House Speaker Bobby Harrell wished impeachment subcommittee members "God speed" in their work to determine whether Gov. Mark Sanford ought to be impeached. Anna Mitchell/Staff

Members consider impeachment

House subcommittee weighs evidence against governor

by Anna B. Mitchell

Published: Nov. 24, 2009, 4:26 p.m.

Divisions emerged this afternoon in the first of several meetings of an ad hoc subcommittee whose members will determine whether the South Carolina House ought to impeach Gov. Mark Sanford.

Although none of the ad hoc subcommittee’s seven members said they’d made a decision about impeaching the governor, one of its members, Greg Delleney, co-sponsored the House resolution calling for the governor’s impeachment for serious misconduct while in office.

The subcommittee’s chairman, Rep. James Harrison of Richland County, said he intends to have a report ready to hand over to the House Judiciary Committee by Christmas and scheduled three more meetings to review evidence against the governor.

“We should not make a special exception for this governor or any future officer holder by finding his conduct anything less than serious misconduct,” Delleney said during the subcommittee meeting.

Delleney’s resolution, filed Nov. 17, says the governor must leave someone in charge when he is away temporarily – thereby avoiding a crisis of leadership in the event of an emergency. The governor was out of town and out of touch from June 18 to June 22 this past summer while visiting his girlfriend in Argentina.

House Speaker Bobby Harrell spoke as the subcommittee convened at 1 p.m. and urged its members to rise above any personal or political feelings they may have. He also urged the subcommittee be speedy, saying the House has serious business to conduct come January when the General Assembly reconvenes.

“Be thorough, be unyielding, be fair,” Harrell said. “You will set examples for generations to come for how the people’s representatives can rise to any task.”

Several members of the subcommittee said they wanted further clarification on who knew what and when regarding the governor’s whereabouts, and Harrison said he would welcome testimony or further affidavits from witnesses – including the governor himself.

“The governor is welcome to testify at any time,” Harrison said.

Sanford did not attend, but five members of his staff and legal team watched the subcommittee from front-row seats.

The impeachment resolution calls Sanford’s actions a dereliction of duty and says the governor further dishonored the office when he misled staff into believing he was hiking the Appalachian Trail – a story staff repeated to the public – and when he deliberately evaded his security detail, whose members began looking for the governor in earnest two days after his disappearance.

In today’s hour-long meeting, the impeachment subcommittee also agreed to include the State Ethics Commission’s allegations against the governor. In a report released publicly on Monday, the commission found the governor had violated ethics laws on 37 occasions while in office.

Those violations related to the governor’s use of a state airplane, his purchase of first-class and business-class tickets for international travel and the personal use of more than $2,900 in campaign funds. The Ethics Commission has said it will hold its own hearings on those allegations.

Fellow subcommittee member Walton McLeod said Delleney’s charges against the governor, which invoked comparisons to a soldier’s dereliction of duty and abandoning post were too “shrill.”

“I would suggest to you the language that says the governor’s conduct, being absent from the state, constitutes dereliction of duties,” McLeod said. “Well, it may constitute something, but not dereliction of duty because those are military terms.”

Five exhibits were offered as evidence for the subcommittee – affidavits by SLED Chief Reggie Lloyd, Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer and Sanford Chief of Staff Scott English as well as media accounts and a 25-page memo from the governor’s legal team concluding impeachment is only appropriate when a crime or serious misconduct “that has corrupted the system of government” has occurred.

In his affidavit, Lloyd said he got a call on June 20 from Lt. Jack Proffitt, supervisor of the governor’s security detail, saying the governor had been spotted speeding down a highway and the detail had had no contact with the governor since two days before. Proffitt, Lloyd reported, was unable to reach the governor by phone, and SLED leaders then tried to find the governor through his cell phone and his vehicle’s radio system.

“Sometime late morning or early afternoon, I spoke with Chief of Staff Scott English who informed me that the Governor was taking personal time off from the office and that the Office could reach the Governor if required by circumstances,” Lloyd said in the affidavit.

In his affidavit, Bauer said he had no contact with the governor between June 18 and Monday, June 22, and he said he could not get a clear answer regarding the governor’s location.

“Later that day, I called the Governor’s Chief of Staff and demanded that I be allowed to speak with the Governor. His Chief of Staff told me he would let the Governor know that I had called. I then told his Chief of Staff that if I had not heard from the Governor by 8:00 p.m. I was going to tell the press the Governor’s staff did not know his whereabouts. He responded: ‘ok’.”

English, Sanford’s chief of staff since March 2008, said the governor left June 18 and told him he was taking some personal time.

“I did not speak with the governor from the afternoon of Thursday, June 18, 2009, until the morning of Tuesday, June 23, 2009.”

English said he authorized Sanford spokesman Joel Sawyer on June 22 to tell the press the governor was hiking the Appalachian Trail “based on conversations with my staff” and learned two days later the governor was actually in Argentina. He said he tried to reach the governor by phone several times without success through the morning of June 23.

“Early on the morning of Tuesday, June 23, 2009, I spoke with the governor, and he communicated to me that he planned to return to the office the following day.”

He said he would have informed Bauer had an emergency occurred.

The impeachment committee consists of the five members of the House’s constitutional law subcommittee plus Rep. David Weeks of Sumter and Rep. Jenny Horne of Dorchester. The lone Upstate representative on the subcommittee is Garry Smith of Simpsonville.

Smith said he’d expected today’s meeting to establish what facts would be placed into evidence and when and how the committee expected to carry out its hearings over the next month. When debate broke out between Delleney and McLeod, Smith asked subcommittee chairman, Rep. James Harrison of Richland County, whether that was appropriate.

“We are going down a rabbit trail with some of the arguments being made,” Smith said.

“Anyone can make comments at any time on anything germane to this issue,” Harrison said.

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