The Quinndom at work: SC prosecutors say father-son duo took millions to push bills

When the University of South Carolina wanted less oversight of its spending, university officials turned to Richard Quinn & Associates, a powerful political consulting firm whose founder and chief, Richard Quinn, has since agreed to cooperate with state prosecutors in a State House corruption probe.

The state’s largest university paid RQ&A more than $500,000 between November 2010 and May 2015. The university has said the money was paid for public relations and consulting work. However, prosecutors say Quinn’s son – the now disgraced S.C. House Rep. Rick Quinn, R-Lexington – pushed legislation USC wanted.

The payment is just one of nearly $5 million that state prosecutors, during a Wednesday court hearing, said RQ&A took from powerful special interests, USC being one of them. In return, RQ&A pushed bills for those clients without registering as a lobbyist – an action that is illegal and resulted in a $3,000 fine against Richard Quinn’s firm.

In exchange for the corruption charges against him being dropped, the 73-year-old Quinn agreed to cooperate with law enforcement and will testify in January before a state grand jury on matters related to the corruption investigation headed by special prosecutor David Pascoe. If Quinn lies to the grand jury, he could be charged with perjury or obstruction of justice.

The younger Quinn pleaded guilty to one count of misconduct in office – a misdemeanor that carries up to a $1,000 fine and one year in prison. Pascoe is seeking a full-year prison sentence for Rick Quinn, whose attorneys have asked for probation instead. State Circuit Judge Carmen Mullen plans to issue a sentence at a later date.

Quinn, 52, said he was guilty only of failing to disclose USC as a business client on ethics forms. Quinn’s attorneys said he never took any money for personal benefit and had zero involvement in his father’s consulting firm.

Pascoe told Mullen on Wednesday that was hardly the case. In a slide presentation, he highlighted emails between Quinn and his father, company executives and university officials, /which Pascoe said showed Quinn was voting and lobbying on behalf of special interests that were paying his direct-mail business and father’s firm for services.

Those same special interests routinely employ teams of registered lobbyists to push their agenda, raising questions about why they would hire the Quinn firm.

“It all turns on whether or not these executives from the big corporations knew the scheme the Quinns were running,” said John Crangle, a government watchdog now with the S.C. Progressive Network. “If they did, they have problems.”

The ‘political family’ and its influence

In Wednesday’s hearing, Pascoe laid out a case for why the elder Quinn and his legislator son were deeply involved in pushing the interests of RQ&A’s clients in the Legislature.

In addition to working for some of the state’s most powerful public officials – including the state’s governor and attorney general – RQ&A also has on its client list some of the state’s most powerful companies and state agencies.

In an email sent the night of Sept. 8, 2012, Richard Quinn wrote to two now-former lawmakers that USC President Harris Pastides wanted to meet for lunch.

The email was sent to Rick Quinn and former state Reps. Kenny Bingham, R-Lexington, and Jim Merrill, R-Berkeley.

Merrill, who paid RQ&A $4,500 for campaign work in 2013, pleaded guilty to corruption charges in Pascoe’s case this year. Bingham, who retired in 2016, paid RQ&A $41,000 for political services from 2009 to 2014.

“I met with Harris Pastides last week and he expressed an interest in having an informal lunch with our political ‘family’ just to talk about what ever comes up on the general subject of higher ed or anything else – no agenda,” the senior Quinn wrote in the email.

There would be plenty to discuss, Pascoe said in court Wednesday, referring to $514,763.46 in payments from USC to RQ&A for services between 2010 and 2015. Pascoe argued those payments helped secure favorable legislation for USC.

For example, Pascoe said, on May 29, 2014, USC’s then registered lobbyist, Trey Walker – now Gov. Henry McMaster’s chief of staff – told USC’s chief operating officer and senior vice president for administration, Ed Walton, by email that the S.C. Senate had no interest in hammering out details related to the Clemson Enterprise Act with House leadership. Pastides was copied on the email.

The Senate already had passed the Clemson Enterprise Act in 2013, giving the Upstate university’s Board of Trustees more control over the school’s economic development programs. The University of South Carolina wanted its name attached to the bill, too, and was pushing for the House to amend the bill.

Pascoe pointed to an email in which Walker says Rick Quinn went to work on his legislative colleagues.

“During the Clemson bill consideration in (the) House, I got Rick Quinn to successfully nail (House Ways and Means Chairman) Brian White down on the record – from the podium – that the House conferees would not compromise and accept the Senate version of the Clemson bill,” Walker emailed to Walton on May 30, 2014.

Walton responded, “In the end, what we want is the gist of the Senate version of the CU Enterprise Act to include USC.”

Walker, who worked for RQ&A in the early 2000s, and Pastides both have testified before the state grand jury. Walker told The State newspaper after he testified that he was told he is not a target.

On Friday, Walker said, “On a daily basis, my job was to provide every member of the General Assembly with authoritative policy information and request their support or assistance on issues related to the university and higher education.”

USC spokesman Wes Hickman said Friday that the university paid RQ&A for consulting work that helped create strategies, themes and messages to support the school’s priorities.

“Richard Quinn and Associates did not lobby on behalf of the university nor did we hire RQA to buy access or influence the legislative activities of Rep. Rick Quinn or any other legislator,” Hickman said. “We do not believe the university is a target in the Pascoe investigation.”

A ‘favor to me’

Emails also show the Quinns tried to help Infilaw, a private, for-profit law school that wanted to buy the Charleston School of Law, Pascoe said. Infilaw paid RQ&A $185,000 from May 2014 to March 2015.

Pascoe said several actions set into motion by the Quinns helped the law school by persuading the Commission on Higher Education to delay a vote on Infilaw’s proposal to purchase the law school:

▪ An attorney general’s opinion favorable to Infilaw came at Richard Quinn’s request, Pascoe said.

A witness interviewed by the State Law Enforcement Division told investigators they received a text message from Richard Quinn on May 31, 2014, that said, “Yes (AG’s Office Employee) issued it yesterday morning as a favor to me,” Pascoe said. That text message was not shown in court Wednesday.

▪ On behalf of Infilaw, RQ&A also drafted a letter for now-indicted state Sen. John Courson – chairman of the Senate Education Committee – asking the Commission on Higher Education to delay its vote. Courson then sent the letter to the agency, which oversees S.C. institutions on higher education, Pascoe said. The commission agreed to delay the vote.

Courson, a longtime Quinn client, is accused of funneling campaign money to himself using one of the Quinn firms.

▪ Rick Quinn also sought to help Infilaw “stack the CHE board with favorable members,” Pascoe said, pointing to an email from a Columbia attorney representing Infilaw to Rick Quinn and Merill.

In the email, the attorney, Kevin Hall, compiled a list of commission board members and asked Quinn and Merrill to seek information on some of them. Beside one of the names, Hall wrote, “identify possible ‘grassroots’ replacements for him that can become Gary Simrill’s idea and his referred appointment,” according to the email presented by Pascoe.

By phone Friday, S.C. House Majority Leader Simrill, R-York, said neither Quinn nor Merrill ever approached him to discuss a replacement for the CHE board member. Simrill also said he has never been a client of the Quinns.

“Wishful thinking on their part to stack the deck,” Simrill said.

‘Lose with dignity’

Infilaw was not the only RQ&A client Rick Quinn helped out, Pascoe argued.

In 2015, AT&T was pushing the General Assembly to pass the State Telecom Equity in Funding Act, a bill favorable to AT&T, which paid RQ&A $496,940.42 for unspecified services between April 2007 and November 2015, Pascoe said.

Pascoe said documents show that Rick Quinn helped figure out how to remove an opponent to the bill, pointing to an email to AT&T South Carolina’s president Pamela Lackey and the company’s director of legislative affairs, Jane Sosebee. The email, written by someone whose name had been redacted, said, “... Rick just told me (Jim) merrill (sic) has been working the bill – he is a problem. Rick and I are talking at 1 on how to deal with him.”

Pascoe said Merrill, the former legislator, described what happened next to SLED agents and the FBI. According to Pascoe’s presentation:

▪  Richard Quinn called Merrill for a meeting, and Rick Quinn asked Merrill to return the calls. Rick Quinn was “in and out” of the meeting.

▪  Richard Quinn told Merrill that Merrill was opposing the legislation favorable to his clients.

▪  Richard Quinn “said it had been difficult explaining why someone on the ‘team’ had blocked the bill.”

▪  Rick Quinn pointed out that it would look funny if Merrill flipped his position, and Richard Quinn asked Merrill not to participate instead.

Pascoe said another email chain provides evidence that Rick Quinn was instructing Merrill on what action to take on the bill.

“2 hours of debate. Mr Merrill was a formidable opponent,” Lackey wrote in an email to another telecommunications executive, referring – according to Pascoe – to debate on the bill, which eventually passed and became law.

After the executive responded “Ha. R u surprised?” Lackey replied, “Quinn’s had a talk with him prior. Told him to lose with dignity, but don’t do any harm.”

Lackey has testified before the state grand jury.

AT&T’s Carolinas spokesman Clifton Metcalf said AT&T has never paid or authorized either Richard or Rick Quinn, or any business associated with them, to lobby on behalf of the company. The company follows all ethics and lobbying laws, including reporting who is registered to lobby for the company, he said.

This story was originally published December 15, 2017 at 9:16 PM with the headline "The Quinndom at work: SC prosecutors say father-son duo took millions to push bills."