Commissioner Tim Boyd moves to dismiss his criminal extortion case

Brent Lambert, left, and Tim Boyd are shown in this composite photo.
Brent Lambert, left, and Tim Boyd are shown in this composite photo.

An indicted Hamilton County Commissioner who won his re-election earlier this week is asking a specially appointed judge to dismiss his criminal charge.

In a motion filed this morning, Tim Boyd's defense attorney said the conversations he had in February with defeated campaign opponent and East Ridge Mayor Brent Lambert is politically protected speech.

"In a political campaign, telling your opponent that you will release negative research information, if the candidate stays in the race, is not a crime," Lee Davis wrote. "It is political speech."

That public information concerned $5,000 in political contributions, $3,000 of which Lambert accepted from Interstate 75 Exit 1 developers in the summer of 2017, just days after the East Ridge City Council approved a $4 million bond for one of its projects. Lambert then used that money to pay off a loan from a 2014 campaign.

Boyd's request to dismiss his Class D felony comes a day before he is scheduled to plead guilty or not guilty before Andrew Freiberg, a Bradley County, Tenn., judge who was appointed to the case. Boyd has already posted a $2,500 bond and maintains this is a political setup.

Lambert, who is also the chief operating officer at the Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum, said he received a call on the evening of Feb. 15 from his employer's attorney, Allen McCallie, that Boyd planned to release some damaging information unless he dropped out of the District 8 race.

When he called Boyd the next morning, Lambert said he recorded their conversation so he would have a witness.

He then took the information to Hamilton County District Attorney General Neal Pinkston, who arranged a meeting between Lambert and the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation on Feb. 19.

After that meeting, Lambert called Boyd two more times on Feb. 20 and Feb. 21 and recorded those conversations as well. Tennessee is a one-party consent state, meaning you don't have to tell someone when you're recording them.

Lambert played those phone calls during a press conference in April where an off-duty police officer turned interested East Ridge residents away at the door.

According to his indictment, Boyd unlawfully coerced Lambert for the purposes of obtaining property, services, or some kind of advantage or immunity. Defense attorneys have previously said the perceived advantage here is Boyd telling his opponent to drop out to gain an upper hand in the election.

But Davis said Lambert had "a plan in mind" when he recorded these calls.

Davis said Boyd has every right to publish or withhold information he discovered on his political opponent. He also has the right to discuss the consequences of releasing that information, Davis said.

"A discussion with Lambert concerning the facts may surface in the election is fully protected political speech," Davis wrote. "There is no place for the state to burden Boyd with its view on the matter."

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