PRELUDE
The following story will, at some point, use some or all of the abbreviations below, and I’m not up for repeating their longer titles. These are all State of Georgia-related abbreviations:
AG = Attorney General
AAG = Assistant Attorney General
DOI = Declaration of Intent (to run for office)
GAA = Georgia Aviation Authority
GBI = Georgia Bureau of Investigation
GTA = Georgia Technology Authority
GO = Governor’s Office
LG = Lieutenant Governor of Georgia
OIG = Office of Inspector General
ORR = Open Records Request
INTRODUCTION
A funny thing happened on the way to performing research on Casey Cagle: I not only discovered something that appears to be theft (of greater than $500 in value) by Casey Cagle (not as LG, but as a “private person”) but I also uncovered (quite by accident) something stinking to HIGH heaven at GTA.
I have prepared a bunch of Exhibits that will be referenced in this article, and all those exhibits are located in this Google Drive (feel free to download, view, or, in the case of the audio files, listen on your own computer):
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1XrzX3TwEzbQC7UofAQmECfKYQn7isx4_
The Exhibits are in the order they are in because for Exhibits A thru K, those were first submitted as a Complaint to the OIG’s office on April 9, 2018 via their online complaint form.
I have since added Exhibits, most of which are in a progression of the order of events, but there are a couple of exhibits (Exhibit R and S) that, time-wise, actually occurred before I obtained Exhibit I.
BACKGROUND STORY
So, in late February 2018, I sent an ORR to the legal counsel for the LG’s office, a woman named Irene Munn (her actual, legal name registered with the State BAR is Irene Munn Jacobsen).
In this ORR (seen as Exhibit C), I requested to see a copy of Cagle’s contract with Mercer University Press for the LG’s book he released in September of 2016 titled “Education Unleashed.” Exhibit A shows the approximate date that Education Unleashed started its promotional tour.
Thru a back-and-forth of emails, it was mutually agreed that Munn would call me on Friday, March 2 to address the issue of the ORR regarding the publishing contract.
You can listen to the recording of that phone call via Exhibit D, an audio file of me talking to Munn. In this conversation, I learned two things in the World According to Munn: 1) Casey Cagle published the book as a “private person” and 2) that the LG’s office is a “Member of the General Assembly.” (Note: OCGA 28-1-1 obliterates Cagle’s claim that he is a member of the General Assembly, but that is an argument for another arena than this PV article.)
I also invited Munn to respond to any future ORR that if she thought the LG was a Member of the General Assembly, she would have to put that in writing (audio evidence is always good…but so is written evidence was what my thinking was).
In the ensuing weeks that followed that March 2 conversation with Munn, I engaged in emailing a series of ORRs to Munn and to Robyn Underwood, who is in charge of Legislative Fiscal Office.
To Underwood, I had sent an ORR, and CCed Munn in it, in which I explained that Munn told me that she wanted to be ‘open and transparent’ as much as possible, and therefore, Underwood should be willing to email me copies of the mobile and landline phone records for both LG Cagle and Bo Butler, who is LG Cagle’s Chief of Staff, a full-time paid employee of the State of Georgia.
Amazingly, Underwood did not respond to that ORR…as if to telepathically communicate to me: “We’re the General Assembly, and regardless of whether the people in the General Assembly are breaking laws by using taxpayer-funded mobile phones and landlines for their political campaigns or for their private liaisons with hookers, I don’t frankly give a damn as this is my duty to help cover that all up because the AG’s office will protect all of our wrongdoing, and you cannot do one damn thing about it, Mr. Simon.”
Now, as to why I was inquiring about phone records, I believe the likelihood is 100% that Bo Butler, while taking-down approximately $100,000 per year in salary from the State of Georgia as Chief of Staff, is engaged in doing stuff directly on behalf of the Casey Cagle campaign for Governor.
How do I know this? Because of Exhibit T (in the Google drive) that shows Mr. Butler receiving reimbursement for a few things in relation to the Cagle Campaign. If he’s receiving reimbursement, that means he’s working for the Cagle campaign.
And, hey, if he’s NOT using government-issued phones for political campaign purposes, then he and Cagle and Munn should be perfectly willing to turn-over the taxpayer-funded mobile phone records for Butler and Cagle, right?
The fact that they don’t turn them over tells me they are using those phones, since sometime after April 10, 2017 (this date being the date Cagle filed his DOI to run for Governor in 2018) for campaign purposes. (BTW: That is illegal, both in Georgia law, as well as the federal Hatch Act, which does apply to state elections, believe it or not.)
But, I had also filed an ORR with Munn, asking for copies of Cagle’s calendar for a few dates after he filed his DOI. Munn ignored that ORR completely. I followed-up with her a week later. She ignored that one as well.
Then, sometime in late March, after I get a bit frustrated with Munn’s silence, I contacted AAG Jennifer Colangelo to see if she could help push the ORR forward from the AG’s side.
What I learned from my interaction with Colangelo is that the AG’s office actually believes its duty is to protect law-breaking state government personnel. We kinda saw this back in 2014 when then-AG Sam Olens and his henchman, AAG Dennis Dunn, withheld evidence in a civil trial that would have exposed the Governor’s henchmen, Chris Riley and Ryan Teague, of interfering with an ethics commission investigation into the Governor’s campaign activities.
I bring this up regarding the AG’s office because some of you may, no doubt, call for the “AG’s office to investigate these allegations against Cagle.”
In actuality, the AG’s office will interpret these allegations to be an attack on who they wrongly consider to be their client, and respond by advising Munn, Cagle, Underwood, Butler, et al. to, likely, destroy any and all evidence they can (much like the AG’s office advised Kennesaw State University to wipe a server clean that contained voter records after the State was sued over voting results from 2017).
So, back to current-day activities…Exhibit R shows 3 emails: The first one is at the bottom, which is an email from me to AAG Colangelo, asking for the 2nd or 3rd time for her to get involved…and then her response to me is the middle email…and then the email at the top is actually my response to her email (yeah, you have to read these emails in reverse order of presentation to understand things).
Note in Colangelo’s email to me where she says the following: “Our office cannot divulge the content of those discussion with the Lieutenant Governor’s office, and our office’s mediation program cannot actually oversee mediation with state officials and agencies because of our office’s constitutional and statutory obligations and duties.”
That is AG-legal-speak for “We believe the Constitution of Georgia authorizes us to use your taxpayer dollars to protect, defend, and help cover-up criminal and/or other wrongdoing by any State agency, department, office, or what-have-you, and you can go pound sand because we like being corrupt attorneys at the AG’s office with our corrupt clients. And, let’s face it, Mr. Simon, it’s damn fun being paid to be corrupt and getting away with it, wouldn’t you agree?”
See, it appears to me that lawyers in the AG’s office have absolutely ZERO concept of what State Bar Rule “1.13 ORGANIZATION AS CLIENT” means, and how it is to be applied in situations like this.
Munn is NOT a client of the AG’s office. Neither is Casey Cagle. The “client” is the legal entity called the “State of Georgia,” which is an organization, consisting of the Offices/Agencies/branches of the State of Georgia. Individual people working in these agencies are not immune from prosecution for violating the law. (But, yet, in the over 6 some-odd years that I have followed cases where the AG is representing State entities, I’ve seen their written motions that sought to cover-up criminal wrongdoing by people who work in agencies of the State…one example being people that work at the Board of Regents).
Any human being-person discovered to be in violation of the law is to be prosecuted as such, not protected by the AG’s office. That is how one would correctly interpret and apply Rule 1.13…if, that is, one is an ethically-minded lawyer. (Hint: The AG’s office/Department of Law has no such an animal working there who matches that kind of mind.)
But, whatever AAG Colangelo interpreted from my comments back to her, somehow she was able to convince Munn that it would be a good idea for Munn to relent to answering my ORR. (Could be the fact that I pointed-out how Munn must have directly lied to Colangelo, and Colangelo wasn’t going to be able to defend Munn on the lie?)
Which is why I believe I received Exhibit S…an email from Irene Munn to me on March 29th, telling me she would get the info I asked for regarding Cagle’s calendar days. AND, do note Munn’s statement, in writing, that she is of the belief that the LG’s office is not subject to the Open Records Act. (Yay! Written evidence Munn is a flaming moron.)
What Munn delivered to me that next week via email provided what I believe to be probable-cause proof of Cagle using government resources to enrich himself personally, and engaging in felony theft of government resources to do so.
That proof is all part of the Complaint I filed online with the OIG on the evening of April 9, 2018. A copy of the full OIG Complaint can be found by reading Exhibit L (in the Google Drive), and you are free to read that.
That OIG Complaint describes Exhibits A thru K, and their relevance in support of my allegation.
It is what happened after I filed that OIG Complaint that things got really weird, which I think you will find quite fascinating (if not quite troubling).
THE OIG COMPLAINT
I filed the complaint online after-hours on a Monday. I called the OIG main number the next day to let them know that I had about 10 exhibits that their system did not allow me to upload, and I wanted to know how I could transmit them.
The number I called was answered by someone at 1-800-GEORGIA, a catch-all help desk for the State of Georgia. The lady told me to wait 48-72 hours and someone would contact me, likely via email since I had filed it and put my contact email address on the Complaint.
72 hours passed…no contact from the OIG’s office. I call their main number on Friday, April 13th, and, again, that number is forwarded to the Ga help-desk main number (because they answered “1-800-GEORGIA”), and again, I go thru an explanation with the lady, who then offers to take my name and phone number. Now, during that call on that day, the connection was really bad, and I could barely hear her, and she could barely hear me. At some point I just offered to email the OIG directly, and she said that would be fine.
I went to my copy of the complaint that the OIG system had emailed to me. I hit the FWD button, and proceeded to write an email to the OIG email address, and happened to notice what was in the header information of the email I was forwarding, and I stopped cold in writing my email to OIG.
If you look at the very top of Exhibit L, you will see what I saw. While the line that is marked as “From:” says “Office of the Inspector General”, in actuality, it shows a very different email address. One that says “creative@gta.ga.gov”.
What does that mean? Well, to me it means that someone at the Georgia Technology Authority is monitoring EVERY single complaint filed online with the OIG. (Also, use of the word “creative” demonstrates the mind of an idiot at GTA who thought it’d be cute to create such an email address in which to “creatively” forward copies of all complaints filed online.)
Now, just to let you know, the purpose of the OIG was set-up, originally, to investigate complaints about people in the Executive Branch engaging in corruption. GTA is NOT an investigatory agency, so WTF is anyone there doing reading/monitoring complaints filed against employees and members of the Executive Branch of Georgia Government?
However, the plot thickens even more. On Monday, I called the OIG phone number again, again reached the Ga help desk, and this time the call was clear, and I left my name and number for someone with the OIG to call me back.
That afternoon I did receive a call. From someone named Joe Gray. In the ensuing phone conversation, I learn that Joe Gray is the “intake person” for the OIG. Further questioning of him revealed that he works for GTA, NOT the OIG.
We end that call with him repeating to me that he will find out the status of my complaint and what OIG investigator has been assigned to it, and HE WILL CONTACT ME BACK. (You can hear this conversation via Exhibit M.)
He did not contact me back. What did happen is that the next day, Tuesday, April 17, I received an email appearing to come from OIG. See Exhibit N for the contents of that email.
What Exhibit N did not have in it was a signature of…ANYONE. Now, For several months, I had been emailing various state government offices with ORR. Every response I had ever received had the signature of the person sending me the email. Not so this supposed email from the OIG.
So, I sent back a response. See Exhibit O. I simply asked who am I talking to in that email. To this day, I have received NOTHING back. No response at all. Kinda baffling, eh?
What this kinda tells me, Folks, is the following:
1) Either the OIG is not in operation, though there are names of investigators listed on their site…or
2) They are in operation, but they only receive what the entity(ies) at GTA (and, potentially, the Governor’s Office…because this kind of email eavesdropping smacks of exactly something Chris Riley would do, just as he and Ryan Teague tried to influence the ethics investigation into his boss back in 2011-2012) decide to let pass on thru as complaints that don’t hurt anyone they are concerned with.
I also think Casey Cagle or Bo Butler (or, perhaps even Irene Munn) have long received a copy of my Complaint that I filed back on April 9 via OIG’s online complaint system. Because, it is for certain that my complaint has not reached the keen eye of someone honest at OIG (assuming anyone at OIG is, really, honest…).
You see, GTA can (and does, as evidenced by that “creative@gta.ga.gov” email address) monitor who they supply email server service to. I only have proof of the one for OIG, but, it’s a piece of cake to monitor e-transmissions of communications if you are hired to supply email service to any entity. It’s a bit like an application of the concept of George Orwell’s Big Brother. Who needs the NSA when Georgia has the GTA?
And, funny thing: You actually don’t need to set-up and expose an email address like GTA did in order to monitor email traffic. It is easy enough to set-up a programmed routine to take whatever comes into Email Box A, and secretly send a copy of any email that Box A gets to Email Box B.
[Side Note: A variation of this technique was actually uncovered at the Georgia Republican Party HQ back in the 2011-2012 timeframe. Some little sh*tbird had set-up such a thing on then-Chair Sue Everhart’s email box. (I won’t reveal the name of the sh*tbird, but, coincidentally, he’s pals with Calvin Rhodes, Executive Director of GTA…) ]
And, I researched a little further into who the clients are of GTA that GTA supplies e-mail service to. With an ORR to GTA, I discovered all of the state agencies that GTA supplies email service to. These can be seen in Exhibit P, and below is the list from GTA:
Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities
Department of Public Health
Dept of Administrative Services
Dept of Community Health
Dept of Corrections
Dept of Drivers Services
Dept of Human Services
Dept of Juvenile Justice
Dept of Natural Resources
Dept of Revenue
Georgia Aviation Authority
Georgia Bureau of Investigation
Georgia Drugs and Narcotics Agency
Georgia Technology Authority
Georgia Technology Authority ENT
Office of Governor
Office of Highway Safety
Office of Planning and Budget
Office of State Inspector General
Office of the State Treasurer
State Accounting Office
State Dept of Veterans Service
Note that one of them is actually the GBI. Gee, I wonder if there is a creative@gta.ga.gov (or similar blind email address) that secretly gets copied on all GBI emails, for someone at GTA to snoop into the GBI’s business, and monitor what’s going on?
It’d be the perfect way to ensure a Governor, such as Nathan Deal, always knows when someone is squealing on any crooked activities of his office, or any other office in the state, and seek to squash that person daring to blow the whistle on corruption.
IN CONCLUSION
The title of this article is “Total Corruption of The State of Georgia.” While the main portion of it is about the corrupt use of government resources by Casey Cagle to enrich himself personally via the use of GAA airplanes to fly to St. Simon’s to promote book sales of a book primarily written by his government-paid staff, when you combine Cagle’s crap with a) the revelation that the OIG is a facade of an independent operation charged with rooting-out executive branch corruption, and b) that the GTA monitors who is having allegations thrown against them, and, c) that the AG’s office THINKS their role it to take taxpayer money and protect corrupt government personnel…we have, in this state, a condition of corruption unmatched by anything anyone has ever seen in this state. Or, perhaps, any state.
P.S. I am in the market for a good lawyer to take-on a pro-bono case to file in Fulton County Superior Court for a declaratory judgement against Munn and Casey Cagle that the LG’s Office is NOT a “Member of the General Assembly.” And, all you need is OCGA 28-1-1 to argue to the Court. When you win, you’ll get attorney’s fees, and the self-gratifying feeling of winning. Contact me at
