Speaker 1: What's going on. Thank you so much for listening to
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smartphone or tablet, and again, thank you so much for
your support. Let's start with our Charlotte City Council corruption, chicanery,
whatever you'd like to call it. We have a new
chapter in this unfolding saga now that the North Carolina
State Auditor has announced via a letter to the Charlotte
City Council and mayor that he will be probing them.
E he will be investigating them. Yes, he's investigating the
City of Charlotte over it's reported payoff, or, as the
Charlotte Observer calls it, a settlement. I think it's a payoff.
I think a settlement occurs when you have litigation and
there isn't litigation. There wasn't litigation, there were no lawsuits filed.
So it's just a payoff or a payout. If you'd
like a little bit more palatable of a term, it's
a payoff to the Charlotte Mecklenburg Police Chief, Johnny Jennings,
over what we don't know, but as best I can tell,
I'm going with the hurt feelings narrative, because again, there's
no lawsuit filed, and without a lawsuit filed, there's no
outline of harms actually suffered or alleged, And even the
ones that are alleged were not defamatory because they were
not public to a third party, and if they were
public to a third party, they were only made public
by apparently the chief himself, in trying to get an
ethics complaint filed with the city attorney against City Councilman
tarc Bakari. Tark Bacari no longer on city council. Edwin
Peacock was named his replacement on Monday. Tark Bacari took
a job up in the Trump administration, but before he
left there was a complaint, an ethics complaint filed against
him with the city attorney. That ethics complaint was filed
by the president of the Charlotte Chapter of the NAACP,
woman by the name of krinn Mac. That complaint contained
language that came from an email exchange that she had
had with the police chief's right hand and I guess
left hand, so I call them the hands of the chief,
the chief's hands that crafted the language that then wound
up in the ethics complaint. And apparently they reports are
that she submitted a Freedom of Information Act request in
order to get evidence of the nature of the defamatory
language that Councilman Bakari used against Police Chief Jennings. And
in submitting that FOYER request, she knew apparently the keywords
from the private text message exchanges between the chief and Bokari.
So that tells me that the chief gave the text
messages or told her to foya the city for these
text messages and use these keywords to ensure that she
got the correct evidence that she could then incorporate into
the ethics complaint again with other language that was crafted
by the hands of the chief, and submits that to
the city attorney. The city attorney then says, no to
your ethics complaint. No, there's no merit here for an
ethics violination. But then the city attorney, the interim city Attorney,
Anthony Fox, turns around and advises. So the reports are
that the city council needs to approve the payoff to
the chief, reportedly of about three hundred thousand dollars. We
don't know if it's three hundred thousand, two hundred thousand,
a billion. We don't know because the city attorney refuses
to release the settlement the amount, what for whatever, and
he claims it's part of the personnel records of the chief.
That is an opinion that is not shared by basically
any other lawyer. Then you have the matter of the
way the city council voted on the payoff because the
dismissal of the ethics complaint was apparently reported not known
to several of the city council members. How many don't know.
They won't talk about that. We don't know who was
aware of the ethics complaint dismissal before they agreed to
the payoff, some of them. Some council members have told
reporters in town that they were not aware of the
ethics complaint dismissal and that that may have changed their
vote knowing that information. So who knew about the ethics
complaint dismissal? Why would the city attorney dismiss the ethics complaint,
but then advise the payoff. What was the legal rationale
for it, and what are the harms alleged? We don't know.
Defamation requires there be a third person that hears the defamation.
Otherwise it's not defamation. If I call you a bunch
of bad names and it's just us on the phone
together or me in a text message with you, and
I don't say it in public, and you don't say
these things in public, then there is no defamation.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: There isn't any third party to hear the defamatory language,
So why would you settle? It doesn't make any sense.
None of this makes any sense except what I hypothesize
based on the reports and what limited information we have.
My hypothesis is simply that during the fight over the vests,
the bulletproof vests that Bakari said a lot of rank
and file officers want to wear instead of the under
the shirt vest, they wanted the outer carrier vests. And
what I suspect occurred, I don't know this. I want
to be very clear, this is wild speculation. What I
suspect may have occurred, though, is there were council members
that did not want to take a public stance by
voting no on a budget item. That's my bet. They
didn't want to be seen as crossing CMPD officers that
were asking for this other bulletproof vest, particularly after four
law enforcement officers, one of whom was CMPD, were murdered
while trying to serve and arrest warrant in East Charlotte.
They were shot and killed, and the rank and file
cops now asking for these vests. Tark Bacari tries to
put it into the budget, and they didn't want to
have to vote no. And so during what's called the
straw voting, where you have a budget that comes in
that the proposal comes in from the city manager and
they do in. They're not binding votes, that's why they
call them straw votes, but it's a budget workshop and
the council members will just kind of to raise their hands.
They'll go line by line through various budget items and
they'll say, all right, who supports this spending and you'll
get a show of hands, and if there's a majority,
then it stays in the budget. If there is not
a majority, it doesn't get into the budget or it
gets cut. So that straw vote meeting that they had,
but Cary pulls the funding request for the vests, but
then promises that he will make this a public campaign.
He will raise the money privately. Right, He's going to
go out and he's going to get a go fund
me set up. He's going to raise a bunch of money.
He's going to get donations. City council not wanting to
go on the record as voting against bulletproof vests for
cops in the aftermath of the murder of four law
enforcement officers, but they so they didn't want to have
to do that. So what do they do. They asked
the chief to say, no, make the chief the face
of the opposition to this, because nobody would you doubt
the chief's commitment to his own officers. So if you
make him the face of the opposition, and he comes
up with this excuse of well, the vests make the
cops look too militarized. It's purely esthetic. Not the most
solid of arguments, to be sure, But he goes out
and makes that case. I because the argument isn't so solid.
He is mocked and ridiculed for that. So maybe the
defamation was actually against the city council for hanging him
out to dry and not standing up and supporting him
while he became the sole face of the opposition to
the vests. Because when they came out and the city
council did their press conference, not about the vests and
not about the payoff, but about how one of the
council members was leaking information and accusing the city of corruption,
that made them very angry. They call their press conference,
and what do they do. They praise the chief. They
apologize to the chief for not standing with him publicly
last year during the vest fight. Why would you do that?
Was a public apology part of your settlement agreement? Or
maybe it was actually heartfelt that they do apologize. We
should have stood up for you, We should not have
been cowards and let you take all of the slings
and arrows on this debate. That's kind of that's what
I think might have happened. Again speculative. I do not
know that. But now the state Auditor would like some answers,
and that is entirely appropriate. I welcome it. I'm glad
for it, Thank goodness. State Auditor Dave Bullock announced an
investigation in a letter to Mayor vy Lyles, and it
was shared with the media by his office yesterday afternoon
after I got off the air. Not that I'm bitter
about it, but no, I'm just kidding. But it did
come in after I got off the air. I have
the letter. I'll give it's not long. I'll give you
the highlights. Well, I'll probably just read the whole thing
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make memories that'll last a lifetime. I have a couple
messages here. This one is from Rodney. In my opinion,
if the Charlotte City Council cooperates in any way with
the State Auditor in this investigation, then they are hiding
a lot more than people know, and they just want
him to be done as quickly as possible. So I
hope his office digs deep into the council's activities. I
had not even considered that.
Speaker 3: That's uh, yeah, they well, they've they've got a they've
got some decisions to make, both personally and at an
organizational level, Dave says, the way the council wanted to
keep the payment secret, I can't help but wonder about payoffs.
Speaker 1: Did the chief agree to a little payback to the
council members if he got his money? Was there collusion
or conspiracy? That's just where my mind goes when something
is meant to be secret. Yeah, Look, it could be
something as banal as they just didn't want people to
know because they didn't want to answer any questions, and
it would be embarrassing. They made a political calculation in
an election year to pay the chief, you know, assuage
his hurt feelings. We're sorry we didn't stand with you
against that mean, nasty tark Pacari. But he's gone now.
He can't hurt you anymore, you know. And now he's
up in the in the federal government. But he's in
a position regarding transportation, and the City of Charlotte would
very much like to have him be a conduit for
fun for light rail lines and you know, bus rapid transit,
electric vehicles, that kind of stuff. And so you don't
want to anger him now that he may have some
influence over millions, hundreds of millions, maybe even billions of
dollars in transit funding that the City of Charlotte would
very much like to secure. So you want to just
keep the payment to chief. You just want to pay
him off in quiet. He gets his money. It's a
hush money, it's a go away money. You know that
could be it don't know. So here's the letter from
State Auditor Dave Bullock to Mayor Lyles. But then the
City Council is also included on the CC. Constituent requests
and recent reporting involving the Charlotte City Council have raised
serious concerns regarding the potential disbursement of public dollars out
side of the public view. It is my understanding that
there is a possibility that as much as one hundred
thousand to three hundred thousand in public dollars may It's italicized,
may have been given to Charlotte Mecklenburg Police Chief Johnny
Jennings for a legal settlement that may have been entered
into by the City Council. This is only what has
been gathered by the Auditor's office from news reports, social media,
and conversation. The truth of the matter remains unclear. While
answers to some of the more pressing questions could be
provided through quick release of information from your office, which
I strongly encourage. There remains a list of unknowns regarding
the potential settlement or payout to the police chief on
behalf of the citizens of North Carolina and the nearly
one million people who call Charlotte home. The North Carolina
Office of the State Auditor will be investigating this matter.
The Office of the State Auditor will be asking how
much money was reportedly paid out, whether a payment exists.
We still don't even know that right, did they actually
cut the check yet, where did the money come from?
And several other pertinent questions. Even if the payment was
worth one penny, it should be disclosed to the public
in a timely and transparent manner. There is no tax
dollar free from public scrutiny. Our office will be in
contact to establish lines of communication and engagement city councils
in trouble, as they should be. So thank you to
North Carolina Auditor Dave Bollock and his team his investigators.
Thank you. They obviously heard and this is a right there.
The Auditor gets involved in stuff aside from like your routine,
regularly scheduled state mandated audits and the like. The auditor
is only aware of this kind of this kind of
an issue. If you get people that file on file
a complaint through the website or their hotline. That's where
you go to whistleblow. If you think there is some waste, fraud, abuse, corruption,
something that requires an audit, you go through the state
Auditor's office and you ask for that. You ask for
some attention to be paid to it. The other way
is through media accounts, right, which of course then inform
the public, and then the public and file complaints. But
the auditor's office they become aware of the things through
media reports as well. So that's apparently the only sourcing. Well,
he also says and conversation. So I'm not sure who
his office has spoken with about this issue, but I
would imagine they've probably gotten some complaints from not just citizens,
but people maybe inside the Republican party, maybe some city
council members went to the auditor's office. Right, But this
is what the auditor is supposed to be doing, all right.
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video dot com. Here's a Pete tweet from Steve who says, Pete,
thanks for your breakdown of the shakedown gate. It's a contender.
I like it. I'm open to other ideas. How we
want to brand this this Charlotte City Council payoff corruption
scandal that has been brewing because you always need to
have a brand, you know, because so you put it
on the bottom of the TV, you know, with like
a hash tag on it. So d Stewart says that
the mayor should resign, and Melissa says, when you say
issue pete and by that I mean chic canery. Yes, yeah,
chic canery is I think that's a that's a sanitized
word for what I suspect is some form of corruption.
I don't know that, but I suspect it very strongly.
Let's go to the phones and talk with Rick. Hello, Rick,
welcome to the program.
Speaker 2: Hello. Yes, I'd like to say that I've seen some
original report on this from Steve Harrison, and what it
looks like is he said that there was a vote
of five to two with two people against the settlement.
As you know, there's the city Council's eleven people, so
you need a majority of six to pass something. They
needed seven for quorum. The original reporting said one of
the two people who voted no left the room, and
policies and procedures indicated that one of the two no
votes was changed to a yes.
Speaker 1: So what I read the when I read the Steve
Harrison piece at WFAE, and he's done good work on
this story. My interpretation was that if it was that
the no vote would have been cast. What happened was
there was another member that was in the meeting, but
before the vote they left, and that person who so
you're talking about, so was a five to two There
were seven voting, there would have been eight initially in
that closed session, and one left, and when that person left,
they did not count a vote because they didn't vote. However,
you are correct. The rules say that if you start
a meeting, if you're there at the beginning of a
meeting and then you have what's called an unexcused absence,
you leave. Any vote that is taken during the rest
of that meeting. When you leave is your vote is
counted as a yes vote. And that's been standard procedure
in Charlotte City Council meetings. I mean back when I
was covering council. That happened. That happened on more than
one occasion. Usually when they didn't want to take a
controversial vote, they would just leave or they would show
up just to get the yes vote, you know, on
the record, so they could whip the sufficient number of
votes and then the member would leave, so like that.
So that's my understanding. I don't know if what you're
telling me is that one of the two no votes
left and they had their vote counted as a no
before they left. But I don't I have not seen
that reported.
Speaker 2: Okay, I just read the Steve Harrison article. Yeah, and
I was wondering if we can get some good reporting
on this.
Speaker 1: Well, it's tough because it's a closed session, right, and
the city attorney has been browbeating all of the council
members that they're not allowed to leak anything, they're not
allowed to say anything about what happens in closed session
or else they're going to be investigated and could face
crime charges. And that's not true, not for this kind
of information. It's that's just not true. Now. It does
just it does harm the trust right among city council
members and staff that you're in a closed session meeting,
and if you're talking about stuff outside of closed session,
then you know they may not be, as you know,
interested in having an honest conversation in the closed sessions
with you in the future. That's one of the downsides
of leaking. But my understanding of the way the city
council rules operate is that you can't like if I like,
if you and I are both in the meeting and
we're both no votes, and we're like, I'm gonna vote no,
I'm gonna vote no, and then all of a sudden
you get called away. We don't count your vote as
a no vote because you're gone. But maybe that did happen.
I've just not seen that reported, and that wasn't my
understanding of the Harrison report. But yeah, but that is
the challenge that you face as a reporter, as Harrison
is trying to, you know, piece together what actually occurred
in the closed session. You've got council members that won't talk,
and so you have to try to get some of
them to talk anonymously and then corroborate each of the
anonymous accounts.
Speaker 2: I agree with everything you said, and it seems like
you and Steve are doing good reporting on this. But
like you said, it's hard to do good reporting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, it is very difficult. It costs money and resources,
and that's why a lot of newsrooms have been cutting
their staffs because they cannot afford. You know, you sit
out and sit outside of a closed session meeting and
they come out and they don't say anything, and now
you've just wasted, you know, three hours sitting outside the meeting,
and you don't have a story to turn and that's
not helpful for a newsroom that has to fill the
news hole. You've got to have content. So that's difficult.
So yeah, it's a challenge, Rick. I appreciate the call.
Speaker 2: Man, Thank you, sir.
Speaker 1: Yeah, take care. Yeah. I give credit where it's due
and report. I try, Like if you listen to my show,
I am always giving the bylines of the reporters that
do stories. I try to give the headlines and so
you can find it, and I try to give the
website so you can find it. But I because I look,
I you know me, I drag enough reporters and media
outlets for shoddy coverage or biased coverage. So I try
to give credit where it's due. And like I said, Harrison,
Joe Bruno has done good work on this over at
WSOCTV as well. They've gotten a lot of you know,
people to talk about stuff and to confirm details on
this story. I would not be able to talk about
the story as I have been. Had they not done
the actual work, I'm just running my mouth. They were
the ones that did the reporting, you know, so if
anything's wrong, it's there full I'm just kidding, no, but
it is. I recognize, like, because I was a reporter.
It's a lot harder to do that than this. That's
why I enjoy doing this job. All right. If you're
listening to this show, you know I try to keep
up with all sorts of current events, and I know
you do too, And you've probably heard me say get
your news from multiple sources. Why Well, because it's how
you detect media bias, which is why I've been so
impressed with ground News. It's an app and it's a website,
and it combines news from around the world in one
place so you can compare coverage and verify information. You
can check it out at check dot ground, dot news
slash Pete. I put the link in the podcast description too.
I started using ground News a few months ago and
more recently chose to work with them as an affiliate
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but it also supports Ground News as they make the
media landscape more transparent. Got a message from the Hellion
on Twitter. I got to Charlotte in late six I
cannot recall which mayor was around when I started keeping
up with council mayor politics. Well, if it was six,
that would have been Pat McCrory, because McCrory first ran
for governor in twelve and lost to Bev Perdue and
then one no sorry, he ran in eight, he won
in twelve and then lost right in sixteen, and Cooper
was governor for two four year cycles and now Josh Stein.
So yeah, so it would have been mayor Pat McCrory
in the probably final his final term. The election after
McCrory was the election between Anthony Fox, not the interim
city attorney, just some other guy named Anthony Fox who
went on to work in the Obama administration, versus John Lassiter,
lassador the Republican Fox the Democrat, and they ran against
each other. Lasster lost and Fox won and there's not
been another Republican mayor since. Anyway, back to the Hellians message,
he says all that I have ever heard none of
them sound like real leaders. I since most get told
what to do. When I hear Lyle speak, I can't
believe she is a mayor anywhere. So keep in mind,
North Carolina has a what's called a council manager form
of government. Our mayors are very weak in our systems
in this state. And because you have a council manager
form of government, the idea was that, well we have
the manager. They are professional and so they will manage,
and the council acts as like a board of directors
to offer direction, do approvals and that sort of thing.
But day to day operations, it all, it's all the manager.
So the managers are very powerful in our state. And
the bigger the city gets, the more staff you get
that works for the manager, and so a lot like
in Charlotte, and it's been this way for forty years.
It is a staff driven process. Everything staff driven because
when you are a newbie council member, you come on
and you don't know what the processes are. You don't
know who the people are, you don't know where the
bodies are buried, all of that stuff. So you rely
on staff to prepare you, inform you, you know, tell
you the ins and outs of all of these different
issues that you can't possibly be expert on, right, So
you rely heavily on staff, and sometimes you end up
than with a relationship where the council members become very
dependent on staff and then protective of staff. The city
manager is always protective of their staff too, So like
that's always the dynamic that you've got going on. And
so if it's if you get the sense that most
of the council and mayors over the years in Charlotte
are getting told what to do, there's a logical explanation
for it. Is that they are, is that they probably are.
And that's why some of the best city council members
that I've ever I think the best I ever saw
was Don Lockman, the late Don Lockman, Republican from District six.
He was a retired business owner and he would ask
questions because he knew what this stuff meant, Like you
would look at the budgets and stuff, and he spoke
their language. He knew what to look for, what to
ask about, and he always had them on the defensive.
The staff. It wasn't mean about it or anything, but
he was always on the defensive or he put them
on the defensive because they knew that he knew what
they were talking about. Yeah, mayoral power is not strong
in North Carolina. Russ says. You have mentioned the council
rule where if you leave, your vote gets counted as
a yes a few times in the last few weeks.
What is the benign, non corrupt governance explanation for such
a thing. It's so the business of the council can
continue if somebody has to leave and then you don't
end up with enough votes for a majority, right, or
you know, if it's like a protested petition or something
like that in a rezoning, whatever. It's so this way,
if you end up with a bunch of council members
that don't attend, like you get one or two that
are sick or traveling, and then somebody has to leave,
they can't attend the full meeting, but they can show
up and then leave, then you get the vote count.
I think that's the benign rationale for it is so
it doesn't completely slow down the work of the council.
Let's see, this is from moral compass. You may be
thinking to the attorney's advice in the wrong way. There
may be criminal charges for leaking something in the closed meeting.
If they did something illegal in the meeting. Oh well,
now that's fair. Maybe yeah, no, because that would be
like if you did the illegal thing, then you wouldn't leak.
You wouldn't leak it, you know, or maybe you would
in order to throw off the meeting. I don't know,
but yeah, if they if they did something that was
improper in the closed session, there could be exposure there.
But no, the only criminal charges I think we went
over this like a week ago. The only criminal charges
that people would face is if they are like divulging
personnel file stuff. And in fact, Charlotte had an example
of this a few years ago, had to do with
the Charlotte fire captain I believe, or a chief rather
and he just got to reprimand no charges wherever filed.
So yeah, precedent isn't even on the interim City Attorney's
side on this either. All right, that'll do it for
this episode. Thank you so much for listening. I could
not do the show without your support and the support
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thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything
while I'm gone.