From left: GOP Caucus Chair Cameron Sexton, House Speaker Glen Casada and aide Cade Cothren
Underlying the already-manic final day of the 2019 legislative session on Thursday was inescapable chatter about House Speaker Glen Casada’s chief of staff, Cade Cothren.
Cothren, whose $130,000 pay raise drew the attention of lawmakers and media earlier this year, was the subject of a Thursday NewsChannel 5 story that simultaneously suggested that he may have submitted false evidence about activist Justin Jones and that he sent racist text messages.
Jones, a frequent protester at the Capitol, was arrested in February after allegedly lobbing a paper cup at Casada. A few days later, Cothren submitted an email to the Nashville District Attorney’s Office that made it look like Jones had violated his no-contact order, and a judge revoked Jones’ bond.
Turns out, Jones sent the email before his arrest. Once the confusion was sorted out, the DA dropped the revocation. Former Scene reporter Cari Gervin first reported on the date discrepancy in March, though without the further context provided this week by Casada and legislative staff.
Vinay Duttu, director of Legislative Information Systems for the Tennessee General Assembly, said Jones’ Feb. 25 email was caught in the state’s spam filters and that Cothren did not receive it until March 1, after Jones’ arrest. (A Scene reporter was copied on the email, and it arrived on Feb. 25.)
House leadership staff later released Cothren’s emails to the DA’s office, which show that Jones’ email was sent Feb. 25. When an assistant prosecutor asked why the email in question appeared to have been sent prior to Jones’ arrest, Cothren wrote: “When I try forwarding to you, the date of the email changes to February 25 in the chain. I am not sure exactly what is going on here.”
Casada said on Thursday that Cothren realized the discrepancy on March 2 and “immediately called the district attorney’s office.” But in the email chain released by Casada’s staff, the DA’s office initiated the contact over the date discrepancy on March 3.
“He did nothing wrong,” Casada said. “The email story is not true.”
Cothren did ask the assistant prosecutor to hold off on pursuing the case until he could seek clarity from IT staff.
The Nashville DA has asked the state district attorneys conference appoint a special prosecutor to take over the case against Jones and investigate the circumstances surrounding the email evidence, The Tennessean reported.
But that’s not all Williams reported. He also published text messages reportedly from a former Cothren acquaintance in which the chief of staff wrote that “black people are idiots” and described NFL quarterback Jameis Winston as a “thug n****r.” Casada was even copied on one of the purported text messages, but maintained that he did not believe they were real.
“I know him,” Casada said. “I refuse to believe anything else because of what I know firsthand.”
He also said that he did not receive the text message on which he is copied, without offering the same sort of technical evidence he provided in the email matter.
“If I had received that text message, I would strongly scold whoever sent that to me,” he said. “There’s something not right about that story.”
House Majority Leader William Lamberth did say the texts were “despicable” and that such behavior would not be tolerated among House staffers, but he added that he did not know if Cothren sent them.
Democrats called for an investigation into the text messages, which Democratic Caucus Chair Mike Stewart called “shockingly racist.”
“We’re not talking about a dog whistle,” he added.
If an investigation ended up determining Cothren sent the messages, it is “self-evident” that he should not be in government service, Stewart said. A House GOP spokesperson would not say whether they would launch an investigation.
See the screenshots below courtesy of NewsChannel 5:
