Tennessee AG addresses Harshbarger complaint, NCAA lawsuit

KINGSPORT, Tenn. (WJHL) — Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti is continuing to investigate an ethics complaint against political candidate Bobby Harshbarger, who claimed the Republican nomination for Tennessee Senate District 4.

Skrmetti was in Kingsport Monday morning for the Kingsport Chamber of Commerce’s Regional Fireside Chat event at the MeadowView Marriott Conference Resort & Convention Center.

Skrmetti spoke with News Channel 11 about a variety of topics following the event.

Harshbarger/Lundberg

In April, an ethics complaint was filed against Bobby Harshbarger , who won the Republican primary election to Tennessee Senate District 4 . The complaint was filed while Harshbarger was engaged in a heated and expensive race against incumbent Jon Lundberg.

The complaint was initially sent to Tennessee’s Registry of Election Finance board, which ultimately sent the complaint to Skrmetti’s office for investigation.

As of Monday, Skrmetti said there was no timeline as to when the investigation into that complaint would be complete. Skrmetti told News Channel 11 that investigations such as the Harshbarger complaint are not commonplace for his team.

“This is still a pretty new role for my office,” Skrmetti said. “We’ve only done one of these so far.”

Investigations into election finances are a different ballgame for the attorney general’s office, Skrmetti remarked.

“The first one took a while,” he said. “I don’t recall the exact amount of time, but the statute doesn’t let us use the investigative tools that we typically use when we look into things.”

While Harshbarger has already defeated Lundberg in the Republican primary, Skrmetti believes completing the investigation is worthwhile.

“It’s really important that people trust the system,” Skrmetti said. “It’s really important that when we have laws, they’re fairly enforced. I think it’s always important to have transparency and accountability.”

Bureau of Ethics and Campaign Finance Executive Director Bill Young told News Channel earlier in August that Skrmetti’s office will not ultimately make a decision on the law regarding the complaint. Skrmetti’s office will present the findings of the investigation to the bureau which will provide it to the Registry of Election Finance Board.

NCAA Lawsuit

In July, a full settlement agreement in the antitrust lawsuits centered around the NCAA and several athletic conferences was filed.

Tennessee and Virginia were the first states to sue the NCAA early in 2024 over anti-competitive restrictions on student-athletes that prevented them from fully benefiting from the use of their name, image and likeness (NIL). The NCAA later faced two additional lawsuits.

“So they just settled the House case, which was the big money-oriented NIL case that looks back at prior money that players didn’t get,” Skrmetti said. “We’re currently in a position where we have our injunction. They can’t enforce the new rules in Tennessee. We have five states involved in it now; it started out with just us and Virginia and has expanded since then.”

Opposition to the settlement has arisen from some groups who say it undervalues the claims made. Skrmetti said, however, that he expects the NCAA to seek a resolution quickly.

“If the NCAA wants to fight, we’ll fight. But I imagine that they’re probably going to want to resolve this now that they have House resolved,” he said. “We’re not just going to rubber stamp anything. I think it’s really important that we make sure going forward our student-athletes have the protections they deserve. The law guarantees that they’re entitled to a free market for their name, image and likeness rights.”

The full settlement outlined by the NCAA and its Power Five Conferences would be to the tune of roughly $2.8 billion. The settlement requires approval from a federal judge and is expected to also result in widespread changes to the landscape of college athletics.

“The previous rules were illegal,” Skrmetti said. “And so whatever happens next, we have to make sure that their legal rights are respected.”

Tech issues/social media/scams

Skrmetti’s eye is also on the tech world.

In January, the Tennessee attorney general joined the Department of Justice (DOJ) and several other state attorney generals in suing Google for maintaining an illegal monopoly over internet searches. U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta ruled in the DOJ’s favor in early August.

“We just won against Google in a big antitrust suit,” Skrmetti said on Monday. “It was a bipartisan suit: us, the Department of Justice, and Colorado along with a few other states. The judge ruled that Google has an illegal monopoly over Internet search. So we’re going to proceed to the remedies phase there and see what’s going to fix that problem.”

Internet search engines are not the only area of the digital world facing litigation.

“We’re looking at the social media companies,” Skrmetti said. “We’re suing Meta, which is the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, over the mental health impact of social media on teens. And there’s a lot of evidence, a lot of evidence that an entire generation has been negatively affected by social media platforms that are designed to be addictive and that have really outsized impact on younger people whose brains are still developing.”

Skrmetti pointed to issues like anxiety, depression, suicidal tendencies and sleep deprivation among teenagers as reasons that his office is taking action against social media companies.

“We don’t want to put them out of business,” he said. “We don’t want to tell them how to do their business, but they need to make their product safe for kids.”

Skrmetti’s office is also looking into multiple online scams that have targeted Tennesseans.

“When there are people in Tennessee that are trying to scam folks, we see a lot of issues with elderly citizens being targeted for things like solar panels or water filtration systems, where the financing scheme is set up to be very burdensome and where the product that they get isn’t what was promised. And we intervene and we stop that.”

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