Will House Ethics report be used against SC Freedom Caucus in 2026 elections?
As questions surrounded the future of former state Rep. RJ May after his house was searched for evidence of child sexual abuse material, the group he helped create had to figure out how to distance itself from him.
During a news conference after the November 2024 elections, where SC House Freedom Caucus members rolled out their agenda for the upcoming session, Chairman Jordan Pace declined to directly say whether May would still be a member of the group. He later added the only communication by Freedom Caucus members with May were brief greetings such as “how are you?”
But weeks later, the Freedom Caucus confirmed May had been suspended from the hard-line conservative group.
“I get y’all had to suspend me. No hard feelings. Y’all gotta do what ya gotta do. And once I emerge from the other side of this, we can mend whatever fences we got to,” May said in a text message to Pace.
“Amen to that,” Pace responded, before any charges against May were made public.
That text exchange, along with other messages describing communications between House Freedom Caucus members and before May was arrested, were included in a footnote of a state House Ethics Committee report into the former lawmaker who has since pleaded guilty into distributing child porn.
The report is the result of a monthslong investigation that Freedom Caucus members said was really carried out to find dirt on the caucus, which has been at odds with the House GOP caucus over whether the chamber is truly passing conservative laws. So, skeptical of the investigation, some members of the caucus fought to avoid participation.
House Majority Leader Davey Hiott, who filed the ethics complaint against May that set off the investigation, said he just wanted to make sure none of the actions May eventually pleaded guilty to took place in the State House and no one else was involved.
“The gentleman in question is waiting, is waiting to be sentenced. He obviously had done something wrong, and I want to make sure that no other House member was involved,” Hiott said.
Hiott said he wasn’t surprised by the contents of the report.
“We all play by the same rules. If you’re not playing by the same rules, you’re not playing by the rules that are set up for you, then you need to be caught, need to be dealt with, and I think that’s what the report said, and I think that’s what happened. I think we move on from there,” Hiott said.
.JPG "03.14.23.house.session.file.000003 (1).JPG")
Freedom Caucus participation in investigation
Attorneys for Maynard Nexsen, who was hired to handle the investigation, wanted to speak to five members of the hard-line conservative S.C. House Freedom Caucus. Two of them, state Reps. Ryan McCabe and Joe White, were “fully cooperative.”
Three of them, state Reps. Stephen Frank, Jay Kilmartin and Jordan Pace did not want to answer questions from investigators. Investigators went as far as delivering subpoenas to those three members.
Delivery of a subpoena to Frank is depicted in the final report and can be interpreted as him avoiding the process server. “Representative Frank initially refused to come out of his house and accept service of the subpoena, and Representative Frank was seen peering through the window but refused to answer phone calls or the doorbell,” the report said. “The investigator spent nearly two hours attempting to serve Representative Frank, but he only came out of his house to accept service when his wife needed to leave the residence.”
Frank told The State he was helping homeschool his four children who range from four to 14 years old when the process server, whom he didn’t recognize, knocked on his door. He told his kids to ignore whoever was at the door.
“I didn’t do anything illegal. I don’t have to accept service,” Frank said. According to text messages included in the report, Frank texted May after his house was searched in August 2024, “Praying for you my friend.” May responded, “LOL [shrug emoji] I’ll hopefully emerge from this soon.”
The report also says Frank sent a text message to May before his arrest, but investigators did not include contents of the text.
“I don’t really care what narrative they try to spin at this point, on the one hand, I expect them to lie, misconstrue,” Frank said in an interview. “That’s what they’ve done categorically so far.”
Frank criticized the investigation when speaking to a reporter.
“The whole ethics complaint was a waste of taxpayer money, was Davey Hiott’s parade that the taxpayers footed the bill for,” Frank said. “We had nothing to do with any of his (May’s) illegal activity. That was obvious. Everybody knew that beforehand, because we’re not in jail.”
Hiott denies the investigation was a pretense to find material to use against the Freedom Caucus.
“It wasn’t directed to one individual outside of Mr. May. Their close connection to him had nothing to do with,” Hiott said.
Pace says some context missing in report
In a text chain after May’s suspension, May and Pace referenced rapper Sean Combs, known as Diddy, who has since been sentenced to four years in prison for transporting people across state lines for the purposes of prostitution.
May said, “You’d have to know you, me, and P Diddy. Then you’d have to know what P diddy is alleged to have done and that I’m under investigation. Then you’d have to know your chairman. [And] try and put that together.”
Pace replied, “they’re not good at politics.”
May also asked, “Does your average GOP voter even get [what] that text is supposed to mean?”
Pace responds, “No. The average voter is not paying attention to anything but Trump and Christmas.”
Pace in an interview said the text exchange was about a meme with a photo of Pace and May with Combs in the middle that had been texted out to in districts represented by Freedom Caucus members in an effort to connect the Freedom Caucus to May in the eyes of voters.
The House Ethics Committee report points out that despite the Freedom Caucus saying it had very little communication with May, members turned over pages of text messages. Pace himself had 63 pages.
But Pace says the text messages he handed over were blown up to a larger type face in order to fill more pages, saying investigators put two to three sentences per page, and they were from December 2024 and later.
“I think a lot of the pertinent details were omitted purposely, judging by that, the specific lack of information in the way that they tried to frame me as being dishonest,” Pace said.
Pace, who did not share the text messages he handed over with The State, said most of the messages are brief greetings and May providing “unsolicited political advice that I generally didn’t respond to halfway through the session.”
Pace said in an interview, if May was innocent, he would have been welcomed back into the Freedom Caucus fold.
“We didn’t know what was going on at all. Nobody did,” Pace said. “If he was innocent of the rumors at the time of what it was about, that means there wouldn’t have been victims for those types of crimes. Of course, we were hoping that was going to be the reality. Unfortunately, it wasn’t.”
“I don’t think I will participate in referring to them as investigators. That gives some false notion of balance or nonaffiliation,” Pace said.
Ethics report may be primary election fodder
The report has the potential of being used against Freedom Caucus members in the June primaries.
But will campaigns against Freedom Caucus members or candidates they support work? One indicator may be the primaries ahead of recent special elections. Candidates backed by House GOP Caucus members did not win nominations.
“If you look at the special election cycle we just went through, they didn’t do too well. Every establishment pick lost miserably or couldn’t make it in a runoff dead heat with us,” Frank said.
In the race to fill the seat May vacated, John Lastinger won the Republican nomination after he received support from Freedom Caucus members.
Dianne Mitchell won the Republican nomination in House District 21 to complete the unfinished term for the seat previously held by Bobby Cox. Mitchell was endorsed by several Freedom Caucus members ahead of the election. She ended up winning the nomination in a Republican runoff by 20 votes.
The entire House will be up for election in 2026 and it may lead more battles between the House GOP Caucus against Freedom Caucus at the primary election ballot box.
Will the House GOP caucus use the material issued in the report, which is now public record?
“I have no idea. I don’t run any campaigns,” said Hiott, who himself is not running for reelection.
.
This story was originally published December 29, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
