Gov. Nathan Deal tried to distance himself Wednesday from a growing crisis in the state ethics commission by casting himself as an outsider who is caught in the crossfire of a legal dispute between warring staffers at the agency.
Yet efforts to sort out the ethics commission’s internal problems remain muddled in the weeks after a series of reports by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution documented concerns over the handling of complaints accusing the governor of misusing campaign funds in his 2010 election.
Deal’s comments came in response to an AJC story published the same day featuring John Hair, a former computer specialist with the ethics commission. Hair said that on orders from superiors, he altered and removed dozens of documents in the governor’s case file as the probe into Deal’s campaign was pending. Hair told the AJC in an earlier story that he was later fired when he refused an order from the commission’s executive director, Holly LaBerge, to remove documents from Deal’s case file.
“I don’t know what was going on with the staff within the ethics department,” Deal said. “It is obvious there appears to have been personal agendas that were in place.”
via As ethics review sputters, Deal distances himself from commission | www.myajc.com.
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