COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) - South Carolina’s high court has shed light on documents in a dispute between Attorney General Alan Wilson and a special prosecutor he appointed to oversee a legislative corruption investigation.
Unsealed late Thursday were papers that Wilson had filed in response to Solicitor David Pascoe.
The documents include Wilson’s legal defense for his decision to dismiss Pascoe, saying the prosecutor doesn’t have authority to challenge the chief of the state grand jury in court and also reiterating previous comments that the attorney general recused himself, not his entire office, from the probe.
Two years ago, Wilson designated Pascoe to handle the prosecution of former House Speaker Bobby Harrell, who ultimately pleaded guilty to six misdemeanor campaign-spending violations and resigned. After Harrell’s plea, state police released a heavily redacted investigative report. Eleven of the 42 pages were completely or mostly blacked out, with the State Law Enforcement Division citing a public records law provision exempting the release of information to be used in a future or likely law enforcement action.
No other lawmakers have been charged, but the probe is ongoing.
Last month, Wilson abruptly fired Pascoe after the prosecutor tried to open a state grand jury probe into the redacted portion without proper authority, saying that’s only something Wilson and the state police chief could authorize and decrying multiple media leaks about grand jury matters, which are conducted in secret.
Days earlier, The State newspaper had cited documents filed with the high court in which Pascoe said he wanted to utilize the state grand jury but was being obstructed by Wilson.
The attorney who serves as chief of the state grand jury has also detailed the paperwork he says Pascoe gave him last month supposedly authorizing state grand jury action.
“At the time I swore-in Mr. Pascoe and signed subpoenas, I was under the impression that that the investigation was authorized,” Jim Parks wrote in an affidavit obtained Friday by The Associated Press.
Parks said he got that impression from a memo signed by Pascoe and SLED Chief Mark Keel purportedly authorizing the initiation of a case. But subsequently, Parks says he told Pascoe he wouldn’t be swearing in any of his staff or issuing subpoenas after learning of concerns over whether the prosecutor had the authority alone, without Wilson’s say-so, to use the state grand jury.
Wilson has vehemently maintained that, while he appointed Pascoe to head up the investigation, he didn’t recuse his entire office from the case and still solely maintained the authority to initiate a state grand jury investigation.
“The power to initiate is non-delegable,” Wilson writes in papers unsealed this week, calling Pascoe’s interpretation as such “fundamentally flawed.”
In court papers filed Friday, Pasco reiterated his stance that he is empowered to open a state grand jury probe because of authority vested in him by the attorney general. He also included an affidavit from Keel laying out a timeline of his own involvement in the case, as well as a September 2015 letter to Wilson’s office in which Pascoe said he had leaked no information to the media and had “kept information closely guarded.”
Pascoe also asked Chief Deputy Attorney General John McIntosh to “not interfere in this investigation any further unless I ask for your assistance.”
Pascoe, who did not immediately return a message seeking comment, has said that he won’t step down without court intervention. Justices haven’t said when they will rule in the dispute. Another prosecutor Wilson has appointed to take Pascoe’s place has declined the job pending a court decision.
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Kinnard can be reached at https://twitter.com/MegKinnardAP . Read more of her work at https://bigstory.ap.org/content/meg-kinnard/
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