The Investigation Alan Wilson Tried to Bury

In 2015, Alan Wilson stepped aside from the Statehouse corruption probe and handed it to special prosecutor David Pascoe. The investigation pointed at Richard Quinn, the Republican consultant who ran Wilson's campaigns,¹⁸ and whose firm Wilson's campaign paid $532,064 across 85 payments between 2009 and 2017.^2,8

In March 2016, as the case closed in, Wilson moved to block Pascoe from convening a grand jury, then tried to fire him and put another prosecutor in his place. The South Carolina Supreme Court ruled against Wilson 4 to 1 and called his claim that he could step back into the case “absurd.”²

In October 2018, a state grand jury found that Wilson impeded the investigation. Quinn testified that he talked about the probe with Wilson “almost every day” until shortly before his own indictment, that Wilson saw him as a “second father,” and that Wilson promised him “everything would be fine.” All the while, Wilson kept asking Quinn to help write official letters and statements about the very investigation targeting him, going around his own press staff to do it.¹

Wilson's deputy, Adam Piper, was drawing a paycheck from the Attorney General's office and from Quinn's firm at the same time, according to the grand jury report. Piper's own text messages show him trying to recruit the state Republican chairman to smear the prosecutor.¹⁹

The grand jury found that Wilson's delays cost investigators 13 months and let the statute of limitations expire on potential charges against entities and individuals.^1,20 Wilson's campaign kept paying Quinn's firm until June 2017, weeks after Rick Quinn was indicted.^8,21 Richard Quinn later pleaded guilty to four counts of perjury and two counts of obstruction, including charges tied to false testimony about work he did for Wilson.³

Wilson was never charged, and he calls the report a political smear. The grand jury's findings remain on the record.