Speaker 1: What's going on?
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It
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And again, thank you so much for your support. So
remember that time a Charlotte City Council member accused the
city of being corrupt.
Speaker 1: Remember that. I mean, I know I'm dating myself here, but.
Speaker 2: The City of Charlotte went out and hired a law
firm to do an investigation, and the investigation has uncovered
no corruption, no corruption, Thank goodness. Yes, yes, there was
a very lengthy press conference that was held where they
took no questions and it actually, in fact, I complete
the entire press conference for you. It lasted three and
a half minutes. Here's the mayor doing her best Kamala
Harris impression.
Speaker 3: Last night, in closed session, the council was presented with
an independent report from.
Speaker 1: A third party law firm.
Speaker 3: The firm was contracted to conduct an investigation into allegations
made in May of unethical and moral and illegal activities
occurring within city government. We took these allegations seriously at
the request of some members of council. We retain Cranfill
Summer to investigate. That's a law firm, guys, and we
are today to sure that we are being transparent about
the findings that were made. In all instances, the report
revealed that there was no merit to any unethical, immoral
or illegal activities occurring within Charlotte City government. I want
to repeat that that there was no unethical, immoral, or
illegal activities occurring within our city's government.
Speaker 1: It's Cranfil Sumner. By the way, over the.
Speaker 3: Past many months, the city has been under a lot
of scrutiny. Our nearly nine thousand employees need to know
that they are the most important part of the city
and we support them. These egregious allegations hurt our team.
Speaker 2: Hang on well, okay, hand on a second. These allegations
were made by a council member, Victoria Watlington. Were not
directed at the nearly nine thousand city employees.
Speaker 1: It was directed at you.
Speaker 2: It was directed at the mayor, directed at her fellow
fellow council members, and directed at the upper levels, the
executive level management. It wasn't directed at rank and file cops,
the trash collectors, right, the bureaucrats, the people you know
at the cashier's desk at the you know, city office
taking your water and sewer payments and stuff.
Speaker 1: It wasn't those people. It was you.
Speaker 2: And it had to do with the contract or sorry,
the settlement that you gave to police Chief Johnny Jennings
or as they reframed it after the fact, they called
it a retirement package. Right, That's what this was about.
And the way that all went down, the way the
vote was held, how somebody who was opposed to the
deal left the closed session and their vote got counted
as a yes in favor of the package, and that
allowed it to pass by a one vote majority in
closed session. And they didn't realize that that was the case.
And all of this and the lack of disclosure, the
relying on, oh, it's a personnel matter, and we went
over this at the time. When you give out big
settlements or retirement package deals to executive level staff, and
the police chief is one of those that is not
personnel protected. We get to know what the payment is,
what the compensation is, We get to know that. And you, guys,
after you decided and closed session, you should have come
out and you should have disclosed it to everybody, but
you refused to do so. That then prompted litigation for
you to information requests and the accusation that you were
behaving in a corrupt manner. That's what prompted it, she continues, And.
Speaker 3: We owe it to them to investigate. They work for
an organization that can be trusted and operates with the
highest degree of integrity. This organization is one of the
finest municipalities in the country, the findest and our staff.
They're passionate about serving our community and are dedicated to
our residents. And although counsel has different ways they express
their passion. We care deeply about this community and our team.
Speaker 2: I don't think she's read this speech before she took
the podium. She's reading a speech, a prepared.
Speaker 1: Statement.
Speaker 2: I don't I get the sense she has not read
this before. She's pausing at weird times. She seems kind
of surprised by the next word in the sentence. You
know she did not write this somebody else wrote this
for her, and I would be surprised if she laid
eyes on it before she cracked the mic.
Speaker 3: This council and I work hard to make sure that
the best that it can be.
Speaker 1: Page Stern, over the past.
Speaker 3: Times, I want to say thank you that we are
going to have you offered her an opportunity for you
if you'd like to interview council members. I hope that
you'll come down and talk.
Speaker 2: Okay, what was that sentence over the past times, We're
going to offer you the opportunity to come down. See
this is where in their full transparency mode, they're going
to not take questions from the media from the podium.
You're going to have to pull them all off one
by one. And there's a reason why you would do
this from a pr management, a damage control strategy standpoint. Okay,
because when reporters now, instead of a pack of them
sitting in front of you, where they're able to just
lob all of these questions at all of the members,
they have to pick one member to pull off to
the side and ask a series of questions too, and
hope that after they're done with that member they can
then bounce over to another member. So at most you're
going to get two, maybe three of the ones who
decided to even show up, because not all of the
council members were there. Okay, when you are sitting in
front of a pack of journalists and you're taking questions
from the podium, reporters then get to hear other questions
that are asked, and they don't have to ask them,
so they can then do a follow up. Or if
your answer to that previous question from a different reporter
now wasn't clear, they can ask you to clarify, they
find an inconsistency, they can then pick at it another reporter,
here's the inconsistency.
Speaker 1: Also, they can pick at it, they can dig deeper.
But when you split.
Speaker 2: Everybody off, the first question is going to be the same.
That every reporter is going to stick a mic in
the face of every one of those other council members
and they're going to ask them generally the same questions.
So by doing it this way, they are limiting the
universe of questions that.
Speaker 1: They get subjected to.
Speaker 2: And if somebody says something that turns out to be
cringey or suspicious or something, it gives everybody else deniability.
See I understand why they do it this way. It's
not transparent. You're not engaging in good faith. You're doing
it this way in order to avoid the dynamic that
I just laid out, because all the reporters first question
is going to be something along the lines of what's
your reaction to the report, and they're all going to
have an answer for that. You're like, well, I'm just
glad that this proves that we did not behave in
this way, the charges were unfounded.
Speaker 1: Blah blah blah, blah blah.
Speaker 2: I'd be surprised if the reporters even had the report
from the law firm before they attended the press conference.
That's another trick that they will pull is they don't
give you the report until you show up, and then
they start the press conference. You have not had time
to read the report before asking questions, so all you
get is them giving you the top line that they
want you to have. That's what I mean. Like, the
pattern that this mayor and this city council has been
employing is obvious to me, and I'm sure it is
super frustrating to the reporters that cover this has their beat.
Speaker 1: It would be to me.
Speaker 2: It is to me, I don't even cover the city
Council as a beat reporter. I mean I do monitor
their meetings and stuff, but that's because I enjoy watching
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I'm not done with the mayor's entire press conference that
lasted three and a half minutes and where she took
no questions, So I will I will get to that
remaining audio, but first let me get Mike on real quick.
Speaker 1: Hello Mike, Welcome to the program.
Speaker 4: Thanks Thanks Pete. Let's take the mayor literally at her word.
And I'm wondering if there are other words to describe
this situation other than illegal, unethical, or immoral, like opaque
or corrupt or insulated or choose anything. She's not saying
we didn't do anything wrong. She's saying we literally didn't
do anything the lawyers declare unethical, illegal, or immoral.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: Well, and in fact, after uh, the all of this
stuff came out, there were and you know, media started
reporting on the settlement with the police chief and uh,
and then the accusations came out, like her office said, like,
you know, we're going to work to be better, more
inclusive and more inclusive of this of Charlotte City Council members,
like we're gonna we're gonna try to bridge this divide
because there there are these two different sort of cliques
on city council, one of you know, that is like
led by the mayor, and then there's this other group
that is not and Watlington is in that group, that clique.
And so she even acknowledged at the very beginning, before
they even hired the law firm, she said that, uh
that you know, they're they're working to improve transparency and
all of that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I want to see former or unelectable or uh
immediate past mayor immediate passive councilmen. Those are some of
the words I'd like to see.
Speaker 1: Yes, you have a lot of adjectives, Mike. I applaud
the use of your adjectives. I appreciate the call man.
Thanks all right, see it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like there is a very limited view of what
they were looking at, right, unethical and moral?
Speaker 1: Illegal?
Speaker 2: And also I would this is a question I have
asked people for years whenever they involve lawyers. In this case,
the law firm Cranphil Sumner that did the investigation, and
my question is always who is the client?
Speaker 1: Who's the client.
Speaker 2: Who wrote the check for the law firm. Well, the
City of Charlotte did I'm not accusing anybody of illegal, immoral,
or unethical behavior. I'm not saying that about the investigation.
I would note that there are other organizations that could
have done an investigation that actually had subpoena power. You
could have asked for an SBI State Bureau of Investigation probe.
You could have asked the state auditor to come in,
do another round, take a look at all of the records. Right.
You could have had those people come in, But they
hired a law firm, and that law firm cleared them.
And then if you are not, if you're not actually
trying to bury this story to make it go away,
I would submit you do not hold a news conference
in the manner in which this was held. But this
seems to be the standard operating procedure for the City
of Charlotte now. And I will tell you years ago,
when I was the beat reporter here at WBT for
City Council and County Commission school board meetings like this
would not have flown. This would not have been acceptable
at all. I'd be chasing all of the reporters, would
be chasing people through hallways, mikes and making them do
purp walks and stuff. It's the only leverage you have.
And here's the other thing too. They are not well
served by this strategy. Whoever is advising them to do
it this way, it is bad advice because you end
up with people like me raising these questions after the fact,
and then the issue doesn't go away. You know how
the issue goes away if in fact there is no
there there. The issue goes away by everybody standing at
that podium and answering every single question until reporters don't
have another question left to ask. That's how you make
these things go away when there's nothing there. Now, if
there is something there, then you probably would do a
three and a half minute press conference and not take
questions from the podium. Here she is again, let's reract this.
Speaker 3: Have you offered her an opportunity for you, if you'd
like to interview council members. I hope that you'll come
down and talk with them about the world that's being done.
Lindsey is going to provide you with the report that
would be distributed because we want to address each other
and we also want to make sure that you understand
that in transparency we are taking this level in government.
Speaker 2: I don't even know what that part means, but I
don't think she does either, or whoever wrote the script.
Speaker 1: I saw somebody suggest.
Speaker 2: Maybe it was like a chat gpt AI generated kind
of a script.
Speaker 1: It very well might have been. I don't know.
Speaker 2: I don't like that's a question. I would ask, like, Mayor,
did you write your speech? Did you write these statements?
I would ask her that did you because you seem
to stumble a lot on these words, as somebody else
writing this statement for you. And there she just acknowledged
what I guessed because I saw the audio or I
saw the video.
Speaker 1: Got posted, and so I hit record.
Speaker 2: I was recording the video, but then I stepped out
and came back in. So I didn't hear that part
where she said, and we are providing you with the
results of the findings or whatever.
Speaker 1: And so I was right.
Speaker 2: The reporters are in the stands, they're in the seats,
and they don't even have the report, and now they
got to go interview people not having read the report.
You think you're going to ask better questions being ignorant
of what the findings actually say.
Speaker 1: Of course not so.
Speaker 2: When I was a kid, my grandpa died with Alzheimer's
and before he died. My mom and my dad took
care of him as he got worse. Forty years ago,
there were no treatments and not much support for caregivers
and family. But things are different today because of the
work of so many people, including the Alzheimer's Association of
Western Carolina. It's a great organization with awesome people with
huge hearts. I've been a supporter for twenty five years.
This cause means a lot to me. I participate in
the annual Walk to End Alzheimer's and I'm leading a
Charlotte team again this year, and it's called once again
Pete's Pack. You can sign up and you can join
the team and walk with us. It's on October eighteenth,
that truest field. Sign up at alz dot org slash
walk and then you could search for my team name
Pete's Peck. There's also a link at thepetepod dot com.
There's also a link in the description of this podcast. Also,
I'll be am seeing the Gastonia Walk on October eleventh then,
so you can make a team and join that one too,
or make a donation and help me hit my goal
of five thousand dollars. If you do I really appreciate it.
There are a bunch of other walks all over the Carolinas.
You can go to alz dot org slash walk for
all the dates and locations. We're closer than ever to
stopping Alzheimer's. Can you help us get there? Will you
walk with me? For a different future, for families, for
more time for treatments.
Speaker 1: This is why we walk.
Speaker 2: Listening to the very lengthy three and a half minute
press conference that was held where they did not take
any questions from the media, but did offer the media
to take receipt of the final report from the law
firm that the city hired to investigate the city against
allegations of corruption, illegal activities, immoral activities, and unethical activities.
And the law firm's findings were provided to the media
after the statement by the mayor, and then she graciously
allowed the members of the media to then come down,
get the report and interview individual council members off to
the side. And I laid out why that is a
that is an intentional strategy to try to tamp down
more questions. That's the design of the strategy. And I
don't know why reporters aren't objecting to it. Maybe they were,
and I just don't know. But all right, here's the
last forty six seconds of the mayor's comments here after
she told them, you're going to get a copy of
the findings here and then peel away and talk to
individual council members, but not up here at the podium.
Speaker 1: On the mic.
Speaker 3: And so today I hope that you'll have an opportunity
again to speak up or speak with the members of
the council. But more importantly, I hope that you will
understand that we know that this community deserves service that
we give them and the attention that they are owed.
So with that, I'm not going to take any comments
or requests or questions from you, but I hope that
you will have an opportunity to see what kind of
work this council can do and how we can do this. Well,
thank you very much for your time.
Speaker 2: I love the music. Yes, it's cartoonish. I don't know
if that was intentional. I don't think it is. I
think they just have like some standard music that they
play on the YouTube channel before and after the meeting,
you know, while you're waiting for the council to finish
eating before they come down to the main meeting in
front of the public. So it's just like they're they're
bump tunes, but that I don't know if that was intentional,
but perfect chef's kiss, perfect.
Speaker 1: For what we just were treated to.
Speaker 2: Wsoctv's Joe Bruno says the news is not particularly surprising,
considering Victoria Wattlington has been clear that her email that
she had sent out where she made the accusations was
not alleging financial corruption. However, the city said the investigation
was needed to make it clear to airport bond investors
that the city is conducting business properly, so that's why
they did it. Now here is Victoria Watlington. This was
from wbt's news director Mark Garrison, who I guess got
a chance to speak with her here. Each of us
have our own interpretation, our own moral standard, our own
what we consider unethical, and I respect that we can
agree to disagree.
Speaker 1: Hmm. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Doesn't sound like she agrees with the findings, does it.
And if the point was to assuage the concerns of
airport bond investors, their concerns would have been strictly financial
and so maybe that was the focus of the investigation
by the law firm hired by the city.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I have not seen the report. The investigation was launched
after the email sent by Watlington entitled power corrupts and
saying she was concerned about unethical, immoral, and frankly illegal
activities occurring within city government. Channel nine had just broken
the news that the Charlotte City Council secretly settled a
potential lawsuit from Charlotte Mecklenburg Police Department chief Johnny Jennings.
He claimed, you'll recall former Councilman tarc Bookari created a
hostile work environment during the debate over outer carrier vests
for cops because they didn't look right, they looked scary,
they looked military like. Within a day of her statement,
Watlington made it clear she was not alleging financial corruption.
She says she doesn't regret sending the email. The independent
Attorneys interviewed Watlington and all members of city council about
her claims. They found no evidence that the chiefs settlement
was handled in an improper manner. However, they did right
that the issue quote appears to stem primarily from procedural
and communication challenges. Yes, yes, challenges, and that's corporate speak
for problems, right, mistakes, opaqueness. Right, that's what Watlington is
talking about, procedural challenges. What was the procedural challenge, Well,
it was that one of the council members showed up
to the closed session and then left and her vote
got counted as a yes, and nobody seemed to know
that that would happen, which is why they said, well,
we're going to come back and revote on this, And
then when they showed up to revote, they were like, actually,
we did some digging. We didn't know the rules, and
actually the rules are that if you attend a meeting
and then leave, your votes from then on out are
counted as yes votes. I knew that because I saw
that happen several times when I was covering city council
back in the early two thousands.
Speaker 1: They did not.
Speaker 2: Apparently, Wallington accepted the report's findings, but said she wishes
more information was provided on how the attorneys reached these conclusions. Quote,
I would have liked an analysis included in the report
to really under stand because each of us are our
own people, we have our own interpretation or our own
moral standard, our own what we consider unethical our own
interpretation of what's in the statutes and what's in our
own ethics policy end quote. When it comes to disclosing
Chief Jennings' allegations to council, the report said that the
interim city attorney conducted a risk assessment and weighed the
sensitivity of the situation since it was viewed as a
personnel issue. So that tells me that the settlement was
a pr move. That's why they did it, because it
does because the decision process does not make any sense
from a logical standpoint, except if you're doing it purely
for PR or I guess if you're trying to do
Johnny Jennings a solid on his way.
Speaker 1: Out the door because you like him.
Speaker 2: The mayor hurried out after reading the statement and did
not take questions or as Mayor Vilize Lyles would call
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Let's head over to the WBT text line driven by
Liberty Buick GMC where as I as I said, the
problem if you're going to do this kind of damage
control press conference format that the city did to release
the findings of their investigation into themselves, here's the problem
is that people see through it and they're not getting
actual transparency and you have not actually put the matter
to rest.
Speaker 1: From seven oh four number, ha ha ha ha.
Speaker 2: Attorneys being hired to investigate politicians, best laugh, I've had
all day an SAI four number says, after careful review,
we have concluded we have done nothing wrong us investigating us.
Seven o four number says we have the Ron Burgundy
of mayors. Seth says the mayor sounds like she had
a TMU version of chat GPT write that speech for her. OMG,
how embarrassing. Oh wait, dang on a second, the mayor
is a ghost, she's a figurehead. OMG, how embarrassing. They
won't care. Randy says the mayor's corrupt and calls this
a cover up. Shannon says she's an idiot and says,
I wonder what the political affiliation of the partners of
the law firm that conducted the investigation. That's a fair
question too, Or how about this have they made political donations?
Do they have any city contracts?
Speaker 1: Right? Why was this form selected? Nothing says?
Speaker 2: This is from Sean who says nothing says transparency like
the words closed session and that bumper music sounded like
the music they play at the Apollo when the Sandman
sweeps you off stage. Okay, Eric says, Splitting council members
up so you never talk to them as a group
is getting really close to the Wanda Green playbook for
folks in Charlotte who don't know who Wanda Green is.
Wanda Green was the county manager of Buncom County and
she was indicted and I believe she eventually. I don't
know if she pled guilty or if she was, but
she was convicted, she went to well, she was sentenced
to prison, but then COVID, so she got to do
it all from home. Massive corruption and one of the
things that she did. And I railed against this the
entire time. I was up in Asheville work in the
afternoon and drive and she would do these oh I
forget what she called them. Rather than meet with the
entire county commission for a briefing on the agenda before
the meeting, she would break them off. I think she
maybe like two on ones or something like that. She
would she would break off and so she would control
the dissemination of information to the different commission members. So
she would have one on one, two on one meetings.
So and they and she said this was so they
could get around the open meetings laws, right, because if
you have if you have a quorum of the commission,
then you have to publicly advertise the meeting. And they
didn't want to do that. They didn't want it to
be a public meeting. This was just a briefing, one
on one. So she would have these briefings, but what
she would tell one commissioner would be different than what
she tells another commissioner.
Speaker 1: And that's how she was.
Speaker 2: Able to engage in her siphoning of counting money for
personal expenditures. She went on trips. She went down to
the equestrian event and try on with one of the
other commissioners because they were both horse lovers and such.
Speaker 1: And then of course, you know, got taxpayers to fund that.
Speaker 2: They took a trip up to New York to visit
a horse that one of the commissions, the same commissioner,
Ellen Frost was her name, to fly up to New
York to see your old horse, because like she sold
the horse it was old, and so she like sent
it out to pasture up in New York or something,
and so they flew up there and then never actually
visited the horse.
Speaker 1: You know, stuff like that.
Speaker 2: They bought a whole bunch of these gift cards, they
made all these purchases on them for personal items and
such massive corruption.
Speaker 1: And that's what she would do. Divide and conquer.
Speaker 2: You keep people in the dark by keeping them isolated,
so they can't hear concerns from other commissioners, questions from
the other commissioners, and so when you go into the
open meetings, at that point, all of your questions have
been answered and everybody else's questions have been answered, and
so there's no discussion. So the public doesn't even know
what questions you may have had before you voted on
the item. That's how she did it, Aaron says. So
they hired the firm to do the report. Somebody got
paid good again somewhere which will never be noted, just
saying this, have.
Speaker 1: A good one. I'm just a guy, a plumber.
Speaker 2: But the investigation by the law firm seems like a
step in advance of an upcoming investigation from the State
Auditor or SBI. I'm still waiting to hear her explanation
of what they did with the money that was diverted
away from law enforcement after the BLM riots and installation
of the anti cop city Council. I hope that gets
addressed and so and is held to account for that,
says Andy. Yeah, so you get there. There are a
ton of similar texts that have come in. I'm not
gonna be able to get to them all, but that's
the vibe, and that's the result of the kind of
pr optics you were angling for, and it actually creates
the opposite of what you were hoping it would create.
All right, that'll do it for this episode. Thank you
so much for listening. I could not do the show
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