I Read the News Today, Oh Boy!

If you like reading a daily newspaper—an actual, hold it in your hands, printed on newsprint newspaper—with your morning cup of coffee Fannin County is not the place for you. We’re too small to have a daily paper and too far from a major metropolitan newspaper to get any coverage.

The closest big daily paper is the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. It is a major metropolitan newspaper with national and state news as well as news from the Atlanta area. (Fannin County is not part of the Atlanta area—thank God!)

I do not subscribe to the Journal-Constitution nor read it for a couple of reasons. First, the news from Atlanta is confusing to me. Metro Atlanta covers nine counties, and each of them has its own government and sheriff’s department. Within those nine counties are a number of separate cities, and each of them has its own government and police department. I never lived in Atlanta so I have no idea where these counties and cities are in relation to each other. When a news report refers to some place in Metro Atlanta I’m clueless of where it is. To me, Atlanta is the place two hours south of me where the traffic sucks.

But more than that, the news from Atlanta is boring. It’s always the same: road construction, traffic delays, murder, mayhem, government incompetence and waste and the Atlanta Braves and Atlanta Falcons. I don’t care about anything of those things as long as they stay in Atlanta and away from here. I feel that way about a lot of things.

The Chattanooga Times Free Press is the only other metropolitan newspaper that has a presence here. I’ve seen a couple Times Free Press mailbox receptacles around here so I guess some people subscribe to it. Chattanooga is located just under two hours northeast of Fannin County in another state. The news of Chattanooga is even less relevant to me than the news from Atlanta. I doubt whether 99.9 percent of the news from Chattanooga is relevant to anyone anywhere, even to people in Chattanooga. The only two meaningful events in Chattanooga in the last 150 years are the terror attack on a recruiting station last year and the Battle of Lookout Mountain in the Civil War. Chances are that it will be another 150 years before something meaningful happens there.

For local news in Fannin County you have to rely on the three local weekly newspapers and word of mouth.

The fact that Fannin County has three weekly newspapers is rather amazing considering that Fannin County has less than 25,000 residents. You would think that with three newspapers Fannin County residents would be well informed about the doings of their local officials. If they’re relying on the newspapers for their news that’s probably not the case.

There’s only one newspaper that does any real investigative journalism or is willing to publish articles that are genuinely critical of the local establishment. That’s the Fannin Focus. Unfortunately, the Focus is small and doesn’t have the resources to cover all the stories that need to be covered.

The oldest and most well established paper, The News Observer, has the broadest coverage of local news of any of the local papers. But a lot of that “news” is stuff like little Johnny wins the sixth grade spelling bee and Elmer Johnson received his Ace Mechanic Award. It might be interesting if you know little Johnny and Elmer Johnson but it’s not exactly the type of information you need to know to decide whether your local government and judiciary are doing a good job for you.

The News Observer does cover local government…in a fashion. Unfortunately it’s the newspaper of the Fannin County establishment, and it goes out of its way to minimize or overlook the peccadillos and mistakes of local officials. It certainly avoids criticizing them, and in at least a couple of instances it actually covers up for them. I believe one of the reasons for that is because it has been designated by local officials as the official legal organ of the county. That means that all legal advertisements and notices must be published in the News Observer. I suspect the News Observer treats local officials with kid gloves because it doesn’t want to lose that lucrative source of revenue.

The third paper, the Fannin Sentinel, also is limited and rather bland in its coverage of local officials. Its reports are factual but there is no investigative journalism or critical commentary when local officials screw up.

If you only read the News Observer and the Fannin Sentinel you might confuse Fannin County with Mayberry.

So the bottom line is that I don’t think reading the local papers is enough to keep fully informed of what is really happening in Fannin County. That being said, this is a small community. It seems like ninety percent of the people in Fannin County are related to each other in some way or went to school with each other. Everyone knows someone who knows something. Word gets around quickly in Fannin County. It’s like there’s a bush telegraph that communicates all the local rumors, scuttlebutt, gossip and dirty laundry faster than a 24 hour news network.

It amazes me when I talk to everyday people in Fannin County how much they know or intuit about local officials, government and local affairs. Many posts ago I commented that one problem with living in a small community is that if you act like an asshole it doesn’t take long for everyone to think you’re an asshole even if you’ve never met the person. That’s the Fannin County bush telegraph in operation.

My hypothesis is that in a small community like Fannin County word of mouth is at least as effective (and perhaps more so) in communicating information about local affairs as newspapers and local television news are in more populous areas. Studies show that most people are not really well informed and usually base their opinions and political choices on incomplete and sketchy information. In that regard, I suspect that thanks to the bush telegraph people in Fannin County have access to just as much incomplete and sketchy information as people elsewhere.

I guess that means that people in Fannin County know as little about local public affairs as people elsewhere. The good news is that we probably don’t know any less. In other words, we’re no more ignorant than the rest of the country. I think that’s a good thing but I’m not sure.

A Dose of Reality

Fannin County has been in the news lately, and not in a good way. If you read my last post you’ll know that the chief judge of the Appalachian Circuit (which includes Fannin County), with the connivance the district attorney, got the publisher of one of the local weekly newspapers and his attorney arrested. The judge’s name is Brenda Weaver and the district attorney’s name is Alison Sosebee. The publisher is Mark Thomason, and his attorney is Russell Stookey. Thomason publishes the Fannin Focus. It’s the only local paper that does real investigative journalism and is willing to be critical of the local establishment. I occasionally write a column for the Fannin Focus.

The charges and arrests were clearly unjustified and an act of pure vindictiveness on the part of Weaver. Weaver got pissed off at Thomason because Thomason “questioned” her honesty in the Fannin Focus. She was actually quoted as saying, “I don’t react well when my honesty is questioned.” As Steve Martin would say, “Well, excuse me!”

The facts are that Stookey subpoenaed court bank records relevant to a suit Thomason is involved in. I don’t want to get too far into the weeds but Stookey was attempting to obtain proof that the Weaver used court funds to pay a private litigant’s attorney’s fees. Weaver went to her buddy, Sosebee, and convinced her to get a grand jury to indict Thomason and Stookey on charges of identity theft, attempt to commit identity theft and making false statements about a public official. Sosebee, who is relatively new to the D.A.’s job, used to clerk for Weaver and was employed for a while with Weaver’s lawyer husband.

The identity theft charges were based on the premise that Thomason and Stookey were somehow stealing the court’s identity by obtaining the court’s bank records which, incidentally, are public records of public funds. The false statement charge was based on the fact that the subpoena suggested that Weaver may have unlawfully authorized the payment of a private litigant’s attorney’s fees—an issue which was not only germane to Thomason’s lawsuit but was also the subject of a couple of critical articles in the Fannin Focus. Thomason contends such a payment violates state law.

You do not need to be an attorney to realize that the charges are total bullshit. The requested records are public records. If the subpoena was improper the appropriate procedure would be to move to quash the subpoena. If there was sensitive information in the records the proper procedure would be to move for a protective order to redact the sensitive information.

How, you may ask, did Sosebee manage to get a grand jury to indict Thomason and Stookey on these bullshit charges? I’m no expert on grand juries but, as one news article put it, you can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich. It seems obvious that Weaver lost her cool and with the connivance of Sosebee lashed out at pesky Thomason. Really a dumb move for someone who is supposed to be so smart.

When news of the arrests got out there was a shit storm of outrage from news outlets and journalist’s organizations both inside and outside the state. Hell, even the Drudge Report ran a piece on the incident. All the news reports were extremely critical of Weaver’s attempt to muzzle Thomason. Some of the reports quoted lawyers versed in criminal law as saying the charges were unwarranted and unjustified. The Atlanta Press Club, Georgia First Amendment Foundation and Georgia Press Association and other journalist organizations demanded that the charges be dropped. The Georgia chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists made a complaint to the Georgia Judicial Qualifications Commission (JQC) about Weaver’s actions.

Oh, guess what? Weaver is also the head of the state JQC.

It is clear that Weaver and Sosebee did not anticipate this tidal wave of criticism. Two weeks after Thomason and Stookey were arrested and in the face of overwhelming criticism Weaver requested that Sosbee drop the charges. Sosebee dutifully filed a motion to drop the charges. To me that’s just further proof the charges were unwarranted to begin with. I mean if Weaver and Sosebee really believed that a crime had been committed don’t they have some obligation to proceed with the case?

But the saga continues. There is a hearing tomorrow on Sosebee’s motion to drop the charges. Apparently that is unusual in and of itself. From what I’ve read the standard procedure in Georgia is for a judge to grant a prosecutor’s motion to drop charges automatically without the necessity of a hearing. Obviously, Weaver is not going to preside at the motion hearing. Well, maybe that’s not so obvious around here.

What’s more, Stookey has said he does not want the charges dropped. He is outraged at the assault on his reputation and wants to go to trial on the charges to prove his innocence. Thomason is happy to have the charges dismissed.

The hearing on motion should be interesting. Sosebee will be arguing strenuously to have the charges dropped because she wants to avoid the humiliation of having it shown that she brought bullshit charges, and Stookey will be arguing for the opportunity to defeat the charges in front of a jury. I think the odds are 50-50 that Sosebee will send one of her assistant district attorneys to cover the hearing rather than show up herself. Thomason believes that there will be a crowd of press are the hearing, and the last thing Sosebee wants to do is answer questions or try to justify the charges. She has clammed up on the advice of the state prosecutors’ association.

Thomason has been talking about suing Weaver and Sosebee for deprivation of his civil rights. I presume the claim would be that they violated his First Amendment right of free speech and freedom of the press and his Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable seizures. I suppose there are some state law claims such as false arrest, malicious prosecution and abuse of process that could be alleged also. I’m not sure how far any of these claims will get. Thomason will have to overcome strong defenses such as judicial and prosecutorial immunity.

For me this has been a strong dose of reality. I have been painting a picture in these posts that Fannin County is this idyllic place of rural bliss and tranquility where small town values reign, people are friendly and the discord, abuses and evils of contemporary America happen elsewhere. I guess I was being naïve and overly romantic.

The root of the problem, as I see it, is that persons in power in the local establishment do not understand that Fannin County is no longer the remote, rural county unconnected with the larger world that it was 20 or 30 years ago. Back then they could do things and get away with it without being subject to scrutiny.

A prime example of this is that last year a judge and a prosecutor used the N-word in open court. Thomason reported on the incident in his newspaper much to the embarrassment of the court and prosecutor. Regardless of how you feel about using the N-word, smart people—particularly those in public office—simply do not use the word in this day and age. (Incidentally, that incident and Thomason’s reporting of it is the genesis of the present controversy but that’s a story for another day.)

A few posts ago I poo-pooed the idea that I could get in trouble for writing columns critical of the local establishment. Now I’m not too sure.

I’ll tell you one thing. Having never lived in a small town I find the local politics and political machinations fascinating. I’m trying to understand them. I feel like Margaret Mead exploring the culture of Samoa. I just hope I don’t run into a tribe of head hunters and end up in some local stew pot.

Big Doings in Small Fannin County

I warn you that this post will be lengthy.

Back in October I published a post that poo-poo’d the idea that the local powers that be in Fannin County would be vindictive against those who criticize them. I may have spoken too soon. A recent incident involving the publisher of a local paper and the chief judge of the Superior Court has attracted quite a bit of media attention and started to make me rethink whether Fannin County is safe for civilized people.

Here’s the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s version of the story:

Torpy at Large: Pushy journalist makes 

news when judge pushes back

By Bill Torpy (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution)

If Mark Thomason is an identity fraud artist, he’s a bad one.

Thomason and his lawyer, Russell Stookey, were arrested in Blue Ridge in North Georgia on charges of identity fraud and making false statements. Thomason is a known troublemaker — he publishes the Fannin Focus, one of the county’s three newspapers. That’s right, Fannin County, population 22,000, has three (3!) print newspapers AND a news blog.

The felony charges against Thomason go back to a year-old fight he’s waged with the local Powers That Be, one that started with a prosecutor and a judge casually tossing around a racial slur in open court. What got the publisher tossed in the pokey last month was his insistence to get his hands on bank records to show Superior Court Judge Brenda Weaver (who is not the judge in the racial slur episode) used public funds to pay a court reporter when she shouldn’t have.

Thomason first tried using the Open Records Act to come up with documentation. When that didn’t work, he got inventive and used a subpoena from ongoing litigation to demand the records from a bank.

Whoops! Thomason soon found himself stopped by police on a highway, handcuffed, strip-searched not once, but twice, forced to sleep overnight on a concrete jailhouse floor, and then tested for drugs not once, but twice, since his release.

The story has gone national, with First Amendment and newspaper groups saying his treatment represents an attack on Freedom of the Press. It’s David getting ‘cuffed by Goliath.

Thomason, who started his newspaper two years ago, is bemused. “If anyone wanted to commit ID fraud, the last thing they’d want to do is to file public records discussing it,” he said.

It seems Judge Weaver has gotten her robes all bunched up because Thomason is pesky and aggressive and has bothered the heck out of her and other local officials.

Weaver told the AJC’s Rhonda Cook she resented Thomason’s continuing attacks in his weekly newspaper and what he was saying around town.

“I don’t react well when my honesty is questioned,” said Weaver, who called the questioning of her spending a “vendetta.”

If Thomason was twisting the process by using a subpoena to get the bank records, it seems an odd way to access the judge’s operating account to, say, buy stuff on Amazon. No, his intention was to write about how the judge used taxpayer dollars.

It all started last year when a prosecutor casually mentioned a racial slur as the nickname of a witness in a case before Appalachian Judicial Circuit Superior Court Judge Roger Bradley, who was Weaver’s colleague. Someone called Thomason about it and he started digging.

Thomason got a copy of the transcript, but it did not include other people (like two Fannin sheriff’s deputies) who used the slur, as he had been told by people in the courtroom.

The publisher demanded court reporter Rhonda Stubblefield turn over a tape recording of the proceedings. She wouldn’t. He sued her to get it. She slapped him with a $1.6 million defamation lawsuit.

Ultimately, yet another judge ruled the court reporter didn’t have to turn over the tape and Stubblefield dropped her defamation suit. But late last year, Judge Weaver stepped in and approved paying the court reporter $16,000 to cover her legal expenses, even though emails show at least one Fannin County administrator was uncomfortable with public money being spent to aide a private individual.

Weaver said she didn’t want the court reporter to be out all that money in attorney’s fees. And you certainly wouldn’t want an attorney to go unpaid. The court reporter’s attorney, Mary Beth Priest, is now a judge alongside Weaver.

Things get cozy in small towns like Blue Ridge.

For instance, the prosecutor who brought up the fraud charges against the newspaperman is District Attorney Alison Sosebee. When she got out of law school, she got a job as a law clerk — for Judge Weaver. And when she got her first lawyer job, it was with the firm of veteran attorney George Weaver, the judge’s husband.

Judges using the criminal justice system to settle a score or shut someone up could run afoul of the state’s Judicial Qualifications Commission, which investigates wrongdoing. (In fact, Bradley, the judge in the racial slur case that started all this, resigned this year as the JQC investigated him.)

A JQC spokesman said he couldn’t comment on the situation.

Incidentally, Judge Weaver is the JQC’s board chairman. Georgia’s legal community is, in essence, a small town.

And in Blue Ridge, the newspaper and its publisher are the talk of the town. Thomason’s divorce record and failure to pay child support have surfaced.

And there’s a deep divide on what people think.

Take Sheriff Dane Kirby, who took the publisher into custody: “I do not have a lot of confidence that what is printed in the Fannin Focus will be the truth.”

Or Blue Ridge Police Chief Johnny Scearce, who has played softball with Thomason: “He’s done my department fair. In two years, his paper has grown pretty popular. He’s pretty aggressive. He’s more detailed. He goes after it.”

And now they’re going after him.

Even the Drudge Report covered the story:

'Retaliation for use of the Open Records Act

will inhibit every citizen from using it.'

A North Georgia newspaper publisher was indicted on a felony charge and jailed overnight last week – for filing an open-records request.

Fannin Focus publisher Mark Thomason, along with his attorney Russell Stookey, were arrested on Friday and charged with attempted identity fraud and identity fraud. Thomason was also accused of making a false statement in his records request.

Thomason’s relentless pursuit of public records relating to the local Superior Court has incensed the court’s chief judge, Brenda Weaver, who also chairs the state Judicial Qualifications Commission. Weaver took the matter to the district attorney, who obtained the indictments.

Thomason was charged June 24 with making a false statement in an open-records request in which he asked for copies of checks “cashed illegally.” Thomason and Stookey were also charged with identity fraud and attempted identity fraud because they did not get Weaver’s approval before sending subpoenas to banks where Weaver and another judge maintained accounts for office expenses. Weaver suggested that Thomason may have been trying to steal banking information on the checks.

But Thomason said he was “doing his job” when he asked for records.

“I was astounded, in disbelief that there were even any charges to be had,” said Thomason, 37, who grew up in Fannin County. “I take this as a punch at journalists across the nation that if we continue to do our jobs correctly, then we have to live in fear of being imprisoned.”

Thomason and Stookey are out on $1,000 bond and have a long list of things they cannot do or things they must do to avoid going to jail until their trials. On Thursday, for example, Thomason reported to a pretrial center and was told that he may have to submit to a random drug test – a condition of the bond on which he was released from jail last Saturday.

Alison Sosebee, district attorney in the three counties in the Appalachian Judicial Circuit, and Judge Weaver say the charges are justified. Weaver said she resented Thomason’s attacks on her character in his weekly newspaper and in conversations with her constituents.

“I don’t react well when my honesty is questioned,” Weaver said.

She said others in the community were using Thomason to get at her. “It’s clear this is a personal vendetta against me,” she said. “I don’t know how else to explain that.”

But legal experts expressed dismay at the punitive use of the Open Records Act.

“To the extent these criminal charges stem from the use of the Open Records Act undermines the entire purpose of the law,” said Hollie Manheimer, executive director of the Georgia First Amendment Foundation. “The Open Records Act is the vehicle by which citizens access governmental information… Retaliation for use of the Open Records Act will inhibit every citizen from using it, and reel us back into the dark ages.”

Another expert said the charges against attorney Russell Stookey may also be unfounded. Robert Rubin, president of the Georgia Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, said it was wrong for the grand jury to indict a lawyer who “is using the legitimate court process for a subpoena to get records relevant for his case.”

It began with a racial slur in court

The dispute grows out of a March 2015 incident involving another judge who is no longer on the bench. Judge Roger Bradley was presiding over several cases and asked the name of the next defendant. The assistant district attorney announced next up was “(Racial slur) Ray.” Bradley, who resigned earlier this year, repeated the slur and also talked about another man whose street name started with the same slur.

Thomason asked for the transcript after he was told courtroom deputies also used the slur.

But the transcript only noted that Bradley and the assistant district attorney used the word.

According to Thomason, the court reporter told him that it was “off the record” when others in the courtroom spoke the word so it would not be recorded in the transcript. He asked to listen to the audio recording, but his request was rejected.

In an article Thomason quoted the court reporter as saying the slur was not taken down each time it was used.

And then Thomason asked Stookey to file paperwork with the court to force the the stenographer, Rhonda Stubblefield, to release the recording.

Stubblefield responded with a $1.6 million counterclaim against Thomason, accusing him of defaming her in stories that said the transcript she produced may not be accurate. Two months later a visiting judge closed Thomason’s case, concluding that Thomason had not produced evidence the transcript was inaccurate.

Last April, Stubblefield dropped her counterclaim because, her lawyer wrote, it was unlikely Thomason could pay the award if she won.

The next month, however, Stubblefield filed paper work to recoup attorney’s fees even though last last year she was cut a check for almost $16,000 from then-Judge Bradley’s operating account.

“She was being accused of all this stuff. She was very distressed. She had done absolutely nothing wrong,” Weaver said of the judges’ decision to use court money to cover Stubblefield’s legal expenses. “She was tormented all these months and then had to pay attorneys’ fees. And the only reason she was sued was she was doing what the court policy was.”

Stubblefield’s lawyer, Herman Clark, said in court Stubblefield was asking for the money from Thomason or his attorney so she could replace the funds taken out of the court bank account. Clark said it was unfair to expect taxpayers to pick up the cost.

To fight Stubblefield’s claim for legal fees, Stookey filed subpoenas for copies of certain checks so he could show her attorneys had already been paid. One of those two accounts listed in a subpoena had Weaver’s name on it as well as the Appalachian Judicial Circuit.

Weaver said the identify fraud allegations came out of her concern that Thomason would use the banking information on those checks for himself.

“I have absolutely no interest in further misappropriating any government monies,” Thomason said. “My sole goal was to show that legal fees were paid from a publicly funded account.”

At this point I should let you know that I occasionally write a column for the Fannin Focus.

The latest news is that the District Attorney, Sosebee, is dismissing the charges against Thomason and Stookey:

District Attorney Asks to Dismiss 

Indictment Against Publisher and Attorney

By R. Robin McDonald (Law.com)

An attorney for the publisher of a North Georgia newspaper said she will ask to expunge his arrest and seal felony charges against him after the district attorney who secured the indictment moved Thursday to dismiss the case.

Ashleigh Merchant—who with husband, John, is representing publisher Mark Thomason pro bono—said Thursday that she was ‘shocked” and “very happy” by Appalachian Circuit District Attorney Alison Sosebee’s surprise decision to ask that felony charges against Thomason and Hiawassee attorney Russell Stookey be dismissed. The charges stemmed from efforts by the two men to obtain bank records for the county operating account of the circuit’s chief superior court judge, Brenda Weaver. Thomason is the publisher of the Fannin Focus.

“I think they were under pressure from the media and public scrutiny,” Merchant said. “There has been a large public outcry.” But Merchant cautioned that Sosebee could still object to sealing the indictment or expunging Thomason’s arrest. “And even if you get it expunged,” she said, “it’s never really gone.”

Thomason agreed with Merchant’s assessment. The publisher was arrested June 24 after he was pulled over by the county sheriff on the town’s main highway. He secured his release with a $10,000 bond. His bond conditions also barred him and his reporting staff from the county courthouse because the alleged crime victim was a sitting Superior Court judge.

"Unfortunately, a dismissal does not counteract the harm or the experience that Mr. Stookey and myself have had to live through,” he said. “I feel like, from this point forward, Mr. Stookey will always be known as the lawyer who committed fraud, and I am the journalist who was arrested.”

Merchant also vowed that once the charges are formally dismissed and the case is closed, she intends to file public records requests to discover “what communication there was between the DA and the courts and the county commissioner’s office” on the matter. Right now, those records are exempt from the state’s open records laws because the investigation has not concluded. “Mark wants some answers,” she said. “I think the public wants to know how this happened.”

Stookey could not be reached for comment.

Sosebee filed the motion to dismiss just two weeks after a Pickens County grand jury charged Thomason and Stookey with identity fraud, attempted identity fraud and making a false statement to a public official.

Richard Winegarden, a senior superior court judge who was assigned the case after Weaver and her two colleagues on the Appalachian Circuit recused, will have to sign off on Sosebee’s motion to dismiss the charges.

Until he does, Sosebee—who once served as Weaver’s law clerk and who was a law partner of Weaver’s husband until she was elected district attorney—said it would be inappropriate for her to comment.

Obviously I'm very disappointed that something like this could happen in my adopted home. I feel like the guy in the new suit who has just been crapped on by a large bird.

I guess it shows you that no place is free from abuses of power. It was so bush league of Weaver and Sosebee to think that their actions would go unnoticed and they could get away with something like this. I suppose that's the problem with the insularity of rural and small town life--you tend to forget there's a wider world out there. Hey guys, when are you going to realize that you're not in Kansas anymore?