Fulton County Superior Court Judge Ural Glanville was not happy, and he made that displeasure clear. This week he levied a $10,000 fine against Holly LaBerge, the executive secretary of the state ethics commission, and another $10,000 fine against the state attorney general’s office, ruling that they had willfully withheld evidence.
Their behavior “not only amounts to a flagrant disregard for the basic rules governing litigation and the fair resolution of legal disputes in the state of Georgia, but also an injustice and an undermining of the confidence imposed by the citizens of the state of Georgia in the legal system,” Glanville concluded.
Glanville’s ruling is the latest in a long string of events that began with allegations of wrongdoing in the financing of Gov. Nathan Deal’s 2010 campaign. And it’s important to judge it in its full context.
More than three years ago, the two top employees of the state ethics commission prepared subpoenas demanding documents from Deal’s campaign. Politically connected members of the ethics commission then blocked the subpoenas, in effect squashing the investigation. They then took their coverup a step further by forcing the ouster of the two employees who dared to seek the subpoenas, creating a false cover story for the decision.
In effect, they perpetrated a coverup, and then a coverup of their coverup.
It’s important to note that none of that is in serious dispute. Earlier this year, a jury heard convincing evidence that the two ethics commission employees had been fired in retaliation for pressing the case against the governor too hard. They learned that the governor’s office had been involved in finding a new executive secretary to head the commission that was supposed to be investigating him. They heard allegations that the new executive secretary, Holly LaBerge, had improperly intervened on Deal’s behalf. All in all, they heard enough to award the ousted executive secretary $1.14 million in damages, back pay and attorney fees. (Whistleblower cases filed by three other former ethics commission employees were settled out of court, raising the total cost to taxpayers to more than $3 million.)
But thanks to LaBerge and the attorney general’s office, there were some things that the jury did not learn. They did not learn of a memo written by LaBerge in which she described inappropriate attempts by the governor’s staff to pressure her into a favorable ruling. They did not see email messages and texts from Deal’s staff members to LaBerge.
The attorney general’s office has argued, implausibly, that the memorandum from LaBerge was not relevant. But Glanville clearly disagreed: “Without question, the subject memorandum, e-mails, and text messages were relevant to the claims and issues raised in the (case).”
In effect, we’ve now witnessed a coverup of a coverup of a coverup, and Georgia politicians are now arguing over how to change the law to avoid such scandals in the future. That debate is useful. In the end, however, voters are — or ought to be — a better bulwark against corruption than are laws. People get the government that they demand, and so far, this is what Georgia has demanded.
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