{"id":7938,"date":"2010-07-11T14:58:26","date_gmt":"2010-07-11T21:58:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bradblog.com\/?p=7938"},"modified":"2010-07-11T21:27:40","modified_gmt":"2010-07-12T04:27:40","slug":"sc-officials-clear-greene-in-senate-primary-filing-fee-investigation-without-bank-records-subpoena","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/?p=7938","title":{"rendered":"SC Officials Clear Greene in Senate Primary Filing Fee Investigation Without Bank Records Subpoena"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/BradBlog.com\/Images\/AlvinGreene_ESS_iVotronic_name.jpg\" hspace=\"6\" vspace=\"3\" border=\"0\" align=\"right\">An investigation by the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED), the state&#8217;s top law enforcement agency, has concluded that no charges will be filed against Alvin Greene, the mysterious and unverifiable winner of the Democratic Party&#8217;s nomination for the U.S. Senate, in relation to the $10,440 filing fee the unemployed military vet paid to get onto the party&#8217;s June 8th primary ballot.<\/p>\n<p>In that election, the unknown Greene was reported &#8212; by the 100% unverifiable ES&#038;S e-voting system &#8212; to have defeated former four-term state legislator and U.S. Circuit Court Judge Vic Rawl 59% to 41% despite having failed to campaign for the nomination, nor even having a campaign website.<\/p>\n<p>Questions have arisen as to how the jobless Greene, who was recently appointed a public defender in a felony obscenity case he faces, was able to afford the filing fee for the U.S. Senate race. As <a href=\"http:\/\/www.citizensforethics.org\/node\/45215\">noted by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington<\/a> (CREW), which requested an investigation into the matter, Section 7-25-200 of the SC Code of Laws prohibits anyone from accepting or offering &#8220;either directly or indirectly, money, a loan of money, or any other thing of value&#8230;as inducement to file as a candidate for any state or federal election office.&#8221;  Greene, who lives with his father, maintains he used money saved from military pay to cover the fee. <\/p>\n<p>Some, including both state Republicans and South Carolina&#8217;s Democratic U.S. House Rep. James Clyburn (SC), have <a href=\"http:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/stories\/0610\/38358.html\">stated<\/a> the possibility that Greene was a &#8220;plant&#8221; on the ballot, given a <a href=\"http:\/\/scindex.blogspot.com\/2010\/05\/new-poll-results-for-sc.html\">public poll taken in May<\/a>, as cited by Rawl campaign manager Walter Ludwig <a href=\"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/?p=7918#comment-426012\">here at The BRAD BLOG<\/a>, just three weeks weeks before the election, which showed Rawl trailing SC&#8217;s incumbent Republican Sen. Jim DeMint by just 7 points, 50 to 43%. However, even the &#8220;plant&#8221; theory can&#8217;t explain Greene&#8217;s nearly 20-point &#8220;victory&#8221; as reported in the June 8th election results.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s the very last paragraph of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2010\/POLITICS\/07\/09\/south.carolina.greene.investigation\/\">CNN&#8217;s report on SLED clearing Greene<\/a>, however, which, for the moment, raises both our eyebrow and, possibly, a curious red flag in the results of the Republican-controlled state&#8217;s investigation into Greene&#8217;s filing fee&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<div class=\"media\">Though the law enforcement agency said it determined that Greene used his own money to pay the party&#8217;s filing fee, the South Carolina attorney general&#8217;s office told CNN that it never received a request from SLED to subpoena Greene&#8217;s bank records.<\/div>\n<p>Without having subpoenaed Green&#8217;s bank records to determine if he really did save up those funds as he claims, how does the state know where the money came from? <\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.wmbfnews.com\/Global\/story.asp?S=12782814\">According to AP&#8217;s report<\/a>, which also notes that the law enforcement agency did <i>not<\/i> subpoena Greene&#8217;s bank records, SLED Chief Reggie Lloyd tells says that Greene cooperated with investigators, <i>apparently<\/i> allowing them to review his bank records in some fashion:<\/p>\n<div class=\"media\">[W]hen state agents reviewed Greene&#8217;s bank accounts, they found an October deposit of nearly $6,000, which was Greene&#8217;s military exit pay, and about $3,000 deposited early this year from state and federal tax refunds, Lloyd said.<\/p>\n<p>The records matched Greene&#8217;s story that the 32-year-old candidate, who has been collecting unemployment benefits since he left the military in August, was able to afford the fee because he saved his money and lived frugally.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;He clearly does not have someone paying him. He just decided to take his money and run for U.S. Senate. There&#8217;s no big conspiracy,&#8221; Lloyd said.<\/p>\n<p>Greene said Friday that SLED&#8217;s findings vindicated him.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It was just as I said: It came from the Army,&#8221; Greene said Friday. &#8220;I&#8217;m happy.&#8221;<\/p><\/div>\n<p>The investigation, however, and the failure to subpoena bank records, has failed to satisfy everyone, including a <i>Republican<\/i> state lawmaker, as AP reports:<\/p>\n<div class=\"media\">Lloyd had said that agents would use a new law allowing them to issue administrative subpoenas to force financial institutions to produce records during the investigation of financial crimes. But a spokesman for the state attorney general&#8217;s office, whose authorization is needed for the subpoenas, says no applications were ever received.<\/p>\n<p>Rep. Chip Limehouse, the state lawmaker who asked state police to investigate, says he&#8217;s not satisfied with their probe and will continue to ask questions about where Greene got the money for his filing fee.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Did the $10,400 fall out of the sky?&#8221; the Republican from Charleston asked Friday. &#8220;This doesn&#8217;t clear it up for me.&#8221;<\/p><\/div>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/BradBlog.com\/Images\/VicRawl_ESS_iVotronic_name.jpg\" hspace=\"6\" vspace=\"3\" border=\"0\" align=\"right\">For his part, Rawl has largely <i>not<\/i> focused on the curious circumstances behind Greene&#8217;s appearance on the ballot. Instead, he has focused on what he describes as <a href=\"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/?p=7896\">&#8220;systemic software problems&#8221;<\/a> on the <a href=\"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/?p=7899\">oft-failed<\/a>, easily-hacked ES&#038;S voting system as the reason for Greene&#8217;s otherwise inexplicable win, even as he was not allowed by the company or state officials to examine the machines or tabulators prior to their being scrubbed for state run-off elections just ten days after the June 8th election.<\/p>\n<p>A number of statistical and election integrity experts <a href=\"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/?p=7890\">have cited<\/a> the &#8220;staggering&#8221; disparities in the 11-point difference between paper-based absentee results in the election and those from the unverifiable touch-screen voting machines used on Election Day, describing what they see as &#8220;clear signs of election fraud.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Following the race, and a <a href=\"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/?p=7902\">five-hour hearing<\/a> on his <a href=\"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/?p=7894\">election protest<\/a> before the Executive Board of the state&#8217;s Democratic Party two weeks ago, Rawl has been outspoken about the problems with South Carolina&#8217;s unverifiable voting system. &#8220;The issues we raised about the lack of election integrity in South Carolina are real,&#8221; he said in a <a href=\"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/?p=7902\">recent statement<\/a>, &#8220;and they are not going away unless people act.&#8221;<\/p>\n[<i>Our recent exclusive live interview with Rawl on the <\/i>Mike Malloy Show<i> can be <a href=\"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/?p=7930\">heard here<\/a>. Greene did not respond to our repeated requests for an interview.<\/i>]\n<p><!--BB-DONATEPITCH-START--><\/p>\n<div style=\"background:#f5f0e0; border:2px solid #6b5a2e; border-radius:6px; padding:10px 14px; text-align:center; font-family:Georgia,serif;\"><span style=\"display:block; margin:0 0 8px 0; color:#3a2e0e; font-size:0.95em; line-height:1.5;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.BradBlog.com\">The BRAD BLOG<\/a> covers your electoral system, fiercely and independently, like no other media outlet in the nation. Please support our work with <a href=\"https:\/\/BradBlog.com\/Donate\">a donation<\/a> to help us keep going.<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/Donate\" style=\"display:inline-block; background:#6b5a2e; color:#ffffff; padding:6px 18px; border-radius:4px; font-weight:bold; text-decoration:none; font-family:Georgia,serif; font-size:0.9em;\">Please CLICK HERE to help support our work today!<\/a><\/div>\n<p><!--BB-DONATEPITCH-END--><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An investigation by the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED), the state&#8217;s top law enforcement agency, has concluded that no charges will be filed against Alvin Greene, the mysterious and unverifiable winner of the Democratic Party&#8217;s nomination for the U.S. Senate, in relation to the $10,440 filing fee the unemployed military vet paid to get [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[420,6,5,248,233],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-7938","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-election-2010","category-election-irregularities","category-ess","category-south-carolina","category-us-senate"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7938","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7938"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7938\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7938"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7938"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7938"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcoauthors&post=7938"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}