Georgia State Sen. Jason Carter (D-Decatur), the grandson of former President Jimmy Carter, speaks at a news conference in Atlanta in this 2013 file photo.ATLANTA – A memo by the head of the state ethics commission in which she claims an attorney for Gov. Nathan Deal threatened her agency during its investigation of complaints against the governor demonstrates a “pattern of intimidation and interference on the part of the governor’s office,” Democrat Jason Carter said Tuesday.
Carter, a state senator running against Deal in the November election, also renewed his call for a state investigation and appealed to Attorney General Sam Olens to appoint an independent investigator.
“We still don’t have answers to what it was that was so bad that they went to these great lengths to hide,” Carter told reporters. “We have no one who is willing to apparently investigate the governor’s office and what is clear misconduct at a minimum and probably illegal conduct on the part of his staff.”
Olens has said he doesn’t have the authority to hire someone independent of his office and also does not want to interfere with two other investigations involving the commission. Carter said he disagrees with Olens’ decision, adding he was concerned the memo was not released earlier during civil lawsuits against the commission.
Holly LaBerge, the commission’s executive secretary, wrote in the memo obtained Monday from the Attorney General’s Office that Deal’s chief counsel, Ryan Teague, in a 2012 phone call told her it wasn’t in their or the agency’s best interest for the cases to proceed to a hearing and said efforts to restore the agency’s rule-making authority might not happen if the complaints weren’t resolved.