Wiley Deserves Better (Part 1)
Wiley Price has been a friend of mine. But he got messed over by the Missouri House and fined for an ethics investigation based primarily on hearsay.
I was excited to see this headline in the Missouri Independent recently:
I think Representative Price was done wrong by the Ethics committee. He’s required to pay $22,492.25 to the Missouri House for the “investigation” that was done into a complaint against him, and this is wrong. But like always, there’s more to the story.
$22,492.25
Rep. Price, through his lawyer, Judge Callahan, has filed a lawsuit in state court seeking injunctive relief against the Chief Clerk of the House and against the Director of the Department of Revenue for the money he has been asked to pay back to the House.
It’s not automatically clear from the Petition1 whether they are being sued in their individual or official capacity. Either way, it doesn’t seem like they are the correct parties here when it was the House that assessed the damages.
It is also interesting (and not mentioned in the Petition) that it was the Chief Clerk of the House who chose the outside counsel, according to the Ethics complaint.
The Missouri Accountability Portal lists expenses of government agencies. I cannot find a payment from the Missouri Legislature for legal expenses nearing that amount from 2020.
But what did the law firm do that was worth more than $22,000? (And which law firm was it?) According to the Ethics Complaint, the investigation consisted of interviewing the Respondent, intern, Respondent’s legislator assistant (Witness 1) and another representative (Witness 2). The investigator prepared a report within 2 weeks of receiving the complaint, which included a determination of the credibility of the four witnesses based on their testimony.
Nice work, if you can get it.
The committee also issued subpoenas for phone records, so I suppose that could be part of the bill …
But the real interesting stuff, related to Jan 6, will come in Part 2 …
For ease of access, I have gathered all documents into a Google Drive folder that can be accessed here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/11_hS1R9Xahg_Gv-4wPNQnaUMEKp2NXZC?usp=sharing