Report: Former Atlanta procurement officer escorted out of city hall

This story has been updated.
WSB-TV reports that Atlanta Chief Procurement Officer Adam Smith was escorted from City Hall today.
As procurement officer, Smith would’ve had significant influence over the awarding of city contracts. The city is the target of a federal investigation into bribery of city officials. WSB-TV reported that Smith was fired on Tuesday after the city received a subpoena.
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Initially, WSB-TV reported that he was escorted out by federal agents. The city has disputed that account, saying that he was escorted out by “city personnel who do not work in law enforcement,” according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution.
The corruption investigation involves contracts awarded to Elvin R. Mitchell Jr., who pleaded guilty to paying $1 million in bribes to unnamed city of Atlanta officials. The U.S. Attorney’s Office also announced that another contractor, Charles P. Richards Jr., has been arraigned on conspiratorial bribery charges. Prosecutors say he paid more than $185,000 to receive government contracts.
The city has been working to make all records connected to the investigation available for public review. Earlier this month, the city dumped about 1.4 million records – give or take – connected to the investigation after receiving numerous records requests from the media. The city has slowly been making these available online. The city has now created an Online Document Repository for anyone who is interested in searching through them. More from the city …
In order to facilitate easier review of electronic records, the City has created an Online Document Repository (“ODR”) to host electronic documents related to the ongoing criminal investigation of E.R. Mitchell and C.P. Richards. The ODR does the following:
- Allows users to instantly pre-view and/or download documents
- Allows full text searching of downloaded documents.
- Provides spreadsheets in native format.
- Provides for an option to receive email notification when new documents are added.
- Allows access to documents via a smartphone app using the same login credentials for the primary ODR.
Users must register at the following link: http://www.
sullivanstrickler.com/contact- coa.html. Once registered, each user will receive a second email with instructions to activate the account and create individualized sign in credentials. Please note the confirmation email may be caught up in your spam filter.