Senate Ethics Committee adopts report, adds finding that witnesses were credible

The Senate Ethics Committee voted to adopt a revised findings-of-fact report and added a sentence concluding that witnesses who testified at the adjudicative hearing were credible.

The change, proposed and moved during the committee’s meeting, was part of several edits staff had prepared. Committee members debated whether paragraphs in the draft risked crossing from factual findings into legal conclusions; they consolidated and tightened language, directed staff to add citations (including a Secretary of State filing identified as Exhibit 35), and approved the report as amended.

The motion to add an explicit credibility finding was offered by Senator Joe Pope, who told the committee that “I think it would be helpful … that the committee hereby adopts this testimony as credible.” Committee counsel then proposed specific wording for the conclusion; counsel also framed the matter as part of proper fact-finding. As committee counsel said during the meeting, “Did the witness testify credibly in your opinion? It’s entirely legitimate.”

Senator Smith pressed the committee to avoid inserting legal conclusions into a factual report. “I do not want this document to include legal conclusions,” Smith said, and asked that portions of testimony framed as legal findings be presented instead as quoted testimony or summed in neutral, factual language.

Members debated several paragraphs that quoted or paraphrased the legislative auditor’s statements. The committee agreed to keep an item stating that Angus McKeever, legislative auditor and division director, testified his office “substantiated the allegations involving Senator Ellsworth’s actions regarding the Agile contracts as instances of waste and abuse,” and to remove or consolidate later paragraphs that the committee feared read as legal conclusions. The committee also instructed staff to cite the portions of the transcript or exhibits supporting that language.

The committee approved a conceptual package of edits to the draft and then voted to adopt the report as amended. On the record, members said the motions carried; the final adoption was announced as unanimous. The transcript records the committee deciding to allow staff to make minor editorial and citation changes and to circulate a clean, non–redline version for final review and signatures.

The report’s timeline was also edited to note when the respondents’ witness list was reviewed (committee discussion placed that review on March 7), and committee members directed that the Secretary of State filing for Agile Analytics (cited as Exhibit 35 in the draft) be referenced where officer/director information was discussed. The draft also includes factual summaries that Bryce Eggleston, in a sworn statement, answered “no” when asked whether Ellsworth had an ownership, creditor, loan or director interest; the document notes that no additional financial documents were obtained to confirm or deny a creditor or loan relationship.

Committee members closed the meeting after approving the amended report and directed staff to prepare the final clean copy for signatures and delivery.