A criminal investigation into allegations of corruption at the North Carolina legislature has grown to include another possible target, Wake County’s top prosecutor says — and more charges remain possible in the months to come, including potentially against politicians.

Wake County District Attorney Lorrin Freeman and the State Bureau of Investigation have spent more than a year digging into an allegation that a 2024 trip taken by lobbyists and influential Republican lawmakers may have been motivated by illegal influence-buying. 

The trip — including a tour of Kentucky bourbon distilleries and high-end dinners — was among the events detailed in a complaint filed later that year to the North Carolina Secretary of State. The complaint was filed by Carolina Forward, a progressive nonprofit organization.

Four lobbyists have been charged so far, and Freeman said this month that more charges are expected. On Friday she told WRAL News that the investigation will likely take at least several more months, although she’s hoping it’s finished before she leaves office at the end of the year.

The investigation has grown to include another Kentucky trip in 2022 — plus allegations of tens of thousands of dollars spent on strip clubs, luxury goods, sporting events and a beach trip in states throughout the country. Freeman confirmed Friday that another company, called M Group, has been added to the investigation.

M Group is a Florida-based housing developer that won approval in 2022 to build a neighborhood in Mooresville, a wealthy Charlotte suburb by Lake Norman, through a local subsidiary. 

To win the town council’s support for that development, the company agreed to build a new road in town itself, to save taxpayer money, The News & Observer previously reported. But the next year, as part of the 2023 state budget, the Republican-led legislature voted to spend $15 million of taxpayer money building that road.

Public records show that starting in 2023 while the state budget was being finalized, and continuing over the next several years, M Group executives poured tens of thousands of dollars into the campaign accounts of top Republican legislative leaders.

A Mooresville town website about that road project lists the contact for the developer as David Coble — who was also the head of Greater Carolina, the dark-money political group at the center of the investigation into the Kentucky trips and other expenditures.

“As part of the Greater Carolina investigation we are also examining what, if any, connections there were between those affiliated with Greater Carolina and M Group,” Freeman said in an interview Friday.

Charges against politicians?

Coble hasn’t responded to multiple requests for comment about various updates in the investigation, including on Friday. A request for comment to M Group on Friday also went unanswered.

Before the initial round of criminal charges against the lobbyists allegedly behind the Kentucky trips, a Greater Carolina spokesman defended the trip as being business as usual, telling WRAL: “Greater Carolina deals in public policy so, yes, our donors want to talk to policymakers. Legislators were there.”

Freeman declined to say who else might be charged in the case and noted that different laws are in play.

While the law is clear that it’s illegal for lobbyists to give gifts to politicians, for example, it’s not necessarily illegal for politicians to accept those gifts — or to vote the way the lobbyists, or campaign donors, want them to.

Building that sort of case against a current or former elected official would take more evidence. Freeman said the investigation is still exploring every avenue. No politicians have been charged yet, but Freeman said investigators are exploring elements that could result in charges.

“The further step of trying to establish that there was some sort of quid pro quo … is a high burden to meet,” she said. “But certainly it’s something that we believe is important that we do our due diligence on.”

Greater Carolina is mostly associated with House Republican politicians. A spokesperson for House Speaker Destin Hall said the investigation hasn’t included him. Most of the allegations that have become public so far predate Hall’s time leading the state House, which he took over in 2025. “He has not been contacted or interviewed by investigators,” Hall spokeswoman Demi Dowdy said Friday. “He did not attend either Bourbon Trail event.”

Asked if any other House Republican lawmakers have been interviewed for the investigation, Dowdy said that she can speak only for Hall, who hasn’t.

Previous warrants have shown that Sarah Newby, the North Carolina Republican Party’s top fundraising official, also worked with Greater Carolina. Newby told WRAL in May that those activities were separate from her NCGOP work and that “I remain committed to working with integrity, professionalism, and the highest standards of reputation and accountability.”

Freeman said Friday it didn’t appear that Newby knew of the spending that investigators say could be criminal. “Sarah Newby has cooperated completely with the investigation, and we have no evidence at this point that would indicate that she knew how any of the monies were being expended,” Freeman said.

Push for accountability

Blair Reeves, a progressive political activist is executive director of the group Carolina Forward. It was his complaint that eventually turned into this criminal investigation. He told WRAL on Friday that state officials have uncovered far more than he knew about when he first suggested they take a look.

Reeves said he hopes it opens voters’ eyes to how state politics operate, and perhaps leads to a push for more accountability or stronger anticorruption laws.

“There’s a big gap between what’s illegal and what’s ethical, and that gap is where a lot of the North Carolina state legislature is living these days,” Reeves said.

He noted that while his group was behind this complaint against Greater Carolina and its GOP allies, he’s also been heavily involved in backing primary challengers against Democrats who took large amounts of campaign contributions from corporate interests. At least four of those pro-business Democrats are either already gone from the legislature or are on their way out at the end of this year.

Because of the way the state’s districts are drawn, nearly every seat in the state legislature is safe for either Republicans or Democrats — and thus is largely decided in the party primary, not the general election. Reeves said that means party loyalists need to become more comfortable with holding their own accountable.

“The party labels don’t matter so much if you believe in countering political corruption,” Reeves said. “You have to do it on both sides. And if you don’t do it on both sides, then I don’t know what you are doing.”