The solution to the low county pay Sheriff Victor Hill could offer Jonathan Newton to be his spokesman was to find a company to print a slick newsletter that would kick back some of the taxpayer dollars to supplement his salary, according to testimony Monday.
Newton, who was a spokesman for Hill during his first term in office, testified that the sheriff authorized county payment for invoices for printing a campaign newsletter so the aide could make thousands of dollars over what he got in his county paycheck.
Newton also told how Hill tossed him aside once he had lost the election and no longer needed him to write the book that started out as the sheriff’s autobiography but became a “tell all” book that would reveal the secrets of Clayton County officials.
“I was used garbage. I was throw away material. I was no longer useful,” Newton said, explaining that he was assigned to a post at the jail after the election.
Hill, now in his second term as sheriff, is on trial on 28 counts of racketeering, theft by taking, influencing a witness and violating his oath of office. Hill is charged with illegally using his office in his first term, 2005-2008, for personal gain.
Newton is facing felony theft charges for allegedly getting kickbacks from the company that printed a campaign newsletter, the Sheriff’s Star, that was supposedly paid for with county money and for working on Hill’s book while he was supposed to be on duty at the Sheriff’s Office.
“Sheriff Hill explained to me (in 2008) he could no longer pay me from the campaign. He said I needed to find a printer who would pay me as a subcontractor,” Newton said.
A company in Marietta agreed to the arrangement and Newton received three checks, one for almost $13,000, from Advantage Fulfillment Company after Clayton County paid the business for printing it.
For a while after Hill lost the Aug. 5, 2008, primary runoff, Hill still wanted Newton’s help writing his autobiography. Newton said the focus of the book changed in October.
“It went from being a autobiography to a tell all book about all the dirt he knew on people in Clayton County,” Newton said.
Newton, who after the election was assigned to great visitors to the jail, recorded a phone conversation he had with Hill in which the outgoing sheriff gave him instructions for working on the book while on county time.
“We would stay there, him writing or dictating and me writing. That’s the way it went until it was untenable,” Newton said.
According to a recording of a Nov. 6, 2008, telephone conversation played for the jury, Hill told Newton to come to his house where they could work together.
“Let’s get to work today and they that way you ain’t got to work tonight. I’ll call the chief (deputy) and tell him that your assignment has changed,” Hill said.
Newton testified he never went back to Hill’s house after that Nov. 6, 2008, telephone conversation and that he eventually took the recording to law enforcement.
Newton said he resigned on Nov. 29, 2008.
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