More than four years after SC Attorney General Alan Wilson was forced to publicly repudiate the dishonest actions of one of his longtime deputies, the Lexington Republican finds himself in similar territory again.
Wilson insists it had nothing to do with a robocall, sent by the fund-raising arm of the Association of Republican Attorneys General, who encouraged “patriots” to attend an election protest last Wednesday that turned into a deadly riot in the US Capitol.
His longtime replacement, Adam Piper, resigned his job as executive director of RAGA on Monday night, as the consequences of the call increased. Wilson, who serves on RAGA’s leadership council, helped Piper get this job.
Wilson was not even aware of the message until a day after the turmoil and said “there must be consequences” for the person responsible, a spokesman for the attorney general said on Monday.
Piper, however, obediently jumped on the grenade, saying that RAGA officials sent the message without the approval of Republican attorney generals, including Wilson.
“Serving Republican attorney generals was the honor of a lifetime and, honestly, a dream job,” Piper said in a statement on Monday.
Wilson already had to punish Piper in 2016, when it was revealed that his longtime aide had secretly worked to defame a special prosecutor whose Statehouse corruption investigation targeted Wilson’s political allies.
Now, Piper’s group is facing intense scrutiny about the robocall that was sent by RAGA’s fundraising arm, the Rule of Law Defense Fund, before the “Save America” rally.
Urged by President Donald Trump, who claimed that the 2020 election was fraudulently stolen from him, more than 1,000 Trump supporters who attended the demonstration stormed the Capitol building, overpowered the unprepared police and ransacked U.S. government headquarters.
The crowd forced Congress to block and postponed certification of the election until the end of the night. At least five people, including a policeman, died in the chaos.
Co-chairs of the Association of Democratic Attorneys General blamed part of the blame on their Republican colleagues, accusing the Republican group of selling “conspiracy theories and favoring President Trump’s dangerous lies”.
“Current and former Republican AGs were directly involved in efforts to undermine the results of the 2020 presidential election, and now the so-called ‘law and order’ party has played a role in recruiting domestic terrorists who violated the US Capitol to attack Vice President Mike Pence, for fulfilling his constitutional mandate to certify the Electoral College, “Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey and Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford wrote in a statement.
Wilson, who supported an unsuccessful lawsuit challenging the results of the 2020 presidential election, and other Republican attorney generals have rejected the group’s involvement in the rally.
“I didn’t know and had absolutely no involvement in the participation of the Republican group AG in the rally,” tweeted Wilson over the weekend. “I don’t agree with the staff’s decision to get involved and I strongly condemn the violence that followed.”
Other officials called for further scrutiny of the message.
Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall, the new president of the Rule of Law Defense Fund, issued a statement denouncing the violence and insisting that “unauthorized decisions” had been made by the group’s staff regarding the rally. He pledged to conduct an internal review, according to reports from AL.com.
In response, the Southern Poverty Law Center Action Fund called an independent investigation into the matter by the Alabama Ethics Commission and the Alabama Bar Association, AL.com reported.
State lawmakers in Texas and Nebraska also demanded accountability for the involvement of their attorney generals in the event, while Georgia attorney general Chris Carr, president of RAGA, denied any prior knowledge of the automatic call.
Some of these officials, like Wilson, are now moving away from the electoral protests they supported not so long ago.
Last month, Wilson joined an unsuccessful legal effort by the Texas Republican Attorney General to challenge the results of the presidential election in four battle states, an attempt that would have toppled Democratic Joe Biden’s defeat over Trump. But on Monday, spokesman Robert Kittle said that Wilson believes Biden is the legitimate winner of the elections.
“Although there were allegations of electoral fraud, as far as the Attorney General is concerned, there was no evidence presented in court to substantiate those allegations,” said Kittle. “Attorney General Wilson strongly supports everyone’s First Amendment right to assemble peacefully, but he strongly condemns violence in the United States Capitol and thinks that those who broke the law should be prosecuted as far as possible.”
Piper, Wilson’s former aide, is known in Republican circles as a loyal party that will do anything to support its candidates.
In a statement on Monday, Marshall said that Piper “will be sorely missed” and that “all decisions that Adam made on behalf of the (Rule of Law Defense Fund) were in the best of intentions and in the best interests of the organization in mind “.
But Piper’s aggressive tendencies have led him into trouble before. In 2016, at the end of his seven-year term under Wilson in the Attorney General’s Office, Piper sought to defame the Democratic special prosecutor whose corruption investigation at the Statehouse targeted Wilson’s Republican allies.
In text messages and emails later obtained by the Post and Courier, Piper tried unsuccessfully to recruit state Republican President Matt Moore to help him discredit prosecutor David Pascoe as a Democratic puppet.
At the time, Pascoe’s investigation was focusing on Richard Quinn, an influential Republican consultant who advised Wilson for years. Piper had also worked for Quinn’s political firm, which kept him on the payroll even while working in Wilson’s office.
Wilson, who unsuccessfully tried to expel Pascoe from the investigation, publicly stated that he was unaware of Piper’s plot and asked his aide to refrain from such efforts in the future.
Wilson’s confrontation with Pascoe and his proximity to the Statehouse’s corruption investigation are believed to have undermined his political rise, closing all doors for a candidacy for governor.
Finally, the son of US deputy Joe Wilson ran for a third term as attorney general in 2018 and was re-elected.
Wilson’s ties to the group that financed last week’s robocall will not look good in a campaign direct mail, but they are unlikely to be very damaging in future campaigns, SC political officials said.
“It will not be the political dynamite that some people think it is,” said longtime Republican Party consultant Katon Dawson.
Glenn Smith contributed to this report.