Guilty pleas revealed in Sons of Confederate Veterans campaign finance case
The State Board of Elections has revealed its first criminal convictions — two guilty pleas to a misdemeanor charge — in the six years after state lawmakers made campaign finance investigations secret.
That outcome drew little praise from a campaign finance watchdog whose complaint to the elections board prompted the case. He says it took too long and resulted in too little.
In January, two leaders of a political action committee for the Sons of Confederate Veterans pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of accepting cash contributions in excess of $50.
They were ordered to pay a $100 fine and court costs, according to a letter the board sent to Bob Hall, the retired executive director of Democracy NC.
Court records show Mitchell Flinchum of Burlington, the PAC’s treasurer, and Thomas Smith of Raleigh, the PAC’s assistant treasurer, pleaded guilty to the misdemeanors on Jan. 23.
Neither the board nor prosecutors announced the convictions at the time. Hall did not find out until he received a letter known as a “closure notice” from the board that was dated May 16, nearly four months after the convictions in Wake County District Court.
“It’s a pitiful settlement, but at least they admitted to engaging in criminal activity,” Hall said in a news release Tuesday.
Hall filed a lengthy complaint against the nonprofit North Carolina division of the Sons of Confederate and its Heritage PAC in January 2020. He did so after The Daily Tar Heel, the UNC-Chapel Hill student paper, revealed evidence of illegal donations to the PAC.
The nonprofit had struck a secret $2.5 million deal with the UNC System to take possession of the controversial Silent Sam statue memorializing Confederate soldiers at UNC-Chapel Hill, which protesters tore down. A judge later pulled the plug on the deal.
What is now secret was once public
Prior to the 2018 law, the board would make public complaints and election records associated with them, until it found possible criminal conduct, Gary Bartlett, the board’s executive director from 1993 to 2013, told the N&O last year.
At that point, the board withheld information until a public hearing before the board that included testimony from witnesses. Transparency from such hearings, which legislators ended, helped give the public confidence that campaign finance cases were being handled appropriately, Hall and other government watchdogs have said.
A public hearing would have shed light on claims Sons of Confederate Veterans members made that they were pressured to make cash donations to the PAC and that they had been listed as the source of other donations they did not make, Hall said.
“It would have triggered tax investigations and racketeering investigations by the federal investigators, it very much could have done that,” Hall predicted.
Smith could not be immediately reached for comment. Mitchell declined to talk about the case.
“As far as I’m concerned it’s settled,” he said. “I’m glad after all of it to hopefully have it in the past.”
Efforts to interview state elections officials and Wake County District Attorney Lorrin Freeman about the outcome of the Heritage PAC case were unsuccessful.
Patrick Gannon, a spokesman for the board of elections, said in an email that the board did not see a concern with issuing its notice of the case’s outcome last week.
“Campaign finance investigations are confidential under state law,” he wrote late Tuesday afternoon. “From our perspective, the case was open until just recently, and we provided notice of the status to the complainant.”
The board’s letter to Hall said that it investigated the nonprofit and its PAC for roughly a year, turning over its findings to the State Ethics Commission for its recommendation. Requiring that referral was another change to campaign finance investigations from the 2018 legislation. The commission’s recommendations are also confidential.
The commission’s review added two months to the case, the board’s letter showed. In June 2021 the board referred the case to the Alamance County district attorney to investigate Flinchum and to Freeman in Wake County to investigate Smith. The case was later consolidated in Wake County.
Freeman asked the SBI to investigate further.
When asked about the length of time it takes to resolve elections board cases referred to her, Freeman said the elections board is hampered by a lack of funding and staff and the SBI’s financial crimes unit is taking longer to do its work.
Hall criticized Freeman’s handling of the case, and others in recent years that did not lead to criminal charges, in his news release.
“It’s disappointing that the District Attorney took so long to accomplish so little,” Hall said.
This story was originally published May 20, 2025 at 1:39 PM.