TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WTXL) - The City of Tallahassee has posted thousands of emails online that were turned over to the FBI as part of a subpoena last year.
The city shared these emails Monday night on its website, Talgov.com. They involve city commissioner Scott Maddox, Tallahassee Downtown Improvement Authority CEO Paige Carter-Smith, and the firm both of them were tied to called "Governance."
The emails go as far back as 2012, with countless threads of conversation involving Maddox, Carter-Smith and other city employees.
After combing through the messages, there doesn't appear to be any direct communication between Maddox and Carter-Smith, though thousands of other documents still haven't been posted.
A previously unsealed FBI affidavit linked the two as part of a bribery investigation with clients from "Governance." Some emails seem more irrelevant than others, including Carter-Smith asking for help with passwords after being locked out of her accounts.
This first batch of emails also includes information about Kim Rivers, J.T. Burnette, and Adam Corey, though the FBI hasn't shared details about why they're named in the subpoena. You can find all the recently released emails here.
Monday, commissioner Maddox denied any truth to the allegations made by federal investigators and called out inaccuracies in some media reports about the investigation.
On Tuesday, the commissioner told WTXL he wants to set the record straight.
WTXL looked at a few of those claims and compared them to what he says is actually the truth.
- First, a claim that Maddox paid his own firm $200,000 while he was chair of the Florida Democratic Party. The commissioner said that he had reimbursed himself from expenses by the party that he put on his credit card and that party officials knew about it.
- Second, a claim he brought a property from Duval Partners, which was connected to developers Chad Kittrell and J.T. Burnette. The commissioner said Duval Partners is not the entity those two own. He said the purchase happened many years before any relationship with the two.
- And finally, a claim that Paige Carter-Smith bought Governance for $100,000 and paid Maddox $106,000 more after the sale. The commissioner said that wasn't an extra payment. It was $6,000 for contractual work and $100,000 for the firm.
Maddox also said he's never denied having a business relationship with Paige Carter-Smith. He said there are consistent reports of real estate transactions between the two.
