Important: Please Read
Why does this site exist? Tony Thomas-Savannah Alderman
January 22, 2013 By Veritas
We, who run this website, want to take time to tell you briefly why we felt the need for this information to be made public. It may be hard to believe, given the information contained on this site and the method that this information has been presented here, but we do not have any personal animosity towards Alderman Tony Thomas. In fact most of us are coming from a background where we had a positive view of him as an Alderman. He has a knack for getting things done. The issues raised here come to us by Alderman Thomas’ actions, on of all things Facebook.
The vast majority of the pictures featured here are from Alderman Tony Thomas’ Facebook page. Many of these photos have since been taken down but were captured before their removal could be completed by Alderman Thomas. After some of the disturbing images and actions portrayed on Facebook were initially reviewed there were many questions raised. The major driving question raised was if we, the taxpayers, were being used by Alderman Tony Thomas to pay for extravagant trips, that were really closer to mini vacations, for Alderman Thomas to take his young male companions on.
To this end we decided to proceed with an active investigation and began to submit Georgia Open Records Requests (GORA) and were immediately met with stiff opposition initially from the Mayor and her office and then more extensively from Bret Bell, Information Director for the City of Savannah, when additional GORA requests were made. What initially began as an investigation into a possible misuse of public funds has grown into much more. This came about when our investigator played for us a recording he had made of his meeting with Edna Jackson, Mayor of Savannah, at her request after the initial GORA request. In fact, contrary to State Law she illegally required (her words) him to provide her with a photo ID before she would release the requested documents to him. For her action Mayor Jackson received a letter from Stefan Ritter, Senior Assistant Attorney General, stating that if she may have overstepped if she had indeed required the investigator to provide personal information.
When Mayor Jackson engaged in this questionable behavior and even stated that “she would not go to jail for anyone” over a GORA request that was for travel from April of 2012 to July of 2012, it raised all kinds of red flags. Our investigator did what he does best and simply began to dig. He brought to us a veritable laundry list of questionable activities that Alderman Tony Thomas was involved in. Some of these have been reported or linked here already while others are still being investigated and vetted further. Due to the sheer number of Alderman Thomas’s apparent indiscretions the endeavor to report his activities has been overwhelming at times. What was extremely unsettling was the apparent lack of concern both by some elements of the media as well as other elected officials when it came to Alderman Thomas’ actions, especially his actions with young, often under age, boys or men that would accompany Alderman Thomas on various “official” trips.
During the course of the investigation our investigator encountered a young man by the name of Josh Flowers. Josh Flowers alleged that Alderman Thomas had engaged, not just in questionable behavior, but blatantly illegal behavior during the time that Flowers worked for Alderman Thomas. This time frame began during his first re-election campaign in 2003. At this time (2012) our investigator attempted to immediately hand the investigation over to the local FBI office. The investigator met an Agent and passed along the name, location, contact information and allegations of Josh Flowers.
Due to the highly explosive nature of the charges of the allegations he had uncovered, he waited for the FBI to either begin an investigation or hand it off to another agency. After waiting two full weeks and checking in with Josh Flowers on a regular basis, our investigator learned that the FBI made no contact with Josh Flowers about these allegations. During this time Josh Flowers, who currently lived out of state moved back to the City of Savannah. Shortly after his return Mr. Flowers, accompanied by our investigator, went to the Metro Police Department Headquarters and spoke with a Detective in the Special Victims Unit.
Our investigator provided the Detective with a rather extensive list of other potential victims of Alderman Thomas and informed the Detective that he had purposely not reached out to any of the other victims directly because he did not wish to contaminate any potential police investigation. It was the hope of our investigator and of our group, that the Detective would treat these very serious allegations with the due diligence that they seemed to warrant and perform some further investigation into the situation. Josh Flowers spoke with the Detective afterwards and was informed that the statute of limitations had run out and there was “nothing” that could be done. The meeting with this Detective took place on September 15th, 2012 and for several months our investigator continued to do research and dig into the activities of not only Alderman Thomas but other members of the City Government. We investigated and waited for any signs of an investigation into the charges leveled by Josh Flowers.
For us, the wait is now over. For what ever unknown reasons, there has been no visible sign of an investigation into Alderman Thomas.
So here we are now a full four months after Josh Flowers first walked into the Metro Police Department and accused a sitting Alderman of drugging and sodomizing him when he was 19 years old. We can no longer simply sit silently and wait for those who are in positions of power to, at the very least, investigate these allegations fully.
What do we desire? We are asking that the Police and the new DA either investigate these allegations or ask the GBI to do so. Please take the time to look over all the information provided here and if you agree, please click here and ask the DA to either investigate these allegations or get the GBI to do so.
