Palmetto State Watch Foundation‘s ongoing investigation into the South Carolina Attorney General‘s (SCAG) Litigation Retention Agreements has, until now, focused heavily on the Senate side of the legislature and on the network of outside counsel that has profited from the state’s biggest settlements. Today, we turn to the House and specifically to the two men who wield tremendous power in it.
Speaker Murrell Smith and House Ways and Means Chairman Bruce Bannister are not merely powerful legislators, they are also practicing attorneys whose law firms have collected substantial sums from multiple government entities while holding office. Of particular interest are Litigation Retention Agreements (LRAs) that originate in the office of the Attorney General, an office whose budget is allocated, in significant part, by the House Ways and Means Committee that Bannister chairs.
According to documents obtained by Palmetto State Watch Foundation through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), Smith Robinson Holler DuBose and Morgan, LLC—the firm of House Speaker Murrell Smith—received $2,157,383.60 between 2023 and 2025 under SCAG Litigation Retention Agreements. Bannister, Wyatt & Stalvey, LLC—the firm of Ways and Means Chairman Bruce Bannister—received $541,075.27 during 2024 and 2025 under these agreements as well.
Combined, the two most powerful members of the South Carolina House of Representatives have seen their law firms collect nearly $2.7 million from agreements (that we know of) with Alan Wilson’s Attorney General office in just the past two years.
What Are Litigation Retention Agreements?
As we have reported in previous installments of this series, when a government entity contracts with private outside law firms instead of using in house lawyers that are already on the state payroll, they utilize Litigation Retention Agreements. South Carolina Attorney General’s office has used these Litigation Retention Agreements extensively in recent years with political insider law firms, engaging them to represent the state or political subdivisions in litigation, including major class action lawsuits.
Depending on the structure of the agreement, compensation can take the form of hourly fees, contingency fees, or a combination of the two. The settlements in question are contingency fees from a batch of class action opioid settlements that have brought in over $256 million for the state and a different settlement with Centene, a healthcare company that has come under scrutiny in other states for its settlements-combined-with-lobbying efforts.
Our sources tell us that the vast majority of the insider politicians that signed on to these lawsuits didn’t do any of the heavy lifting in these class action lawsuits, merely copying and pasting legal documents from other participating law firms and signing their name. The numbers of politicians signing on to represent certain political subdivisions in SC are staggering. Aiken County alone had 6 attorneys signed up, including two sitting legislators: Rep. Murrell Smith, Sen. Tom Young‘s Young & Thurmond. It is worth asking why counties such as Allendale and Barnwell required the representation of 9 law firms, but a large county like Charleston only required one.
In November 2025, Palmetto State Watch Foundation submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to the South Carolina Attorney General’s Office for the past ten years of Litigation Retention Agreements and financial documents with outside law firms, including those representing political subdivisions for state matters. What came back in January was voluminous and, as this series has demonstrated, deeply troubling.
The same lawyers that received settlement funds because of their relationship with the Attorney General’s Office get to decide how much taxpayer money the SCAG’s office gets for its budget. In the Senate, we documented how Democrat Senators Brad Hutto and Margie Bright Matthews, whose firms collected over $147,000 from opioid settlement LRAs, sat on the very subcommittee charged with reviewing the AG’s budget. But the Senate’s conflicts pale next to what the FOIA documents reveal about sitting House representatives.
House Speaker Murrell Smith’s Cut
On top of being arguably the most powerful legislator in South Carolina, House Speaker Murrell Smith is also a named partner at Smith Robinson Holler DuBose and Morgan, LLC, a law firm that has collected over $2.1 million from SCAG Litigation Retention Agreements in just two years.
On the last page of Smith’s Statement of Economic Interest Report (SEI) for 2026, he reported receiving $867,766.38 from SCAG from “Opoid Fees for Represent for the counties and Centene settlement” (he misspelled Opioid) during the year of 2025. According to the documents we received from the AG’s office, he only received $514,808.37 during 2025 for the three separate settlements. That’s a $352,958.01 discrepancy.
Did SCAG omit some payments made to Smith’s law firm? And if so, how many payments were omitted regarding other “political subdivisions”?
Worth noting as well: for reporting years 2023 and 2024 Smith did not report any opioid or other settlement fees from the SCAG’s office, nor did Bannister in 2024 in his original filing. Interestingly enough, Bannister amended his disclosure for the year 2024 11 1/2 months after the report was due to include the settlement fees his law firm received from SCAG. The amendment was filed four days AFTER our second report on the AG’s litigation retention agreements with lawyer-legislators. In the amendment, Bannister added that he had represented a private citizen that sued South Carolina Department of Transportation and he earned $90,000 in fees…which he had apparently failed to report on his original disclosure almost a year before.
Chairman Bruce Bannister’s Cut
If Smith’s situation raises questions of scale, Bannister’s raises questions of structure. As Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, Bannister holds perhaps the most consequential budget-writing perch in the entire General Assembly. His committee’s decisions directly shape the funding levels available to every executive agency, including the Attorney General’s office.
His firm, Bannister, Wyatt & Stalvey, LLC, collected at least $541,075.27 from SCAG LRAs in 2024 and 2025. At the same time, his committee was writing the budget that determines how much money flows to the office whose LRAs were paying his firm.
This is not a theoretical conflict. It is a structural one, and our prior reporting adds another dimension to it. On August 19, 2024, an email landed in then-Elections Commission Director Howard Knapp‘s inbox expressing support for the SEC using the Master Lease Program under SC Code § 1-1-1020 to acquire new voting machines. It was signed: Bruce Bannister, Chairman, Ways and Means Committee, South Carolina House of Representatives. However, Bruce Bannister did not send that email, it instead came from his assistant, Kim Jackson’s email.
The other recipient on that email was none other than Hobart Trotter, the registered lobbyist for ES&S, the company whose machines were being purchased. The vendor’s own lobbyist was copied on what amounted to a legislative endorsement of his client’s sale. The following year, the same Elections Director was arrested and charged 11 times related to embezzlement, misconduct, use of his official position for financial gain, and accessory to wiretapping.
Beyond the Speaker and the Chairman
Smith and Bannister may be the most glaring examples, but the FOIA documents reveal that the web of lawyer-legislators collecting fees under SCAG Litigation Retention Agreements extends well beyond the current House leadership. Rep. Robby Robbins’ law firm Thurmond, Kirchner & Timbes, PA also received $568,761.14 from the opioid settlement as well. Across both parties and both chambers, the pattern repeats: a legislator holds a law license, their firm signs onto an LRA with the Attorney General’s office, and public settlement money flows back to a private practice run by someone who votes on that office’s budget and authority.
The figures below represent what the FOIA documents show was paid to firms connected to current or former legislators over the past ten years, beyond those already detailed above.
Current Republican Representative Robby Robbins, a former First Circuit Solicitor, received $568,761.14 through his firm Thurmond, Kirchner & Timbes. The co-founder of this law firm, Paul Thurmond, is the youngest son of former U.S. Senator Strom Thurmond.
Current Republican Representative Tom Young‘s firm, Young & Thurmond, received $58,094.80.
Former Democrat State Senator Thomas McElveen‘s firm, Bryan Law Firm of SC, received $17,879.33. McElveen, who served three terms in the Senate before retiring in 2024, returned to full-time practice at the Sumter-based firm he had been with since 2003.
Former Republican Representative and current Kershaw County Council Chairman Ben Connell‘s Connell Law Firm received $12,805.72.
Former Republican Representative Gary Clary‘s firm received $114,594.09.
Former Republican Representative George Hearn received $231,272.73 through Hearn & Hearn, the law firm he shares with his wife, former South Carolina Supreme Court Chief Justice Kaye Hearn. The firm bears a name that carries considerable institutional weight in South Carolina’s legal community, which makes its appearance on the AG’s LRA ledger all the more notable.
Former Democrat Representative James Smith Jr.‘s sole practice received $306,256.01. Smith is also a member of Liberty Fellowship class of 2012. Smith’s inclusion carries a dimension that goes beyond the financial: according to documents reviewed by Palmetto State Watch Foundation, he also represented Attorney General Alan Wilson in connection with ethics complaints against Wilson’s office. Is a former legislator collecting six figures under the AG’s LRA program is the appropriate person to defend that same AG against ethics proceedings? Let’s continue…
Former Democrat Representative Cezar McKnight‘s Law Office of Cezar E. McKnight LLC received $60,200.61.
Former Democrat Senator Gerald Malloy‘s Malloy Law Firm received $44,177.86.
Former Democrat Representative Paul Agnew‘s firm received $18,960.29.
Former Republican Senator Sandy Senn‘s firm, Senn Legal, received $1,198,772.29 which places her among the highest individual recipients in the entire FOIA dataset outside of Smith and Bannister themselves.
Former Democrat Senator and gubernatorial candidate Vincent Sheheen‘s firm received $138,114.93. Sheheen, who ran for governor twice as the Democratic nominee, is among the more prominent political figures whose firm appears on the LRA ledger.
Taken together, the firms of these current and former legislators collected well over $10 million in addition to the nearly $2.7 million flowing to the firms of Smith and Bannister. This is a clear pattern of financial relationships between the Attorney General’s office and the legislative branch that raises serious questions about independence, oversight, and the integrity of the budget process that funds the office at the center of it all. It is also worth noting that the Democrats received nearly double compared to what the Republicans received.
I cannot emphasize this next point enough: this is not all of the SCAG payments to powerful politicians. This is just the list of legislator-related LRAs that we received. Yes, it continues to get worse the more we dig.
“An Existential Threat to Our Machine”
It is against this backdrop that Solicitor David Pascoe who built his career prosecuting public corruption in South Carolina, announced his campaign for Attorney General. The establishment’s response was swift.
Pascoe, who spent years as a circuit solicitor aggressively pursuing corruption cases that others in the Columbia power structure preferred to leave alone, is now on the receiving end of attacks from a group called Fact Check SC, described by Pascoe as a Republican House caucus operation funded by dark money. As someone who has been a lone figure in raising awareness about these LRAs for years, Pascoe made the following comments:
“I recently asked someone close with the State House establishment why they are coming after me so hard with a group called Fact Check SC, a Republican House caucus group. It is the same dark money that has gone after conservatives like Representative Joe White. He was very honest in his response, ‘because you are an existential threat to our machine.’”
“We have lawyer legislators making hundreds of thousands, and in one case millions, of dollars off of Attorney General Litigation Retention Agreements. We did not elect them to go to Columbia and make a profit. The two most egregious examples of State House grifters on the LRA’s are the two most powerful: Speaker Murrell Smith and Ways & Means Chairman Bruce Bannister.”
“They know I will make sure they never profit from their position again so their consultants in the Blatt Building are coming after me with caucus money. It won’t work. Republican voters are fed up with the the bipartisan culture of corruption in Columbia.”
The “Blatt Building” reference is pointed. It is the home of the South Carolina House of Representatives’ leadership offices, located directly across from the State House. The consultants Pascoe refers to operate in close proximity to the speaker’s suite.
How The Uniparty Stays In Power
What this series has now established, across three reports, is that the attorney-legislator LRA arrangement is a clear pattern, not just a partisan phenomenon.
That pattern continued to grow into an octopus when we looked into the $75 million opioid settlement that involved Alan Wilson’s former law firm and key players. Companies were formed days after the contract was signed and hundreds of thousands of dollars flowed into Wilson’s political campaign and others soon after the settlement money arrived some even the day the funds were received.
Politicians like Senator Stephen Goldfinch who is running for Attorney General is also a recipient of those donations. This is how they keep the machine working flawlessly.
Now, we add House leadership to the mix of lawyer-legislators who appear to siphon off of lucrative state settlements.
These are the people who make decisions that directly affect your everyday life. They raise your taxes, they decide who gets prosecuted and who does not. They pass laws that benefit their group and exempt themselves from standards that you are held to. You fund the system that they bankroll.
Many of these positions are coming up for election during South Carolina’s upcoming primary which is scheduled for June 9th, 2026 and the subsequent runoffs scheduled for June 23rd. Educate your circle and remember this series at the ballot box.
Article posted with permission from Palmetto State Watch Foundation
