder system as a homeowners association leader.
I understand that we newspaper guys are fair game. We report out of a six-story building with lots of windows and we do throw a lot of stones.
At the core of the matter is whether Lee unilaterally brought in a silk-stocking attorney to negotiate with the Braves on the county’s behalf. It turns out one commissioner on his own can’t hire a lawyer to work for the county. For a long while, Lee growled that he Absolutely Did Not! do that. But the AJC kept coming up with records (lots of records) saying the opposite.
That the newest round of political espionage is a secret operation gives some folks the idea that a cadre of Cobb Braves boosters may be behind it all. After all, Lee and his buddy at the Cobb Chamber, Brooks Mathis, snagged the Braves away from Atlanta last year in a round of top-secret negotiations they called Project Intrepid.
But it would be unfair to automatically credit Lee with being the field marshal of this newest operation. In fact, someone who really doesn’t like the good chairman could have hired the private eye and spent $1,600 to make it look like Lee was a vindictive, conniving pol. And if that were the case, $1,600 and the cost of a private-eye retainer would seem an affordable way to damage Lee even further.
It certainly would be cheaper than renting a billboard and plastering a photo of him wearing a Yankees cap.
Tom Cheek, a middle-aged software salesman by day, last week strolled before the county board to complain about the recent investigation. He said Lee and his minions have called him malicious, furious, bitter, desperate and petty for filing an ethics complaint against the chairman. The complaint mirrors Klepal’s story about Lee hiring the off-the-books attorney.
“Is that the price one pays for public comment?” Cheek asked, referring to the email hunt.
He said Lee has been slippery when responding to the allegations. Cheek provided his own imagined transcript in advance of Tuesday night’s ethics hearing:
“Tim, did you hire an attorney?”
“Nope, I had a private conversation with personal counsel.”
“Because it LOOKS like you hired an attorney.”
“Well, I didn’t, because I can’t.”
“So, you did something that you are not allowed to do?”
“Yes. I mean no. Yes no.”
Lee didn’t attend the hearing — his lawyer did — in which the ethics board decided 5-1 to proceed to a full, trial-like hearing. Afterward, a private spokeswoman for the chairman said: “It goes to show if someone is willing to twist the truth enough, the board has no other option but to continue forward with due diligence and gather further evidence, or lack thereof.
“Tonight’s decision simply means the board wants to gather more information before rendering a decision. There is absolutely no finding of guilt and I am happy to work with the board to answer additional questions.”
Cheek became active in watchdog efforts after his son died in a suspicious fire in 2012 and he felt the county medical examiner’s office inadequately investigated the case. Cheek’s efforts, after a year of digging, provoked a shakeup in the office this year, with the medical examiner stepping down.
Cheek said Commissioner Cupid, who’s on the email investigation list, lauded his efforts, saying, “To those who complain one citizen cannot get anything done, Tom Cheek proves you are wrong.”
During his visits to address the county board, Cheek said, “I observed which commissioners were open and which did not take the speakers seriously.”
He categorizes Lee in the latter category. So when he read about Lee and the secret lawyer, Cheek said he took Cupid’s words to heart. Filing an ethics complaint against Lee seemed like his next natural mission.
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