Search warrant details Kentucky bourbon distillery trips taken by NC lawmakers
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- A warrant shows liquor companies paid lawmakers' distillery trip expenses.
- A Wake County grand jury indicted four lobbyists for unlawfully giving gifts to lawmakers.
- An SBI affidavit alleges Greater Carolina used 501(c)(4) laws to evade disclosure.
A search warrant made public this month reports how liquor businesses covered expenses for 11 state lawmakers in 2022 and nine lawmakers in 2024 to attend distillery tours in Kentucky, both trips arranged by a nonprofit now under investigation.
The warrant was made public roughly a month after a Wake County grand jury indicted four lobbyists on a charge of violating the state law that bans gifts to state lawmakers.
Special Agent Kailah Kearney of the State Bureau of Investigation sought the warrant to search bank records connected to Greater Carolina, a Mooresville-based nonprofit initially formed by a former aide in 2018 to then-N.C. Rep. Jason Saine.
She said in the warrant “there is probable cause to believe that Greater Carolina orchestrated through the use of 501(c)(4) non-profit organizations to enable lobbyists and their principals to evade lobbying disclosure and reporting requirements from 2022 to present.
“Based on the information in this affidavit, your affiant believes there is probable cause to believe that information contained in the banking records . . . may be evidence of conduct and activities constituting violations of the Lobbying Act, the State Ethics Act, and the offense of Obstruction of Justice by individuals associated with Greater Carolina, Inc., Diageo North America, and/or Sazerac Company Inc.”
The distillery tours did not become public until shortly after the second trip in April 2024, when an employee at one of the distilleries complained about the group’s behavior. Carolina Forward, a left-leaning nonprofit based in Carrboro, subsequently obtained additional information about that trip and filed a complaint in August 2024. By then, Saine had left his legislative position and by year’s end was lobbying for The Southern Group.
Last week, The News & Observer reported that Saine was no longer working for the Florida-based lobbying firm. He did not return messages asking about why, and the firm declined to comment. He told Business NC this week that he is starting his own firm.
One of the four lobbyists indicted by the Wake grand jury is Kevin Wilkinson, who opened up The Southern Group’s Raleigh office. The others are David Ferrell, Douglas Bowen Heath and Douglas Miskew. Each of the four face a misdemeanor charge of solicitation to commit violations of the offense of giving gifts by lobbyists and lobbying principals.
Greater Carolina had billed itself as a free-market conservative group and in a few years was raising several hundred thousand dollars, its tax returns show.
What the search warrant shows
Kearney requested bank records and credit card accounts associated with Greater Carolina, its director David Coble and board member Madeline Shoemaker Keeter from 2018 to the present. Coble is a Mooresville businessman who has occasionally hosted a radio show with Saine.
He also was the local representative for a developer with offices in Florida and Texas that won $15 million from state lawmakers in the final version of the 2023 state budget to help pay for a connector road in Mooresville. The developer had offered the road to the town a year earlier to win support for a residential development.
The search warrant affidavit said Anna Scott Marsh organized the first trip in April 2022. She is a former legislative aide who first registered as a lobbyist in the state in 2023, lobbying records show.
She emailed lobbyists representing Sazerac and Diageo and “suggested participation of their clients to host a Kentucky distillery visit for Greater Carolina’s, ‘donors and friends’ of the organization,” the affadavit said. Saine was included in the email. The two companies’ lobbying firms would approve who attended since their companies served as hosts.
The trip was scheduled for Aug. 7 and 8, 2022. “The invitations were extended to donors, legislators, and lobbyists,” the affidavit said. “In total, eleven legislators attended the trip.”
Internal Diageo communications showed they thought the trip would “allow discussion of key legislative priorities for Diageo including the sale of ready-to-drink beverages and the opening of a new warehouse within the state.”
Two of the lawmakers expected to attend were being considered for chairman of the legislature’s Alcohol Beverage Control Committee, the affidavit said.
After the trip, Heath, Diageo’s registered lobbyist, suggested the company should focus on building relationships with Saine, then Rep. Tim Moffitt, Rep. Ray Pickett and state Sen. Todd Johnson. Moffitt, who is now a state senator, confirmed that Marsh invited him on the trip, the affidavit said.
Diageo spent nearly $16,000 on two distillery events and received from Greater Carolina an “in-kind expenditure statement” for the costs. Sazerac paid more than $5,400 for a dinner at a distillery. Moffitt told Kearney that Sazerac gave him a bottle of Blanton’s Original Single Barrel Bourbon as a gift.
Moffitt reported the trip as a scholarship on his required Statement of Economic Interest that he filed in 2023.
That year, Sarah Newby began working as a contract fundraiser and event planner for Greater Carolina, the affidavit said. She is finance director for the N.C. Republican Party and the daughter of state Supreme Court Chief Justice Paul Newby.
The nonprofit’s board encouraged her to organize a second trip, held April 25-27, 2024. “Newby used either Keeter’s or Coble’s Greater Carolina American Express credit card to pay invoices throughout the 2024” trip, the affidavit said. “Newby was never issued a credit card for Greater Carolina.”
Wilkinson, another North Carolina lobbyist for Diageo, told the company that “Chairman Saine” had confirmed the date of the tour, the affidavit said. Diageo made a $10,000 contribution to Greater Carolina two months ahead of the tour. It also paid for a $5,300 dinner, while Sazerac paid $4,100 for another dinner.
Newby used the credit card to pay $2,277 for an event at the Stitzel-Weller Distillery, which is owned by Diageo. The affidavit said the expense covered 33 attendees.
State law requires lobbyists and their employers to report spending on behalf of lawmakers, but the reports filed at the times for those tours show none, the affidavit said.
There is an exception to the gift ban for “educational meetings,” but neither Greater Carolina nor the businesses that supported the tours sought an opinion on whether they met that definition, the affidavit said.
Saine, Coble, Keeter and Newby could not be immediately reached.
The search warrant and affidavit were inadvertently made public on the state courts website, despite an order signed by Superior Court Judge Paul Ridgeway to keep them sealed for at least another month.
Wake County District Attorney Lorrin Freeman said the lawmakers who attended may not face penalties because state law puts the responsibility on the providers to report the gifts. Last year, The N&O reported that lawmakers who either acknowledged attending or were identified in receipts obtained by Carolina Forward had not disclosed the 2024 trip on their economic interest statements.
The 2022 trip did not become public until February, when Freeman confirmed the tours were under investigation.
She said she could not speak to the specifics of the case. The investigation is also looking at other aspects of Greater Carolina’s operations.
This story was originally published May 26, 2026 at 3:43 PM with the headline "Search warrant details Kentucky bourbon distillery trips taken by NC lawmakers."