Virginia Politics

Republican leadership battle in Virginia Senate gets heated

By Laura Vozzella November 16 at 7:01 PM 

RICHMOND — A leadership battle among Republicans in the Virginia Senate has taken a turn for the nasty, shattering the chamber’s usual decorum and creating a distraction for the GOP just weeks after its victory in hard-fought elections. ... Sen. Thomas A. Garrett Jr. (R-Louisa) and Senate Majority Leader Thomas K. Norment Jr. (R-James City) complain bitterly about each other in a series of e-mails sent to fellow members of the Republican Senate caucus and obtained by The Washington Post.
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This spring, Norment acknowledged having an affair with a lobbyist whose firm regularly pushed for legislation that Norment voted for and, in two cases, sponsored. He said at the time that he had not given her bills special treatment. Federal investigators reviewed the relationship, closing the matter without criminal charges.

Norment wrote in the e-mails that federal officials looked into the relationship only because he was a potential witness in the criminal case against a man who had tried to blackmail him over the affair. ... “AGAIN, THERE WAS NO CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION OF ME,” he wrote.

Garrett, a former prosecutor, shot back: “The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s job is to ‘investigate’ and conduct ‘investigations.’ When they are seizing your hard drive, copying your cell phone and text records, it is not for posterity .?.?. it is to ‘investigate.’ When they ‘look into’ your relationships for evidence of corruption its an ‘investigation.’?”