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Following myriad allegations that Upstate handyman Michael Thornton was supplying then-Spartanburg County Sheriff Chuck Wright with pain pills, two special agents – one from the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED) and one from the FBI – approached the Police Club Road resident on April 8, 2025.
The pivotal visit to Wright’s drug dealer came just days after the sheriff took an abrupt leave of absence on April Fools’ Day 2025 — conveniently amid the impaneling of a federal grand jury in Columbia, S.C.
FITSNews was first to report that Wright actually used that time to abscond to a rehab facility in Florida.
The recorded encounter with Wright’s admitted pill supplier lasted less than fourteen minutes. During the exchange, the special agents presented Thornton with a proffer agreement — a deal that would soon give him the chance to tell prosecutors everything he knew about Wright’s pill habit without having his own words used directly against him.
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But Thornton wasn’t ready to take advantage of that offer when first approached. Instead, he apprehensively told agents he had known Wright for a “long time,” repeatedly calling the six-term sheriff a “good fella” and a “good guy.”
He did, however, admit to supplying Wright with pills in the past, though he couldn’t say exactly when, only that it had been a “couple years.”
Thornton also told agents he had given Wright information on “drug houses and poker houses up and down [Highway] 221… and stuff like that.”
Despite this extensive interaction, SLED’s entire record of the April 8 exchange with Thornton amounted to a single sentence, presumably entered into the case file (.pdf) by special agent Austin Mills: “Thornton stated that he had provided pills to Sheriff Wright in the past.”
The same case file, however, showed Thornton changed his tune less than two weeks later. Sitting down under the proffer on April 21, 2025, with Mills and FBI Special Agents Justin Newsome and Erin Carlisle, he admitted to supplying Wright with brand-name hydrocodone painkillers over the previous eight to 10 years.
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He furthermore divulged that Wright paid cash, most recently $10 per pill, buying 20 to 30 pills at a time, up to twice a week. Thornton said the two made their exchanges at Thornton’s home on Police Club Road, at Piedmont Farm & Garden in Spartanburg and, on multiple occasions, in the Spartanburg County Sheriff’s Office (SCSO) parking lot.
“Thornton suspected that Wright also purchased pills from other people,” states a case file note summarizing the proffer interview, a recording of which SLED says it does not have. “Wright once gave Thornton a Chaplain’s Benevolence Fund check to pay Thornton’s light bill.”
Despite the detailed information Thornton provided to state and federal authorities, none of it resulted in a single federal charge against Wright or any of the other dealers or users Thornton admitted to doing business with.
As for the state investigation, it was quickly abandoned. S.C. attorney general Alan Wilson, a self-described “good friend” of Wright’s criminal defense attorney, former congressman Trey Gowdy, referred the case to first-term tenth circuit solicitor Micah Black.
Black declined to bring any state-level charges against Wright, despite noting in his declination letter that SLED had uncovered “overwhelming evidence.”
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RELATED | CHUCK WRIGHT LIED TO FBI, SLED, CASE-FILE TAPES REVEAL
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Instead, Wright was charged only at the federal level. He pleaded guilty in October 2025 to conspiracy to commit theft concerning programs receiving federal funds, conspiracy to commit wire fraud and obtaining controlled substances through misrepresentation.
Nine months later, a federal judge sentenced him to 41 months in prison, which he is now serving at FCI Lewisburg in Pennsylvania.
Two co-defendants went down with Wright, former SCSO chaplain Amos Durham and former code enforcement officer Lawson “LB” Watson. While critics argue that Durham’s role in enabling Wright’s abuse of a sheriff’s office benevolence fund, to the tune of roughly $90,000 warranted prison time, Watson was the only other defendant sentenced to federal prison in the case.
As of publishing, Watson is serving 16 months for collecting a county salary despite little to no documented work, according to federal prosecutors. Yet the limited recordings from SLED’s case file indicate Watson did, in fact, show up to work.
Write to Andrew Fancher at andy@fitsnews.com.
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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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