It was perhaps the most crucial allegation against DeKalb County's acting leader in the special investigators' stinging report.
The document said interim CEO Lee May took a loan from Morris Williams, a former high-level county official within May’s inner circle who abruptly resigned shortly after former state Attorney General Mike Bowers and investigator Richard Hyde began digging into the county’s business. A loan from a subordinate would be an ethical violation and grounds for removal from office.
In a recorded interview, Hyde obtained what sounds like an admission from May: “ … You know, I may have, you know, said, ‘Hey, can I borrow a couple hundred dollars? … It hadn’t never been more than a few hundred dollars.”
Now, you can hear audio of that exchange yourself, exclusively myAJC.com:
Here’s the catch, though.
Bowers and Hyde have accused May of torpedoing their investigation when they got too close to him. May said they had veered off mission and were running up a gargantuan bill, so he told them to wrap up their work and finish their final report and recommendations.
Credit: Johnny Edwards
Credit: Johnny Edwards
Therefore, Hyde never circled back with May for a more probing interrogation. It was never established what kind of loan it was, how much money was involved or when the money changed hands.
That's not the only shortcoming in the final 40-page investigative document, a review by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution found. The AJC found a major misrepresentation involving May's spending, as well as some factual errors.
Click here to read what the investigators have to say about that, and how May is using those flaws to his advantage, in a story running in Sunday's Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
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