Brenda S. Weaver (Photo: Rebecca Breyer/ALM)

A federal lawsuit filed Tuesday against the chief judge of Georgia's Appalachian Judicial Circuit claims she pressured the district attorney to initiate “a baseless criminal prosecution” against a North Georgia journalist and his lawyer.

The suit was filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Gainesville by Mark Thomason, publisher of the now-defunct Fannin Focus, and Thomason's Hiawassee lawyer, Russell Stookey. It contends that Judge Brenda Weaver and District Attorney Alison Sosebee “participated in a plan to initiate a criminal prosecution against Thomason and Stookey without regard to whether there was probable cause” to do so.

The plan, according to the suit, “included conducting parallel investigations motivated by animus and for the purposes of retaliation” against Thomason and Stookey. Weaver and Sosebee, the suit claimed, “shared an understanding” that the investigation would result in criminal charges. The suit also alleges that Weaver made false statements to Sosebee.

Thomason and Stookey were indicted by an Appalachian Circuit grand jury on June 24, 2016, on felony charges stemming from Stookey's issuance of two civil subpoenas and Thomason's public records request for bank records associated with Weaver's government operating fund. They were charged with identity fraud and making a false statement to a public official. Weaver was listed on the indictment as the victim and testified before the grand jury.

A month later, at Weaver's request, Sosebee dismissed the charges. At the time, Weaver acknowledged that she conducted her own investigation that likely confused the district attorney's staff in their attempts “to objectively investigate the case.”

Atlanta attorneys Gerry Weber and Jeff Filipovits have partnered with South Carolina attorney Joshua Kendrick of Greenville, South Carolina, firm Kendrick & Leonard to represent Thomason and Stookey.

Neither Weaver nor Marietta attorney Robert Ingram, who defended her when she was under investigation for judicial ethics violations associated with the indictment of Thomason and Stookey, responded to requests for comment Tuesday. Sosebee declined to comment.

The lawsuit claims Weaver orchestrated a “retaliatory and malicious prosecution” after becoming “enraged and personally offended” by Thomason's public records request. Weaver, the suit said, “sought revenge on Thomason and Stookey as a result of their attempts to investigate whether she had misappropriated funds.”

The lawsuit also claims that, when Weaver launched her own investigation of Thomason, she quickly learned from bank employees that some county checks that should have been deposited had been cashed instead.

Weaver, according to the lawsuit, also falsely told Sosebee she was never notified that Stookey subpoenaed her office's bank account records. But the suit claims Stookey subpoenaed the banks and then informed Weaver's office.

The lawsuit also claims Weaver gave the district attorney a list of individuals to question under oath because they were “out to get her.” Weaver also directed her law clerk to research any criminal charges that could be brought against Thomason and Stookey, according to the suit, then forwarded information to Sosebee.

Weaver used government time and resources to conduct the personal investigation, communicated her demands to Sosebee and used her position as a judge and an elected official to improperly influence the DA, the lawsuit alleges.

Weaver was chair of the state Judicial Qualifications Commission at the time. Following the indictment, Thomason, Stookey and multiple news organizations filed formal complaints accusing Weaver of violating the state Code of Judicial Conduct, and Weaver resigned from the JQC.

But last year, the JQC dismissed the complaints, branding them and their authors as “nothing more than a thinly veiled attempt to enlist the JQC in their fixation upon harming Judge Weaver.”

On Tuesday, Thomason told the Daily Report the JQC never talked to him or Stookey prior to issuing its ruling.

“They can only sugarcoat things and present them to public in a slanted view for so long before the truth has to be exposed,” he said. “Ultimately, the truth always comes out.”