A North Carolina grand jury has returned felony indictments against former state Rep. Jason Saine and the director of a nonprofit he helped found that took him and other lawmakers on bourbon trips in 2022 and 2024, District Attorney Lorrin Freeman said Thursday.
Saine, 53, a Lincolnton Republican, and Greater Carolina treasurer David Coble, 49, each face two counts of obtaining property by false pretenses and two counts of embezzlement of more than $100,000. Coble also faces a fifth charge of embezzlement of less than $100,000. Saine aided and abetted Coble, Freeman said.
The charges stem from expenses on Greater Carolina credit cards that had nothing to do with the nonprofit’s mission of promoting economic development through conservative-based ideas, Freeman said. The nonprofit was founded by a former aide to Saine in 2018 as a social welfare organization, which are known under the federal tax code as 501(c)4s.
Search warrants previously made public showed charges on Coble’s credit cards that included roughly $30,000 in personal expenses that he said he inadvertently made and subsequently reimbursed this year. Some of the expenses identified in the search warrants included payments to two companies in the adult entertainment business, a Top Golf driving range in Atlanta, a vacation rental at Emerald Isle and to the Carolina Panthers.
Freeman said the indictment accuses Saine of aiding and abetting Coble to “unlawfully, willfully, and feloniously, knowingly, and decidedly, with the intent to cheat and defraud, obtaining and attempting to obtain goods and services, including but not limited to food and beverages, tickets for athletic events, hotel, hotel, and other accommodations, in an amount over $100,000 from and to be paid for by donors to Greater Carolina.”
Saine said in a statement: “I do not understand why I have been charged in this case. The indictment claims that I ‘aided and abetted’ a crime committed by someone else — I did not do that.
“This organization has an independent board that decided what and where to spend its money, and how to raise it. I was not involved in those decisions, as I told the State. I did not commit any crime and I look forward to clearing my name.”
Coble, a former Mooresville town commissioner, could not be immediately reached. He is identified as Greater Carolina’s director in its income tax filings.
Coble and Saine are scheduled to appear in court on the charges on Dec. 7, Freeman said.
Greater Carolina came under investigation after the second bourbon tour in the Louisville, Kentucky, area in April 2024. A worker at one of the distilleries complained about the group’s behavior on a Reddit post.
Carolina Forward, a left-leaning nonprofit based in Carrboro, filed a formal complaint against Greater Carolina later that year, prompting the investigation. Eleven state lawmakers went on the 2022 bourbon tour and nine went on the second, search warrants said.
In September, three lobbyists whose clients helped pay expenses for the trips each agreed to pay a $1,000 civil fine, undergo education on the state’s lobbying laws and cooperate with the investigation in exchange for the dismissal of a misdemeanor charge of violating the state’s lobbying law. They are David Ferrell, Douglas Bowen Heath and Douglas Miskew.
A fourth lobbyist, Kevin Wilkinson, still faces a misdemeanor charge. His case remains open, Freeman said.
Freeman said the investigation is continuing, but she said she did not anticipate charges against the lawmakers as they related to the bourbon tours. Only a handful of them have been identified.
In a statement, Freeman said social welfare nonprofits such as Greater Carolina have become a “pervasive part of the political landscape on both sides of the political aisle over the last decade.”
“While I do not anticipate that will change, this case serves as a reminder that the law places restrictions on the way they operate and sets forth that they should not be used as an end run around the statutory framework embodied in our state’s Ethics Act and lobbying regulations,” she said.
Freeman is stepping down from office in January. Democrat Wiley Nickel, a former state senator and U.S. congressman has been elected to succeed her.
“I will be handing this over, so I don’t want to limit what the next administration may think is appropriate to look at,” Freeman said.
Saine was appointed to the N.C. House in 2011 and served until 2024. He resigned in August that year and became a lobbyist. He had been a chief budget writer at the time he had resigned.