UPDATE: Senate won’t look into Cooper land deal right now
NASHVILLE — A state senator connected to a land deal that has led to federal fraud indictments won’t be investigated for ethical lapses unless authorities indict him, colleagues decided Wednesday.
The Senate Ethics Subcommittee scheduled a closed-doors meeting to hash over the issue Wednesday and decided they didn’t have enough evidence to prove Sen. Jerry Cooper, D-Morrison, is actually the person called an “unindicted co-conspirator” in indictments handed down on others connected to the deal.
The panel of three senators looking at the deal decided to open the doors on their deliberations to a few reporters waiting outside after they determined they wouldn’t be looking at any confidential documents.
Before that, Senate Speaker and Lt. Gov. John Wilder planned to attend the meeting — but left once he saw reporters had found the location of the unannounced session.
Wilder’s bank was involved in making a loan in the deal, but he said Cooper did not use his influence to do anything wrong.
Wilder told reporters on Wednesday that Cooper approached him about having BankTennessee, which Wilder partly owns, underwrite the loan when the deal was first going down in the late 1990s. Wilder said he stayed out of the decision to grant the loan, which has since defaulted.
“My bank makes many, many loans to industries and industrial loans of this kind and it made the loan,” Wilder said. “This loan is no different than any other loan.”
Wilder said his bank lost several hundred thousands of dollars in the deal.
Wilder said he has not been interviewed by the FBI in the case. “I don’t remember it if they did.”
The land deal resulted in federal indictments charging Anthony and Teresa Auyer of Alabama, who purchased Cooper’s lumber mill property in Warren County, and property appraiser James Passons.
The indictments also cite an unnamed, unindicted co-conspirator who owned the property and “used his political contacts, connections and influence” to help Auyer obtain a $1.77 million federally insured loan.
A day earlier, Cooper said he never used any of his influence as a state senator to help engineer the sale. He could not be reached for comment Wednesday.
The three-member ethics subcommittee, Sens. Doug Henry, Curtis Person and Steve Southerland, looked at a letter Cooper sent on his senate stationary to then-Congressman Bob Clement. The letter asked the congressman to look into the loan going in under a U.S. Department of Agriculture program.
The panel said they couldn’t decide if that breached Senate ethics rules prohibiting lawmakers from using their position for personal gain.
Senate Majority Leader Ron Ramsey, R-Blountville, chairs the full ethics committee and asked for the subcommittee to look into the deal. He said he trusted their decision, and will continue to monitor the federal case against Auyer to see if any incriminating evidence against Cooper surfaces.
Cooper has been in financial trouble in recent years, and has defaulted on nearly a million dollars in bank loans. His state senatorial pay is being garnished for payment on the loans, and the interest on the loans is accumulating quicker than it can be paid.
Gov. Phil Bredesen was watching the committee’s action.
“If the senate committee was asked by federal authorities to defer on this for a while, they certainly acted properly in doing so, as long as it’s a reasonable period of time,” he said.