Ethics Commission drops case against SC attorney general

The S.C. Ethics Commission closed its case Wednesday against S.C. Attorney General Alan Wilson on charges that the Lexington Republican accepted $11,500 in improper campaign contributions.

Wilson’s attorney James Smith, a Democratic state representative from Richland County, asked the commission to dismiss the charges or consider taking no further actions on them.

Before any complaint was filed with the ethics panel, Wilson had hired an auditor to review his campaign finance records and corrected the errors, paying back excessive donations, Smith told the commission.

That argument appealed to the commissioners who voted unanimously not to take any further action against Wilson.

Wilson has “done a lot of things that make us think this is someone who actually cares about compliance,” said commissioner Sherri Lydon, a Columbia attorney.

Ethics Commission director Herb Hayden said not moving forward on the charges is in keeping with previous actions that the commission and its staff sometimes have taken when an official correct ethics violations before complaints are filed.

Earlier this year, the commission found “probable cause” existed that Wilson violated state ethics laws by accepting $11,500 in excessive campaign contributions for his 2014 re-election campaign.

The violations stemmed from 37 ethics complaints that Wisconsin resident Krista Thom filed against Wilson. The commission dismissed those complaints, in part, because Thom refused to provide information to an investigator.

However, finding merit in eight of Thom’s complaints, the commission itself refiled the allegations.

The original complaints against Wilson were filed after news reports that the attorney general and other elected officials had accepted improper contributions, taking money from donors who had exceeded the state’s limit on contributions to an individual candidate. The compaints also came after Wilson had started investigating then-House Speaker Bobby Harrell, R-Charleston. Harrell resigned last year after pleading guilty to campaign finance violations.

“The fact that he changed it before anyone filed a complaint to me suggests that there actually is no (criminal) intent there,” said Lynn Teague of the S.C. League of Women Voters, a good-government group. "Mistakes can happen.”

This story was originally published November 18, 2015 at 3:20 PM.