Boyd seeks dismissal of charges
Tim Boyd, the indicted commissioner who clinched his third term representing District 8 earlier this week, will stand before a special judge today to plead not guilty to his criminal extortion charge. And he wants the judge to dismiss it, too.
“In a political campaign, telling your opponent that you will release negative research information if the candidate stays in the race is not a crime,” Boyd’s defense attorney, Lee Davis, wrote in a 14-page motion to dismiss filed Thursday in Hamilton County Criminal Court. “It is political speech.”
East Ridge Mayor Brent Lambert said Boyd threatened to release negative information about him during three phone calls in February — unless Lambert dropped out of the District 8 Hamilton County Commission race. Lambert said he recorded those conversations to
have a witness. But Davis said there was no threat and that Lambert had a different “plan in mind.”
Davis laid it out in his motion: Lambert used those calls to launch an investigation against Boyd with the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, which resulted in Boyd’s indictment the day before early voting in April. Lambert then played those phone calls during a news conference at which an off-duty police officer in his employ turned away about 15 interested constituents. Finally, the weekend before the May 1 Republican primary, Lambert’s supporters dispersed “obnoxious and repugnant” campaign mailers with Boyd’s mugshot on them.
“Boyd has every right to publish or withhold the information he discovered on his political opponent Lambert. So, too, does he have the right to discuss the consequences of the release of this information with Lambert,” Davis wrote. “A discussion with Lambert concerning the facts may surface if the election is fully protected political speech. There is no place for the state to burden Boyd with its view on the matter.”
Lambert did not return multiple phone calls seeking comment Thursday.
Lambert, who is also the chief operating officer at the Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum, said he received a call on the evening of Feb. 15 from his employer’s attorney, Allen McCallie, saying Boyd planned to release some damaging information unless he dropped out of the District 8 race.
That public information concerned $5,000 in political contributions, $3,000 of which Lambert accepted from Interstate 75 Exit 1 developers in the summer of 2017, just days after the East Ridge City Council approved a $4 million bond for one of its projects. Lambert then used that money to pay off a loan from a 2014 campaign.
In his motion, Davis said Lambert had to know some of that information was out there: A local journalist named Dick Cook published an article about it on his website, East Ridge News Online. Plus, those contributions were available in financial disclosure forms.
From there, Lambert contacted Hamilton County District Attorney General Neal Pinkston, who arranged a meeting with a local TBI agent on Feb. 19, according to a timeline Pinkston provided to the Times Free Press. After that meeting, Lambert recorded two more phone calls on Feb. 20 and Feb. 21, “not at the direction of law enforcement,” Davis wrote in his motion.
Boyd, who already made a $2,500 bond, will appear at 9 a.m. before Judge Andrew Freiberg, of Bradley County, Tenn., in Hamilton County Criminal Court. Freiberg is on the case because county judges recused themselves.
Boyd faces a Class D felony, which carries two to four years in prison, and has no other listed criminal history.