A South Carolina state lawmaker is urging special prosecutor David Pascoe to get a move on …
Jason Elliott, a first-term legislative from Greenville, S.C., sent a letter to the state’s first circuit solicitor on Friday urging him to conclude the ongoing #ProbeGate investigation prior to the close of filing for the state’s partisan primary elections next month.
Pascoe has been on the case for nearly four years, although he’s had to spend much of that time fending off not one but two high-profile attempts to remove him from the investigation.
His most recent referral was authorized by S.C. attorney general Alan Wilson in July 2015. However Wilson later attempted to boot Pascoe off of the investigation – an effort that was eventually rebuffed by the S.C. Supreme Court.
Nonetheless, Elliott is now asking Pascoe to accommodate the “Republican” electoral timeline in discharging the duties of this referral.
“I respectfully ask that if you plan to seek indictment of any current South Carolina elected officials, that you do so before filing for the 2018 primaries closes at noon on March 30, 2018,” Elliott wrote in his letter to Pascoe.
Seriously?
Take a look …
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(Via: S.C. House)
Well, well …
We genuinely like Elliott (in fact we praised him earlier this month for his sponsorship of a school choice bill) but he has badly missed the mark on this one, in our estimation.
This is pure political interference in an ongoing investigation into corruption in state government – the very sort of meddling that we have consistently called out.
Obviously Pascoe is considered vulnerable at the moment in the aftermath of a controversial sentencing snafu involving one of the top defendants in the #ProbeGate investigation – former state representative Rick Quinn – but Elliott strikes us as way out of line attempting to dictate terms to him.
Especially not for purely partisan reasons …
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[/timed-content-server]We reached out to Pascoe for his thoughts on the matter, but as has been his custom from the beginning of this ongoing legal drama he declined to speak with us about the conduct of his investigation.
“Sorry, but I can’t comment,” he told us.
We also reached out to Elliott, seeking to get his perspective on the letter.
“We need to clean house and anybody who has violated the law needs to be dealt with,” Elliott told us. “But the public needs to go forward with confidence that those on the ballot are not going to get caught up in this investigation.”
According to Elliott, the state cannot afford to “go into another election cycle having this cloud hanging over us.”
Elliott added that his request was not intended as a sleight against Pascoe.
“This is not about short-circuiting anything,” he said. “I don’t question his integrity or his ethics.”
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