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With all eyes on the special election to replace late U.S. senator Lindsey Graham, two criminal defendants once entrusted to uphold the fairness, impartiality and accessibility of such an election found themselves back in court.
In a perfunctory hearing held on Tuesday (August 18, 2026) in downtown Columbia, disgraced former S.C. State Election Commission (SCVotes) executive director Howard “Howie” Knapp — and his similarly maligned former second in command, Paige Salonich — appeared before circuit court judge Heath Taylor.
Flanked by two high-profile attorneys with ties to the Alex Murdaugh retrial, both Knapp and Salonich stood clad in funeral black, save only for Salonich’s hot pink flats.
The scandal-plagued duo has come a long way since their first court appearance last fall, when they stood as caged detainees in the Alvin S. Glenn Detention Center while a magistrate weighed whether to grant them bond on a litany of corruption and surveillance charges.
Knapp ultimately received a $75,000 personal recognizance bond, while Salonich was granted a $25,000 bond of the same type.
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Nearly a year later, Knapp still faces eleven charges brought by agents of the S.C. State Law Enforcement Division (SLED). Probable cause affidavits maintain he welcomed himself and his wife to multiple state-owned vehicles, then charged taxpayers over $5,480 to fuel them.
That, for a time, was all Knapp was facing.
But then, according to charging documents, he attempted to remove an illegally placed, voice-activated recording device from the SCVotes’ meeting room. It purportedly captured the entire Sept. 17, 2025, commission meeting that resulted in Knapp’s ouster on a 3-2 vote.
The meeting included a nearly five-hour executive session — itself protected from public disclosure so long as public bodies follow procedural rules set forth under state law.
As for who planted the bug that allegedly violated that protection, SLED has alleged it was Salonich, Knapp’s former deputy director, who was likewise charged last October with one count of wiretapping.
The contents of her alleged recording, though, didn’t take center stage until Tuesday.
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“EVALUATE THE SUBSTANCE…”
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During Tuesday’s hearing, which lasted less than 15 minutes, neither Knapp nor Salonich said anything for the record. By their sides were two of the state’s most prominent defense attorneys: Joe McCulloch for Knapp and Jim Griffin for Salonich.
Across the courtroom stood an equally formidable opponent, Creighton Waters, chief attorney for the state grand jury division of the S.C. attorney general’s office, who revealed new details in the case against the former election officials.
“Your honor,” said Waters, “there is a video provided in discovery where Salonich is recorded placing that device.”
He went on to say the voice-activated device ran for some eight hours, “purportedly” capturing the executive session portion of the fateful SCVotes meeting.
Emphasis on purportedly…
Waters maintained the state has not listened to the alleged wiretap due to the privileged information it may contain. Instead, he says the attorney general’s office had SLED return the recording to SCVotes “to review it.”
“It’s my understanding the election commission has done that review,” he added.
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Regardless of when that review happened, or whether it happened at all, the presumed sensitivity of the alleged wiretap has led SCVotes to seek a protective order before such a critical piece of evidence is provided in discovery.
This position was supported in court by Thomas Limehouse, one of the commission’s many outside counselors. Despite his apparent preparedness, though, neither the judge nor the defense said they received his proposed protective order until shortly before the hearing began.
Apart from calling some of its provisions “wholly unnecessary,” Griffin didn’t elaborate much further, except to ask for more time to review the proposal. He did, however, emphasize that after ten months of litigation, he has yet to see any of the recordings Waters mentioned.
In advance of Tuesday’s hearing, Griffin issued a subpoena for them.
“We haven’t gotten it,” he said in open court. “We’ve been asking for it this whole time. Here we are. We still don’t have it.”
Thus springboarding into the heart of Salonich’s defense, Griffin argued election commission meetings are public meetings, subject not only to the Freedom of Information Act but to recordings from any member of the public.
His argument does not, however, address the allegation that some of Salonich’s recordings captured the meeting’s executive session, the one part of a public meeting exempt from both.
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That’s where McCulloch not only echoed Griffin’s argument but took it further, suggesting Knapp and Salonich may have been unlawfully excluded from the Sept. 17, 2025 meeting – and that a “kangaroo court, of a sort,” occurred during their executive session.
For those reasons and more, the veteran defense attorney respectfully asked Limehouse to “evaluate the substance” of that meeting.
For his part, Limehouse volunteered that newfound data appears to show someone, or some persons, “activating the microphone and/or the camera” during an unspecified executive session portion of an unspecified SCVotes meeting.
Without hesitation, McCulloch added that both Knapp and Salonich had the right to be present during the commission’s executive sessions, and that if they did, in fact, activate something, they had the right to do so.
As for the proposed protective order, Taylor left it to the attorneys to come up with language that everyone can agree on.
“If there’s still some issues,” he concluded, “I guess I’ll have to sort it out for you.”
Knapp, appointed in January 2022 and confirmed by the S.C. Senate a little over a year later, was the Palmetto State’s chief election officer prior to his termination last September.
Since his ouster, sources familiar with SCVotes have divulged to FITSNews founding editor Will Folks that Knapp and Salonich were involved in an extramarital affair that purportedly came with workplace pornography, lubricant, a pelvic floor fitness device and a love journal.
This story may be updated.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR…
Andrew Fancher is a Lone Star Emmy Award–winning journalist from Dallas, Texas. He joined FITSNews in 2023 after leaving an NBC affiliate, where he served as on-air talent. His reporting focuses on public corruption in South Carolina, with an emphasis on law enforcement misconduct and abuse of power.
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SOUND OFF…
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