MEMORANDUM

To: Anthony-Scott Hobbs
Chairman, Cobb GOP

From: Bill Simon

Re: Show Me The Money, Anthony
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Dear Anthony,

In your publicly e-mailed rebuttal yesterday afternoon, you accused me of attacking your character, your family, and Republicans in general.

Then you proceed to state, for the record, that you now have "47" paid members of the Republican Business Council ("RBC"). Funny thing, Anthony, but yesterday morning at 10:00 AM when I first checked your Georgia Economic Summit site, the scrolling list on the upper-right of the site listed only 41 members. You now state that you have 47 because (I believe) you want to accuse Bill Kinney of getting his facts wrong about the "70" members he printed about 3 weeks ago, and it is relatively easy to accuse an old man of getting his "sevens" mixed-up and everyone will buy your story.

At 4:00 PM yesterday afternoon, when I next checked the Georgia Economic Summit Website, the scrolling list of RBC members has been removed and the message that has replaced it is "Summit will be rescheduled due to a conflict with one of our major speakers..." blah-blah-blah...

Kinda fascinating how not less than 12 hours after I issued a fraud alert about your "summit", it magically gets canceled and "rescheduled." Your actions, more than anything else you claim, speak louder than your words. You are in a pickle about the summit and I called you on it. And, now, you are calling me a "thug" because you painted yourself into a corner, and I am merely pointing out your crappy paint job.

So, let's return to our discussion of the money you've supposedly raised. Let's forget what Bill Kinney printed or got mixed-up about printing, and let's stick with what you've now admitted...does that sound fair?

You now state you have 47 members. First, who are they? You had a scrolling list of the $1000 contributors on your website as late as yesterday morning and I wasn't the only witness to this scroll, and now that has vanished. I do remember some of the names of the people and entities, and these are who I remember:

Senator Chuck Clay
Senator Tom Price
Senator Charlie Tanksley
Michael Gravely
Calvin Rhodes
Wiles & Wiles Law Firm
Hobbs Communications (no doubt, your own company)
The Facility Group
Glock, Inc.

...and, that's about all I recall. But, since these contributors should not be a secret, you should not be afraid to list them on your Website. So, I will now ask you to place on your Website (whichever site Debbie Ellis can clear-off and make room for) the list of 47 contributors to the RBC that you now claim to have.

In your letter, you also make some noises about how some of these members are paying $250 per quarter. Fine. We are now in the 3rd quarter of 2003, and therefore you should have raised approximately $30,000 from the $1000+ donors.

Add to this the $25,000 or so amount (and, this would be the minimum amount) that was left in the kitty after the county convention in March 2003, and you should have had approximately $55,000, give or take a few thousand. But, your Treasurer only reported a balance of less than $20,000. Where did the money go, and who approved of these expenditures? $35,000 is a pile of cash.

You now claim that you have already had one meeting before the one on September 23. If so, I did not receive proper notice of this prior county party meeting. I did receive proper notice for the one held on September 23, but not any other you claim.

If you did, in fact, hold a county committee meeting over the summer, then I, along with several other people, were not duly informed by snail mail of these meetings, as required by the Rules. Therefore, just as illegal as the meetings Marilyn held during her tenure when she had Doug DeBolt remove my name and others from the mailing list, you either removed my name from the mailing list for the previous illegal meeting you held, OR, you never gave proper notice according to the Rules.

I no longer am interested in just seeing the Income Statement or the Balance Sheets produced by Mr. Altman. I am interested in seeing the check register to see who has been paid what and for what purpose. Again, there is, at a minimum, approximately $35,000 that is unaccounted for. Show me (and others) where the money you raised on behalf of the county GOP went???

Surely you would have no objection to me visiting Mr. Altman at his convenience to view the entire list of checks written and deposited since you took over the leadership of the Cobb GOP. Surely Mr. Altman would have no problem allowing myself and a few buddies of mine who used to be internal auditors for major corporations take a look at the Cobb books, would he?

Quite frankly, I find no comfort in you reporting that there is a "CPA firm" assigned to auditing the books of the Cobb GOP. I think we've all seen what happens when CPA firms like Arthur Andersen claim that they have audited books and give them a passing score, right?

No offense to the accounting profession, but these financial audits do not test for fraud. The true nature of an "audit" cannot reveal fraud because the only thing a GAAP audit does is check to see if all of the rules of accounting have been followed (like, Debits on the left, Credits on the Right, etc.). They check the audit trails of a few test transactions, and then state the books have passed the tests. They collect their fee, make a statement that the books are in accordance with GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles) and everyone thinks the books are therefore fraud-free. Puh-leeze.

The fraud I am concerned with with regards to the Cobb GOP is actually of several types:

1) The fraud perpetrated when you, Anthony, have told people that the only way they will have access to the Governor or the President is to give the Cobb GOP $1000. I have been told of at least one contributor to your RBC who has had money extracted from them by the use of this method by you or your representative. If I am sued by you, I'll bet he won't lie for you (as an aside, I have an attorney who is aching to file discovery motions should you file a lawsuit).

2) The fraud perpetrated by you in your political extortion letter dated September 9 that states that any candidate that does not give money to the county party will not receive any help in the General from the county party.

3) The fraud attempted to be perpetrated by the Cobb GOP in their misuse of county party resources to con small business owners into believing that they should pay money to the Cobb GOP to attend an "economic summit" to get information that would be provided to them for free by merely contacting the agencies responsible for providing the personnel who would come to speak. And, I reiterate, that summit has been summarily yanked from occuring. (No doubt I will personally bear the brunt of that disaster averted.)

The #1 fraud I am concerned with is money. It's not my money, but it is money that has been raised under the auspice of getting Republicans elected, and I don't think that money has either been raised properly (i.e., by using extortion), or it is not being spent properly or a mixture of both.

And, these two concerns should be of special concern to the State GOP because now the county parties are even more intricately linked to the state party in terms of how money can be spent. If the State GOP continues to demonstrate that it doesn't care, then, hell, I'll go back into hibernation and not care about anything in politics because I will then realize that rules don't matter in this state's GOP and it's a free-for-all.

Ah, one final note, Anthony. Your laughable statement that you believe that "this is a very personal matter for Bill Simon, he is horribly obsessed with my family and I and continues to stalk us with his innuendo and abusive actions."

I have not mentioned your family...ever. But, there you go again, wrapping yourself up into a "woe is me" blanket and trying to make it look like the whole world is against you and out to get you. The only thing I'm obsessed with is when people who claim they represent the GOP do not do so in an honorable fashion. It is you who fits that category.