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by WILL FOLKS
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A North Carolina-based journalist has asked a South Carolina judge to unseal a decade-old family court file tied to Palmetto State first circuit solicitor David Pascoe – initiating a potentially explosive legal saga that could unfold against the backdrop of a fiercely competitive Republican primary for attorney general.
Pascoe is one of three Republican contenders running to replace incumbent top prosecutor Alan Wilson, who is stepping down to seek the South Carolina governorship. The veteran solicitor has campaigned aggressively against the Palmetto State’s ruling trial lawyer lobby, prompting a flood of attacks against his candidacy.
Jody Barr, an investigative reporter with Charlotte-based Queen City News, submitted the motion to unseal on May 18, 2026 in the hopes of obtaining “all filings in this case, including, but not limited to, the docket, pleadings, motions, affidavits, exhibits, (the) sealing order, and other orders.”
Barr noted his media outlet “seeks only to litigate access to public court records and does not seek to reopen the merits of the underlying family court action.”
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According to Barr, the filings in Pascoe’s case were sealed “without disclosure of the reasons… and without even the identity of the parties being known or knowable to the public.”
That’s not entirely true, though…
According to an April 20, 2017 order signed retired family court judge John M. Rucker – a former state lawmaker – the rationale for sealing these records was made manifestly clear.
“The parties’ rights to privacy outweighs the public’s right to view their record,” Rucker concluded.
Addressing the specifics of the case, Rucker noted Pascoe’s public position and the potential “impact” of the records that might otherwise be disclosed.
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“The parties believe there is some professional significance or public significance to this matter as the plaintiff is the solicitor for the first judicial circuit, which is an elected position within the state of South Carolina,” the order noted. “Further, plaintiff believes not having this matter sealed could have (an) impact on his duties as the prosecutor for the first judicial circuit and possible harm as a result of the disclosure of the settlement agreement.”
The order also referenced Pascoe’s involvement as the lead prosecutor in ‘ProbeGate,’ a criminal investigation into influence peddling at the S.C. State House.
“The plaintiff is the designated prosecutor for an ongoing investigation involving certain members of the South Carolina General Assembly,” the order continued, adding that certain members of the public “would be seeking to review (the) pleadings for prurient interests unrelated to the public welfare.”
Sound familiar? It should… we’ve been here before on previous political cases in prior election cycles.
In addition to seeking access to these files, Barr also asked the court for an “expedited hearing” owning to the fact the “records sought involved the elected and serving solicitor of the first judicial circuit of the state of South Carolina, who is also a candidate for attorney general of the state of South Carolina, in an election that is imminent.”
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Barr’s request for an expedited hearing was denied, but as a hand-written note on his filing indicated S.C. family court judge Jerrod Anderson had scheduled a hearing on the matter for 12:00 p.m. EDT on Tuesday, June 16, 2026 at the Calhoun County court house in St. Matthews S.C.
A subsequent order (.pdf) obtained by this media outlet has confirmed that hearing – which would take place one week after Pascoe faces voters in the GOP primary for attorney general.
Recent polling shows Pascoe, state senator Stephen Goldfinch and S.C. eighth circuit solicitor David Stumbo are locked in a close battle for the GOP nomination. In the event no candidate receives a majority of votes on the first ballot on June 9, 2026, the top two-vote getters would advance to a runoff election two weeks later – on June 23, 2026.
Were the primary election held told, Pascoe would likely qualify for the runoff election.
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RELATED | PASCOE VOWS TO INVESTIGATE TRIAL LAWYER CORRUPTION
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In addition to Barr’s motion, Pascoe is also the focus of a civil complaint (.pdf) filed on May 19, 2026 alleging he failed to respond to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests seeking documents related to his travel and expenses and the travel and expenses of a subordinate attorney in his office.
While FITSNews has written exceedingly favorably on Pascoe both before and during his campaign for attorney general, our position on the sealing of family court files has been made abundantly clear over the years.
“The sealing of public records for influential individuals is standard operating procedure in South Carolina … yet another example of the preferential treatment received by those in power (or those with proximity to power) in the Palmetto State,” I noted in a 2020 post. “It works like this: When normal people screw up… everybody gets to read about their dirty laundry. When those with ‘connections’ screw up, the sordid details of their dirty deeds are kept under lock and key… zealously guarded by judges who clearly have no conception of the notion of equal protection under the law.”
Keep it tuned to FITSNews as we track this ongoing development and other breaking news tied to the attorney general’s race…
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR…
Will Folks is the founding editor of the news outlet you are currently reading. Prior to founding FITSNews, he served as press secretary to the governor of South Carolina. He lives in the Midlands region of the state with his wife and eight children.
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9 comments
Anyone can request their family court file be sealed if there is a good reason. It is not reserved for influential individuals.
While I get the “rules for thee, not for me” pushback viewpoint of Will, I think all family courts files should be subject to a presumption that they should be sealed, and place the legal and evidentiary burden on the person asking them to be unsealed. The entire world doesn’t have a default right to know out the intimate details of someone’s family breakup or other crisis.
Hell hath no fury like a lawyer whose chance to make money dwindled or like a prosecutor who failed to obtain a wrongful conviction in case which should not have been brought in the first place or like a prosecutor whose wrongful conviction (obtained by unconstitutional acts to say the least) just got vacated.
We know why Todd Rutherford and Leon Lott are furious that Professor Chow got acquitted in the protection-of-others shooting death of 14-year-old loaded-gun-toting Cyrus Carmack-Belton, acquitted by a jury with seven black members no less after hearing a brilliant defense by the amazing black lawyer Shaun Courtney Kent clad in a bespoke three-piece suit lined in crimson silk and a plain silk tie matching the lining’s EXACT color.
What puzzles me is the silence of Will Folks about the violence-inciting xenophobic speech of lawyer legislator Todd Rutherford and the silence of Andy Fancher about the crime-glorifying speech of Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott.
I, for one, being TRULY committed to the health and happiness of all children, including black ones, will NOT be silent, God so willing and FITS permitting.
More important than AG candidates’ marital and extra-marital activities are their views about, and proposed actions against, teenagers carrying loaded guns and trespassing on stores which prohibit entry of those loaded guns.
After a black male lawyer-state-legislator, we have a white chief county law enforcement officer FALSELY asserting the Cyrus “did nothing wrong.”
WRONG: Cyrus did AT LEAST two VERY WRONG things:
(1) Cyrus carried and unlawful LOADED gun; and
(2) Cyrus TRESPASSED with the loaded gun on the Chows’ store which had a CLEAR sign that guns were not allowed in the store.
That is the ULTIMATE disrespect for the store owner.
It a diner had entered shirtless into a fancy restaurant which had a sign, for example “shirt and tie required,” Lott’s men would have arrested that patron for trespass.
The private owner of any premises has the ABSOLUTE right to set conditions for the entry to the premises by any one other than the owner.
What you are doing is encouraging more children to carry loaded guns which are more likely to kill them by accident or suicide, to say nothing of gang warfare.
Stop the hypocrisy and demagoguery! You are killing children for the sake of cheap publicity.
Hell hath no fury like a lawyer whose chance to make money dwindled or like a prosecutor who failed to obtain a wrongful conviction in case which should not have been brought in the first place or like a prosecutor whose wrongful conviction (obtained by unconstitutional acts to say the least) just got vacated.
We know why Todd Rutherford and Leon Lott are furious that Professor Chow got acquitted in the protection-of-others shooting death of 14-year-old loaded-gun-toting Cyrus Carmack-Belton, acquitted by a jury with seven black members no less after hearing a brilliant defense by the amazing black lawyer Shaun Courtney Kent clad in a bespoke three-piece suit lined in crimson silk and a plain silk tie matching the lining’s EXACT color.
What puzzles me is the silence of Will Folks about the violence-inciting xenophobic speech of lawyer legislator Todd Rutherford and the silence of Andy Fancher about the crime-glorifying speech of Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott.
I, for one, being TRULY committed to the health and happiness of all children, including black ones, will NOT be silent, God so willing and FITS permitting.
More important than AG candidates’ marital and extra-marital activities are their views about, and proposed actions against, teenagers carrying loaded guns and trespassing on stores which prohibit entry of those loaded guns.
After a black male lawyer-state-legislator, we have a white chief county law enforcement officer FALSELY asserting the Cyrus “did nothing wrong.”
WRONG: Cyrus did AT LEAST two VERY WRONG things:
(1) Cyrus carried and unlawful LOADED gun; and
(2) Cyrus TRESPASSED with the loaded gun on the Chows’ store which had a CLEAR sign that guns were not allowed in the store.
That is the ULTIMATE disrespect for the store owner.
It a diner had entered shirtless into a fancy restaurant which had a sign, for example “shirt and tie required,” Lott’s men would have arrested that patron for trespass.
The private owner of any premises has the ABSOLUTE right to set conditions for the entry to the premises by any one other than the owner.
What you are doing is encouraging more children to carry loaded guns which are more likely to kill them by accident or suicide, to say nothing of gang warfare.
Stop the hypocrisy and demagoguery! You are killing children for the sake of cheap publicity.
How quickly do I get vindicated about the hypocrisy of ignoring guns in the hands of teens and feeding xenophobia instead.
Here is what I posted on TODAY’s early morning shooting in Northeast Columbia:
Happy now Sheriff Lott?
Only last night you were glorifying the late illegal-LOADED-gun-toting 14-year old Cyrus as “murdered” in the prime of his life.
This morning, you are telling us about an 18-year-old black male shot dead. I pray you won’t blame Professor Chow and his-college graduate son Andy for that.
Blame your OWN pandering, xenophobia, arrogance, and negligent training of your officers.
You lavish higher salaries and sparkling cars on them and on yourself; but you refuse to equip them with things so cheap and essential as metal detectors for them to collect shell casings and spent bullets when shots are fired in the dark.
You also refuse to install shot spotters and cameras in high-crime areas. You even neglect to require the videos of landlords in housing complexes with videos.
Yes, a human life is worth more than a bottle of water; but it is also worth more than a metal detector and the few minutes it would take your deputies to insist on watching existing videos or to report landlords who advertise safety through video cameras but IN REALITY do not maintain those cameras.
YOUR hypocrisy, not hard-working Asian immigrants, is killing young black people.
Breaking for FITS his and Andy Fancher’s continuing puzzling silence on the Cyrus Carmack-Belton story and on Sheriff’s Lott continued shirking of his own responsibility for Richland County’s gang and firearm problems, I paste my reply to a commenter on an MSM’s interview with Prosecution Witness Jasmine Broadwater:
? @johnson12183 , first, Cyrus was NOT “murdered.” He was fatally shot; but not every fatal shooting is a murder.
Please, please, PLEASE, respect the jury’s acquittal of Professor Chow of murder. That is why we have trials by jury and a court system.
Guilt or innocence of crime is not, and should not become, a matter of on-line opinions. It is to be determined in ONE forum, and ONE FORUM ONLY: a court of law.
Now that it has been determined in the only available and legitimate EARTHLY forum, NO ONE has the right to call Professor Chow a murderer or to call his fatal shooting of of Cyrus Carmack-Belton a murder.
Next, I was only responding to a question about what laws Cyrus had broken because I am very offended by those who should know better than to claim Cyrus did “absolutely NOTHING wrong.”
I do believe that the Chows over-reacted to Cyrus’ suspicious behavior in the store. But those who claim Cyrus’ carrying an illegal firearm and trespassing into the Chows’ store with is “nothing wrong” are simply glorifying self-destructive behavior among urban black youth that ends up hurting those youths themselves.
Only the morning after the vigil for Cyrus were there horrific incidents of much gunfire and a teen-aged black male dead.
Still think “nothing wrong” with loaded firearms in the hands of urban under-age males?
But I also add something important: NOT all injuries should receive CPR by CHEST COMPRESSION, which may be contra-indicated and even itself the cause of death in cases of bleeding into the chest cavity. The life-saving measure in such cases is a chest tube, not chest compressions. Of course, lay people may not have immediate access to surgically-sterile chest tube in all bleeding-into-the-chest-cavity emergencies; but even an IMPROVISED chest tube until EMS arrives is a better option than chest compressions.
But but he was a good boy. They even had a community vigil for him. The real question begs….. why the hell did a 14 yo kid have a firearm in the first place. Nothing like the culture of failure. The real problem isnt the gun, it’s the culture, another thing most black leaders refuse to address.
Why stop now when 7 of 14 trending stories on FITSNews have my comments on them?
No reason to not paste this reply of mine to recurring accusations that I am somehow privately connected to the Murdaughs:
? @marthalisk303 , I have ZERO contact with Richard Alexander Murdaugh (“RAM”) and ALL members of his family and know NOTHING about their lives, public or private OTHER than OFFICIAL court events and records.
What I am “privy to” is how this gang of prosecutors try to frame the innocent because they did it to me but, thank God and WITHOUT A LAWYER, I first succeeded in preventing a jury, presided over by none other than Judge Clifton Newman, from returning a wrongful conviction of me; and I later, always thank God and WITHOUT A LAWYER, succeeded in getting the false criminal charges brought against me dismissed WITH PREJUDICE by another judge.
You would think this gang of frame-the-innocent prosecutors would apologize or mend their ways when exposed.
THE OPPOSITE is the sad reality. They continue to demonize and punish the innocent they tried but failed to frame, as if those prosecutors had some divine dispensation to pick an innocent and cruelly toy with him/her; and if I thwarted the evil prosecutors, then I am the bad guy for having spoiled their perverted fun.
Please respect my proven innocence and my pain at my life having been stolen.
Why stop now when 7 of 14 trending stories on FITSNews have my comments on them?
No reason to not paste this reply of mine to recurring accusations that I am somehow privately connected to the Murdaughs:
? @marthalisk303 , I have ZERO contact with Richard Alexander Murdaugh (“RAM”) and ALL members of his family and know NOTHING about their lives, public or private OTHER than OFFICIAL court events and records.
What I am “privy to” is how this gang of prosecutors try to frame the innocent because they did it to me but, thank God and WITHOUT A LAWYER, I first succeeded in preventing a jury, presided over by none other than Judge Clifton Newman, from returning a wrongful conviction of me; and I later, always thank God and WITHOUT A LAWYER, succeeded in getting the false criminal charges brought against me dismissed WITH PREJUDICE by another judge.
You would think this gang of frame-the-innocent prosecutors would apologize or mend their ways when exposed.
THE OPPOSITE is the sad reality. They continue to demonize and punish the innocent they tried but failed to frame, as if those prosecutors had some divine dispensation to pick an innocent and cruelly toy with him/her; and if I thwarted the evil prosecutors, then I am the bad guy for having spoiled their perverted fun.
Please respect my proven innocence and my pain at my life having been stolen.