Not Treasurer. Got It. Now About That Ponzi Scheme Scandal...
A cease-and-desist letter from a State Senate candidate raises questions.
Most cease-and-desist letters arrive because someone published something false and refused to take it down. This one arrived after the corrections were already posted.
On February 19th, Catoosa County Commissioner Chuck Harris received a legal threat from Denise Burns, a candidate for the 53rd District State Senate seat. Harris had written a social media post that got some things wrong — he’d mistakenly implied she had oversight of funds connected to alleged fraudster and GRA insider and donor Brant Frost, and he’d called her the treasurer of the Georgia Republican Assembly (GRA) where she actually served as Assistant Secretary. Harris figured that out himself quickly. By 8:30 the next morning, he’d scrubbed the mistaken language, posted a correction, and acknowledged he had her title wrong.
He didn’t need a lawyer to tell him he’d overstated it. He just fixed it.
Which makes what happened next worth examining. Harris received the cease-and-desist — after the corrections were already posted.
Anyone who’s followed local politics around here knows that online mobs have spun up regularly over the past few years. Accusations that don’t hold up. Manufactured outrage. Noise designed to drown out the facts. Half-truths, whole lies, and everything in between. You know how many cease-and-desist letters got sent over all of it?
Zero.
Because when the accusations are false, the truth does the work. You point at the facts and let people decide. You don’t need a lawyer. You need patience. Any political figure who’s been around long enough understands this.
This is exactly why Burns sending this cease-and-desist — after corrections were already made — is so revealing.
Burns’ problem isn’t that Chuck Harris overstated a point and then corrected it. He did what anyone operating in good faith does: he made an error, fixed it publicly, and said so. Her problem is that the truth doesn’t help her, and he was talking about it.
Burns was an officer of the GRA, the organization that authorized, promoted, and proudly lent its name to a PAC now under ethics investigation for illegally influencing elections. That PAC was funded in large part by money connected to a $140 million Ponzi scheme that wiped out hundreds of elderly and Christian investors. Correcting “treasurer” to “Assistant Secretary” and correcting an already corrected post raises a new question: why is she more concerned about which title she held than about everything happening around her while she held the title?
Harris posted his correction. The cease-and-desist came anyway. Harris, to his credit, responded with the appropriate level of seriousness. He posted a correction and apologized for any “emotional distress” his error may have caused.
Definitely not treasurer. Noted.
Good thing we got that cleared up.
Everything else remains.
Denise Burns is running for State Senate. She wants the voters of the 53rd District to trust her with their representation, their tax dollars, and their laws. Those voters have every right to know who she is. Not just which title she held, but what she did with it, who she stood beside, and what was going on inside the organization she served while she was serving it.