Gwinnett County Commissioner Marlene Fosque. Image Gwinnett County website

Gwinnett Daily Post
January 24, 2020

‘Tentative’ decision reached in Fosque ethics case, announcement expected Monday

The ethics board is expected to finalize a decision it has tentatively reached in Dustin Inman Society founder D.A. King’s ethics complaint against Gwinnett Commissioner Marlene Fosque on Monday, the board’s chairman has confirmed.

The decision was reached Friday morning after a couple of hours of deliberation by the ethics panel. The panel spent Thursday listening to testimony from witnesses presented by King and Steve Reilly, who is Fosque’s attorney.

The board is scheduled to meet at 10 a.m. Monday at the Gwinnett Justice and Administration Center to go over its decision before taking a vote on it.

“We have reached a tentative or preliminary decision,” ethics board chairman David Will said. “We’ve asked our attorneys to prepare a written decision to incorporate our findings and conclusions.

“On Monday, we plan to review and revise, if necessary, the written opinion and then make our official decision.”

King filed the complaint against Fosque last fall after she publicly criticized Sheriff Butch Conway’s decision to invite King to participate in a 287(g) the commissioner hosted in late July.

Although Fosque hosted the forum, it was up to the sheriff’s office to chose the pro-287(g) panelists who participated in the event.

Conway testified on Thursday that he has considered King an adviser to him on immigration matters for several years. Meanwhile Fosque told King, as he questioned her on the witness stand, that she had no feelings of malice toward him.

When Fosque made the comments criticizing King’s participation in the forum during a commission meeting in August, she cited the Southern Poverty Law Center’s assessment of the Dustin Inman Society as an anti-immigrant hate group. King and his supporters have called the SPLC a discredited organization.

Here.