ATLANTA -- Jason Carter is calling for a new investigation into Gov. Nathan Deal's 2010 election campaign after new allegations surfaced that a staffer threatened the director of the state ethics commission.
Holly LaBerge is the director of the state ethics commission. She was appointed by Deal midway into an investigation into the governor's 2010 election campaign.
One of LaBerge's co-workers told a court that LaBerge boasted of her ties to Deal. But a memo LaBerge wrote on July 17, 2012 suggests otherwise.
The memo documents a phone call LaBerge received from Ryan Teague, the governor's executive counsel. The ethics commission had a hearing scheduled on the Deal investigation. LaBerge wrote, "Ryan informed me that it was not in the agency's best interest for these cases to go to a hearing Monday."
"Miss LaBerge felt unfairly pressured," said Lee Parks, LaBerge's attorney.
Parks says the phone call was a threat to the LaBerge, the woman who ran the agency.
"Well if you're appointed by the governor, and the governor's chief of staff is taking that aggressive an approach with you, you would probably feel like the ice was fairly thin under your feet," said Parks. "That's how she felt."
LaBerge wrote that "I responded by expressing my surprise that the threat was being used to make the complaints go away."
Deal's spokesperson, Brian Robinson, issued a statement saying:
· The governor's staff contacted Holly LaBerge at the request of the campaign's attorneys to ask her to return their phone calls and respond to their questions. Ryan Teague is a member of the governor's legal team and Chris Riley was inquiring for logistical purposes. The Deal team faced a time crunch because the Deal for Governor hearing was scheduled for the next week. The case had dragged on for two-plus years, and we wanted to move forward. This was the week before two big cases for the commission, one involving DFG and one involving Democrat nominee Roy Barnes. As to other comments in the memo, we are not going to engage in a "he said; she said."
· There seems to be confusion about our "involvement" with the commission. I've heard several times, "You guys have insisted that you had no involvement with the commission." Those quotes were about the hiring and firing of staff. We had not have a say on those issues. On the matter of our case, of course we discussed it with the commission staff. There were plenty of requests from the commission staff, many letters exchanged, many documents turned over, many conversations to move the process along. That's how the case system works. Talking with the commission's staff point of contact was the right and proper way to work on our case.
· The charges against the governor's office from current and former staff completely contradict each other. The LaBerge memo backs up what we have long insisted: The governor's office played no role in personnel issues, the commission staff prosecuted our case more vigorously and more in depth than any case in commission history, we were granted no slack and no favors, and we won our case on the merits over the objections of commission staff.
Jason Carter, Deal's opponent in this year's gubernatorial election, is calling for an investigation.
Carter has repeatedly called for more investigation into Deal's ties to the state ethics commission. On Tuesday, he said more of the same, claiming the latest leak is clear evidence that a cover-up took place.
"We have no one who is apparently willing to investigate the governor's office and what is clear misconduct at a minimum and probably illegal conduct on the part of his staff," Carter said.
Carter says it's clear now that there is a pattern of intimidation and interference by the governor's office in this case. He again pointed to the $3 million tab taxpayers pick up in the case by payments made to former ethics commission staffers who challenged the state.
The governor's campaign is dismissing Carter's claims as merely election year attacks.
Stacey Kalberman, the initial whistleblower in this case, claims she had never seen the leaked memo before Monday and considers it critical evidence in her case. She says she will be discussing how to proceed from here with her lawyer.
Attorney Kimberly Worth, representing Kalberman, released a statement Tuesday evening:
We are shocked and disappointed to learn the Attorney General's office did not believe it was under any legal obligation to produce the materials recently identified by Holly LaBerge. These materials go to the heart of Ms. Kalberman's claim in her lawsuit that she was terminated for investigating the Deal campaign and then replaced with a person that the Governor's office apparently believed it could influence.
The Attorney General's office has asserted that a memorandum recently identified by Ms. LaBerge was not "responsive" to any of Ms. Kalberman's discovery requests. To the contrary, Ms. Kalberman requested the "entire Deal Investigation file," which should have included the LaBerge memorandum. Certainly, if the Governor was under investigation for alleged ethics violations, a memo which includes purported threats from his attorney should be part of that file. There is no legal justification for alienating this damaging memorandum from the Deal Investigation file, especially as the file that was produced during litigation contained numerous other memoranda drafted by Commission staff.
In addition, Ms. Kalberman requested all correspondence between Ms. LaBerge and anyone from the Governor's office, which would necessarily include any text messages Ms. LaBerge received from the Governor's counsel and chief of staff. Ms. LaBerge quoted in her memorandum particular text messages with the Governor's counsel and chief of staff, unquestionably putting the Attorney General's office on notice that responsive correspondence existed and should be produced, and in fact rendering the memorandum itself responsive to Ms. Kalberman's request for correspondence. Today, however, the Attorney General's office has attempted to deflect attention to Ms. LaBerge for allegedly withholding emails containing these text messages, all the while ignoring its own discovery obligations under the law, which include, without limitation, contacting Ms. LaBerge upon receipt of the memorandum and asking for the text messages that she received from the Governor's office.
Finally, and even more disturbing, Ms. Kalberman made an Open Records Request in July 2013 seeking any and all e-mails to and from Ms. LaBerge's personal email account concerning (among other things) the Deal investigation. As we now know, these text messages were sent by Ms. LaBerge to her personal email account, yet those emails were not produced either in discovery or in response to our office's open records request. The text messages, emails, and the memorandum itself were subject to production by the Attorney General's office both during and after discovery, as attorneys have a legal obligation to continually supplement our discovery responses when new information is obtained.
Notably, at trial, the Attorney General's office moved to exclude all evidence related to the resolution of the Deal Complaints.
At this time, Ms. Kalberman is exploring her legal remedies.
