Attorney General Sam Olens on Thursday defended his office’s actions in handling a controversial ethics memo and said a judge was wrong to blame his team for failing to divulge its existence in a whistleblower lawsuit.
Olens, in an interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, again laid the blame for any failure to produce documents at the feet of state ethics commission director Holly LaBerge. It was LaBerge, Olens said, who failed to produce copies of texts and emails she described in the memo that showed top aides to Gov. Nathan Deal reached out to her in July 2012, a week before the commission was to rule on complaints against Deal’s 2010 campaign.
Olens said his staff attorney who handled the case “on numerous occasions after receipt of the memo specifically asked (LaBerge) if there was more documentation she needed to send us and was repeatedly told, ‘No.’ ”
The ethics commission, formally known as the Government Transparency and Campaign Finance Commission, late Thursday announced a specially called meeting for 4:30 p.m. Friday. The only items on the agenda are closed-door sessions to discuss pending litigation and personnel issues.
Olens said Fulton County Superior Court Judge Ural Glanville was wrong to sanction his office $10,000 Wednesday. The judge levied an identical fine against LaBerge.
Meanwhile, the AJC has learned, Glanville met privately Wednesday with lawyers for the state, former ethics commission director Stacey Kalberman and state-appointed attorneys for the commission and LaBerge, prior to issuing his ruling. LaBerge’s private attorney, Lee Parks, was not there.
During the meeting in his chambers, Glanville was reportedly openly critical of Olens’ staff — much more so than he was in his order. While he sanctioned the Attorney General’s Office, he accused LaBerge of being “dishonest and non-transparent” in his order.
Olens on Thursday stood by his office’s decision not to give the memo to attorneys for Kalberman. Kalberman sued the state in 2012 and claimed she was forced from office a year earlier for aggressively investigating the complaints against Deal. A Fulton County jury in April agreed and awarded her $700,000 in damages plus an additional $450,000 in back pay and attorneys fees.
The AJC first reported the existence of the memo in July. Olens has said the memo did not have to be turned over to Kalberman's attorneys because it did not meet the criteria of documents they demanded as part of the lawsuit.
But the memo also includes word-for-word details of the texts LaBerge received from Deal Chief of Staff Chris Riley and chief counsel Ryan Teague. At least five lawyers in Olens’ office reviewed the memo, but it remains unclear whether any of them specifically asked LaBerge if she still had copies of the texts. It was revealed last month that she did.
Asked whether his staff asked LaBerge specifically for the texts, Olens said, “I’m not sure we totally know the answer.”
Olens said Senior Assistant Attorney General Bryan Webb, who defended the commission and LaBerge against Kalberman’s lawsuit, “on several occasions, as he told the court, asked for such documentation and was told none was responsive. Which clearly was not accurate.”
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