The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Federal grand jury probing ex-DA
Howard investigated for padding his salary through a nonprofifit.
A federal grand jury in Atlanta is investigating former Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard and his use of a nonprofit to pad his salary with almost $ 200,000 in city of Atlanta funds, The Atlanta Journal- Constitution and Channel 2 Action News have learned.
The criminal probe is focused on a series of checks tot ali ng $ 195,000 that were signed over to Howard by People Partnering for Progress from 2014 to 2019. PPP, a nonprofifit Howard has run as CEO, made the payments from two $ 125,000 checks it received from the city — one in August 2014 and another in September 2016.
On Tuesday, well- known Atlanta criminal defense lawyer Ed Garl and told the AJC he has been counseling Howard about the criminal probe for months and recently agreed to represent the former DA.
“Paul Howard’s position has been and is — and our position is the same — that he has done absolutely nothing wrong,” Garland said. “Everything he did was approved by the mayor and the
Atlanta City Council. It was not against the law and no one has ever suggested it was. We know of no crime he could have committed nor have we been told of any alleged crime he committed.”
As previously reported, the Justice Department’s public integrity section in Washington subpoenaed records of communications between the DA’S offiffice and the city regarding the $ 250,000 payouts to PPP. The Justice Department lawyers told the city and the DA’S offiffice to turn over those records and other documents last October.
The DA’S offiffice has fully complied with the requests for documents, Garland said.
“These payments were completely lawful,” Howard said in a statement issued in September in response to the Justice Department subpoenas. “I will cooperate fully with this investigation and am confifident my actions do not violate any state or federal law.”
In a runoff election held in
August, Fani Willis, a former prosecutor who once worked for Howard, unseated the sixterm incumbent with almost 72% of the vote.
In 2014, Howard told the city of Atlanta he believed he was not being paid enough through his state salary and a county supplement. ( He was making about $ 158,000 at the time and was making about $ 175,000 when he left office.)
He asked the city to give him an $ 81,259 salary supplement to increase his annual pay to $ 239,500. The cit y refused, but it ultimately sent PPP the two checks totaling $ 250,000, the lion’s share of which ultimately made its way to Howard’s bank account.
The arrangement appeared to be questionable because state law says only counties — not a nonprofit — can supplement a DA’S state salary.
J ust days bef ore bei ng thumped in the runoff election, Howard agreed to pay a $ 6,500 state ethics fine for failing to disclose his role as CEO in t wo nonprofits, one of them being PPP, on annual state filing reports.