Court Opinion

ID: 9387513
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-04-18 13:02:32.3284+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:18:13.710188
License: Public Domain

NOTICE: This opinion is subject to modification resulting from motions for reconsideration under Supreme Court
Rule 27, the Court’s reconsideration, and editorial revisions by the Reporter of Decisions. The version of the
opinion published in the Advance Sheets for the Georgia Reports, designated as the “Final Copy,” will replace any
prior version on the Court’s website and docket. A bound volume of the Georgia Reports will contain the final and
official text of the opinion.
In the Supreme Court of Georgia

                                                    Decided: April 18, 2023

    S23Y0037. IN THE MATTER OF NATALIE SPIRES PAINE.

        PER CURIAM.

        This disciplinary matter relates to allegations made against

Natalie Spires Paine (State Bar No. 312524) related to her

involvement in a double-murder case in 2018 as the District

Attorney of the Augusta Judicial Circuit and as the lead prosecutor

in that case. The State Disciplinary Board filed a grievance on its

own motion, see Rule 4-203 (2), alleging that Paine violated Rules

3.4 (g) (using methods of obtaining evidence that violate legal rights

of opposing party or counsel); 4.2 (knowingly communicating with a

person represented by counsel); 8.1 (a) (knowingly making false

statements of material facts in connection with a disciplinary

matter); and 8.4 (a) (1) (violating or knowingly attempting to violate

rules, knowingly assisting or inducing another to do so, or doing so
through acts of another) of the Georgia Rules of Professional

Conduct found in Bar Rule 4-102 (d).1

      Special Master Patrick H. Head held an evidentiary hearing on

the matter and found that the State failed to prove that Paine

violated any rules and recommended that no discipline be imposed.

The Bar filed exceptions to, and requested review of, the Special

Master’s report and recommendation.                On review, the State

Disciplinary Review Board concluded that some of the Special

Master’s findings were clearly erroneous and that Paine violated

Rules 3.4 (g) and 8.1 (a). The Review Board recommended that a

      1
        Rule 3.4 says: A lawyer shall not . . . (g) use methods of obtaining
evidence that violate the legal rights of the opposing party or counsel.” Rule
4.2 (a) says: “A lawyer who is representing a client in a matter shall not
communicate about the subject of the representation with a person the lawyer
knows to be represented by another lawyer in the matter, unless the lawyer
has the consent of the other lawyer or is authorized to do so by law or court
order.” Rule 8.1 says: “An applicant for admission to the bar, or a lawyer in
connection with a bar admission application or in connection with a
disciplinary matter, shall not: (a) knowingly make a false statement of
material fact.” And Rule 8.4 (a) says: “It shall be a violation of the Georgia
Rules of Professional Conduct for a lawyer to: (1) violate or knowingly attempt
to violate the Georgia Rules of Professional Conduct, knowingly assist or
induce another to do so, or do so through the acts of another.”
      The maximum penalty for a violation of Rules 3.4 (g), 4.2, and 8.1 is
disbarment. Rule 8.4 provides that “[t]he maximum penalty for a violation of
Rule 8.4 (a) (1) is the maximum penalty for the specific Rule violated.”
                                           2
six-month suspension be imposed.

     As explained below, we reject the Review Board’s conclusions,

which failed to give appropriate deference to the Special Master’s

findings. Applying the appropriate standard of review ourselves, we

defer to the Special Master’s fact-findings—which are not clearly

erroneous—and we agree with the Special Master that no discipline

is warranted.

     1. Evidence Presented at the Hearing Before the Special Master

     The Bar has the burden of proving each element of alleged rule

violations by clear and convincing evidence. See Bar Rule 4-221.2.

At the hearing before the Special Master, the following evidence was

presented.

     Paine testified as follows. She was the lead prosecutor in a case

against William Krepps, Vaughn Verdi, and another defendant for

the murder of two men. Lieutenant Lucas Grant from the Richmond

County Sheriff’s Office was the lead investigator. On February 27,

2018, Krepps and Verdi were transported from the jail to the

Richmond County Sheriff Office’s Criminal Investigation Division

                                    3
(“CID”). Lt. Grant told Paine that morning that the men were going

to be transported. He asked Paine to tell the defendants’ lawyers

about their transportation to the CID and to go to the CID herself,

both of which she did.2

      While at the CID, both defendants met with their attorneys

privately in a CID interview room. Paine knew about Krepps’s

meeting with his attorney because at some point during the meeting,

she knocked on the door and “stuck [her] head in the interview room”

to speak to the attorney.          Both attorney-client meetings were

recorded “by audio and visual means,” and the recordings were

included within the evidence provided to the DA’s office by the

Sheriff’s Office, which Paine burned onto 107 compact discs (CDs).

She then distributed copies of the CDs to the parties. She did not,

      2  In her answer to the formal complaint, Paine admitted that Krepps’s
attorney told her that there was no need to move Krepps to the CID because
he did not want to talk with law enforcement. Before the special master, Paine
testified that she did not remember this conversation. However, after she was
shown her answer to the formal complaint, she acknowledged the admission.
As we explain in footnote 5 below, the Review Board pointed to this
inconsistency in concluding that Paine had made a false statement of material
fact, even though this statement was not the basis for the violation of Rule 8.1
alleged in the formal complaint (Count III), and the Special Master expressly
found that this inconsistency had “little evidentiary value.”
                                           4
however, watch the CDs before distributing them. To the contrary,

she did not know that recordings of the attorney-client meetings

were on the CDs until Verdi filed on September 21 a motion to,

among other things, dismiss the indictment based on the recording

of his private attorney-client conversation, at which point members

of the media began calling Paine.3

     As to whether she knew that interviews that were held in the

CID were being recorded, Paine testified as follows. It was her

understanding that it was the “common procedure” to record “all the

conversations in the CID rooms.” She had viewed “thousands of

interviews” recorded in the CID interview rooms, and each of those

recordings “starts before the person walks into the room, and it

doesn’t end until after the person has been led out of the room.” She

had also previously watched interrogations conducted in the CID

interview rooms on a live monitor at the CID.            She assumed

everyone knew the CID interview rooms were recorded and that if

     3  The trial court denied the motion to dismiss, but suppressed the
attorney-client recordings, which Paine agreed was appropriate.
                                         5
attorneys wanted to have a private conversation with their clients,

“they would indicate that or that the Sheriff’s Office would tell them,

you know, we’re recording.” At the time Krepps and Verdi met with

their attorneys in the interview rooms, Paine did not know that the

software used to make the recordings did not have the ability to

mute the recording. After Paine discovered that privileged attorney-

client conversations had been recorded, she demanded that a new

recording system be installed to prevent that from happening again,

and she spent $40,000 of the DA’s budget for the new system.

     Lt. Grant testified as follows. He instructed that Krepps and

Verdi be brought to the CID on February 27, and Paine did not direct

or influence that decision. In fact, if Paine had told him not to

transport Krepps, he “still would’ve transported [the defendant]”

because Paine was “not [his] boss.” When attorneys met with clients

in the CID rooms, the rooms were “visually monitor[ed], only

visually, [to ensure that] no contraband is being passed by the

attorney or the defendant is not trying to harm the attorney or vice

versa.” There was not a way to stop the audio recording of the CID

                                     6
interview rooms while still visually recording the room, but Lt.

Grant believed that the Sheriff’s Office had a protocol in place to

ensure that any privileged communications that were recorded were

deleted—but they obviously “dropped the ball” as to Krepps’s and

Verdi’s recordings.

     Finally, Krepps’s attorney testified that before she met with

Krepps in the CID interview room, she asked Lt. Grant if the

meeting was being recorded, “and he motioned to somebody . . . to

cut the audio,” so the attorney “made the assumption that we were

being visually watched, but not listened to.”

     The Bar’s complaint alleged four counts of rule violations based

on the conduct described above.     We address each count below,

explaining the allegation, as well as the relevant findings and

conclusions of the Special Master and of the Review Board.

     2. Count I

     Count I of the complaint alleged that Paine violated Rule 3.4

(g), which prohibits a lawyer from “us[ing] methods of obtaining

evidence that violate the legal rights of the opposing party or

                                    7
counsel,” when she “1) participated in the recording of the . . .

meeting[s]; 2) obtained evidence in violation of the law and the

United States and Georgia Constitutions; 3) obtained the recordings

of the . . . meeting[s]; 4) distributed the recordings of the . . .

meeting[s] . . . to all counsel in the Case; and 5) prosecuted [the co-

defendants] using evidence that [she] knew or should have known

had been obtained in violation of the law and the United States and

Georgia Constitutions.”

     As to Count 1, the Special Master found that although Paine

and defense counsel “were aware that the interview rooms at CID

were recorded, both audio and video,” they were “also under the

mistaken belief that the audio could be stopped.”         The Special

Master also found that “[t]here was no evidence presented that

[Paine] ‘invited criminal defense counsel to meet with their clients

in a CID interview room’” and “nothing in the evidence to suggest

that [Paine] knew attorney-client conversations were being

recorded.” As to the CDs containing the meeting recordings, the

Special Master found that Paine “did not look at any of the CDs to

                                     8
review the content, and was not aware that any of the CDs contained

the audio recordings of the attorney-client conversations.”       The

Special Master further explained that although Paine copied and

distributed the recordings, “there is nothing in the rule that

prohibits the distribution of illegally obtained evidence,” and “[e]ven

if there were, the special master finds from the evidence that [Paine]

did not knowingly do so” since she was “not aware that she was

distributing the conversations of the attorneys with their clients.”

The Special Master also found that “[t]here was no evidence

presented that [Paine] ever used any unlawfully or illegally

obtained evidence.” (Emphasis in original.)      Finally, the Special

Master found that Paine, “though under no obligation to do so under

Rule 3.4 (g), immediately took steps to ensure no future attorney-

client conversations would be recorded” once she learned of the

recordings. Based on these findings, the Special Master concluded

that the Bar failed to prove that Paine violated Rule 3.4.

     The Review Board concluded that the Special Master’s finding

that “[t]here is nothing in the evidence to suggest that [Paine] knew

                                     9
attorney-client conversations were being recorded” was “clearly

erroneous as there was evidence upon which findings of fact could

have been drawn to support a violation.” The Review Board

concluded that Paine “knew all conversations in the CID interview

room were uniformly and consistently recorded” and she knew that

Krepps met with his attorney in a CID interview room. Thus, the

Review Board concluded that Paine “had a duty to assure that the

[attorney-client meetings] were not part of any CDs delivered to the

parties,” but failed to do so.

     3. Count II

     Count II alleged that Paine violated Rule 4.2, which forbids a

lawyer from “communicat[ing] about the subject matter of [a]

representation with a person the lawyer knows to be represented by

another lawyer in the matter, unless the lawyer has the consent of

the other lawyer or is authorized to do so by law or court order,”

when she “continued interrogations of [the co-defendants] after

knowing that each was represented by counsel and when she

continued prosecuting [the co-defendants] using testimony obtained

                                   10
in the interrogations.”

     The Special Master concluded that “[n]o evidence; none; zero;

not even one scintilla of evidence was presented to support the

allegation” of Count II that Paine violated Rule 4.2. The Review

Board agreed with the Special Master that the Bar did not submit

any evidence in support of this claim.

     4. Count III

     Count III alleged that Paine violated Rule 8.1 (a), which

prohibits a lawyer from “knowingly mak[ing] a false statement of

material fact” “in connection with a disciplinary matter,” when she

“stated in a grievance response dated May 20, 2019, that she had no

knowledge of the recordings of privileged conversations until the

media started calling on September 28, 2018, when in fact [she] was

aware of the recordings prior to [that date],” and when she “stated,

through counsel, in a letter to . . . the State Disciplinary Board, dated

November 4, 2019, that [she] was not involved in any manner with

the transport of [the defendants] to [the sheriff’s office], when in fact,

                                      11
[she] had prior knowledge of the transport and its purpose.”4

      The Special Master found that although Paine testified that

she had “reviewed ‘thousands of hours of interviews’ at CID, there

was no evidence presented by the State Bar that any of those

      4 The Bar’s formal complaint does not quote either of the allegedly false
statements, but Paine’s May 20 grievance response and November 4 letter to
the State Disciplinary Board were introduced at the hearing before the Special
Master. In the May 20 response, Paine stated that she was surprised when
she arrived at a superior court hearing about these recordings in the criminal
case and was:
      interrogated as if I had engaged in some sort of conspiracy to trick
      the defendants into talking to their lawyers on camera so that I
      could surreptitiously record them talking. What they thought I
      possibly had to gain from this is still a mystery. I had no
      knowledge about the existence of the recordings or the camera
      system’s operation when the interviews [were conducted] in
      February 2018. . . . I didn’t know the recording(s) existed until the
      media started calling on September 28, 2018.
At the hearing before the Special Master, Paine was questioned about her
statement, “I had no knowledge about the existence of the recordings or the
camera system’s operation when the interviews [were conducted] in February.”
In the November 4 response, Paine stated through counsel:
      District Attorney Paine was not a driving force, or any force in the
      law enforcement officer’s decision to transport/speak with any of
      these represented individuals. District Attorney Paine was not
      involved, in any manner, with this unilateral law enforcement
      officer’s conduct.
And later in the response, she stated:
      As explained above, District Attorney Paine had absolutely
      nothing to do with the transport or planned interrogation of these
      represented parties as same was facilitated, orchestrated, initiated
      and executed by law enforcement before District Attorney Paine
      became aware of the issue.
Paine was not questioned about any statements from the November 4 letter
response at the hearing before the Special Master.
                                          12
interviews were between an attorney and a client” and that “[t]he

State Bar has presented no evidence to refute [Paine’s] claim

regarding her lack of knowledge of the attorney-client conversations

being recorded.” (Emphasis in original.) The Special Master further

found that “the evidence of [Paine’s] conduct after learning that the

attorney-client conversations had been recorded[] is consistent with

and supportive of her testimony; she did not previously know

attorney-client conversations were being recorded.”

     As to the second allegedly false statement, the Special Master

found that despite Paine’s “mere knowledge of the transport . . . the

evidence presented through the testimony of [Paine] and Lt. Grant

is clear and convincing that [Paine] had no involvement in the

transportation of the defendants from the jail to the CID.” The

Special Master also credited Lt. Grant’s testimony that he would

have transported the defendants even if Paine told him not to.

Therefore, the Special Master found that Paine’s “statements in

these two instances were in fact true, based upon the evidence

                                    13
presented.”5

      The Review Board concluded that “there are facts in the record

that support a finding of a violation of 8.1 (a) and therefore finds the

determination by the Special Master that there were no such facts

is clearly erroneous.” Specifically, the Review Board found that

because Paine reviewed “thousands of hours” of recorded CID

interviews and knew that Krepps was taken to CID and met with

Krepps’s attorney in the interview room, Paine’s statement that she

was unaware attorney-client conversations were recorded was false.

The Review Board did not appear to address the second allegedly

false statement.6

      5  The Special Master also noted the discrepancy between Paine’s
testimony that she did not remember Krepps’s attorney telling her that Krepps
did not want to make a statement and her admission that Krepps’s attorney
did tell her this. The Special Master, however, found “little evidentiary value
as to whether the conversation took place or not,” based on Lt. Grant’s
testimony that he would have transported Krepps regardless of what Paine
told him. The Review Board similarly noted this discrepancy and—with no
analysis—apparently found that the discrepancy supported a Rule 8.1 (a)
violation.

      6 The Review Board also noted that during the hearing, Paine testified
that finding the body of one of the murder victims was not important to the
prosecution, and that this testimony contradicted her acknowledgement before

                                         14
      5. Count IV

      Count IV alleged that Paine violated Rule 8.4 (a) (1), which

says that an attorney may not “violate or knowingly attempt to

violate the Georgia Rules of Professional Conduct, knowingly assist

or induce another to do so, or do so through the acts of another.” The

Bar alleged that Paine “attempted to violate” Rules 3.4 (g) and 4.2,

violated those rules through the acts of Lt. Grant, and “knowingly

assisted” or “induce[d]” Lt. Grant to violate those rules.

      The Special Master found that Paine did not violate Rule 3.4

(g) or Rule 4.2; that she did not attempt to violate those rules; and

that she did not assist Lt. Grant in recording attorney-client

conversations. The Special Master also stated that he “found no

evidence that Lt. Grant, or anyone else at the Richmond County

Sheriff’s Office was directed, encouraged, induced or asked by

[Paine] to perform any task on her behalf, including, but not limited

to the recording of any attorney conversation with their client.” The

the criminal trial court that finding the body was important. However, neither
of the statements alleged by the Bar to be violations of Rule 8.1 (a) related to
the importance of finding the victim’s body.
                                           15
Special Master further stated that “[t]here was no evidence that

[Paine] gave any direction to anyone at the Sheriff’s Office, including

Lt. Grant, to transport defendants to CID or to interview or attempt

to interview any of the defendants.”

     The Review Board agreed with the Special Master that the Bar

did not prove this count.7

     6. Paine’s Exceptions to Counts I and III

     Paine contends that the Review Board erred in rejecting as

clearly erroneous the Special Master’s findings that the Bar did not

meet its burden to prove that Paine violated Rules 3.4 (g) and 8.1 as

alleged in Counts I and III. Paine argues that the Review Board

“misquotes and contorts the credibility findings made by the Special

Master by truncating the complete finding.”

     7. The Bar’s Response to Paine’s Exceptions

     The Bar maintains that Paine violated Rules 3.4 (g) and 8.1 as

     7  Because the Special Master concluded there was no evidence to support
the alleged violations set forth in Counts II and IV, the Review Board agreed
with the Special Master’s conclusions, and the Bar took no exception to the
Review Board’s conclusions, we do not address these counts further.
                                          16
alleged in Counts I and III, and recommends that Paine receive a

minimum sanction of a public reprimand.

     As to Count I, the Bar argues that because Paine knew that

conversations in the CID rooms were recorded in their entirety and

that she knew that the defendants in this case were transported to

the CID to give statements, she must have known that the attorney-

client meetings at issue in this particular case were recorded. The

Bar further argues that Paine “caused” the attorneys to meet with

the defendants in the CID rooms because she told the attorneys

about the transportation of the defendants to the CID. It further

contends that she obtained the CDs with the meeting recordings and

made copies of them.

     As to Count III, the Bar argues that although Paine stated in

her grievance response that she had no knowledge of the recordings

of the privileged conversations in this case, Paine admitted that she

knew that all conversations in CID interrogation rooms were

recorded in their entirety.   And although Paine stated, through

counsel, that she was not involved in the transport of the defendants

                                    17
from the jail to the sheriff’s office in any manner, she admitted that

she told the attorneys that the defendants were being transported

to the CID.

     8. Analysis and Conclusion

     As an initial matter, we set out the proper standard of review

for our review of a Special Master’s fact-findings and credibility

determinations. “[B]ecause this Court recognizes that the special

master is in the best position to determine the witnesses’ credibility,

it generally defers to the factual findings and credibility

determinations made by the special master unless those findings or

determinations are clearly erroneous.” In the Matter of Eddings, 314

Ga. 409, 416 (877 SE2d 248) (2022).       See also In the Matter of

Braziel, 306 Ga. 385, 387 (830 SE2d 730) (2019) (deferring to the

Special Master’s factual findings because they were “supported by

the record, and we are not in a position to second-guess his

credibility determinations”).

     Bar Rule 4-216 (a)—which applies to cases that, like this one,

are initiated after July 1, 2018—provides, in relevant part, that

                                     18
“[t]he findings of fact made by a Special Master may be reversed if

the State Disciplinary Review Board finds them to be clearly

erroneous or manifestly in error.          Conclusions of law and

determinations of appropriate sanctions shall be reviewed de novo.”

We have recently explained and emphasized that the Review Board

must apply this standard to its review of a Special Master’s fact-

findings and credibility determinations. See In the Matter of Cook,

311 Ga. 206, 215 n.3 (857 SE2d 212) (2021) (explaining that current

Bar Rule 4-216 (a) “specifically limit[s] the Review Board’s ability to

set aside a special master’s factual findings to cases in which the

Review Board finds them to be clearly erroneous or manifestly in

error”).

     The application of the clearly erroneous standard is where the

Review Board started making missteps. The Review Board recited

this standard, but then misapplied it by ignoring findings from the

Special Master and by making its own findings inconsistent with the

Special Master’s findings, without explaining why the Special

Master’s findings were clearly erroneous. For example, the Review

                                     19
Board appropriately deferred to the Special Master’s finding that

Paine and Krepps’s attorney “were aware that the CID interview

rooms ‘were recorded, both audio and video,’” but then ignored the

very next finding made in the Special Master’s report: that Paine

and the attorney “were also under the mistaken belief that the audio

could be stopped.” Side-stepping this key finding, the Review Board

concluded that Paine had a duty to ensure “that the audio recording

was actually not running at the time the attorney-client

conversation took place.”

     Instead of engaging with the relevant factual and credibility

findings the Special Master made after personally hearing and

evaluating the testimony of Paine, Lt. Grant, and Krepps’s attorney,

the Review Board focused on the Special Master’s broad statements

that there “were no facts presented that [Paine] violated Count I”

and that there were “no facts to support” the allegation in Count III.

The Review Board then concluded that these findings were “clearly

erroneous” because “there was evidence upon which findings of fact

could have been drawn to support a violation” in Count I and “there

                                    20
are facts contained in the record that support a finding of a violation”

in Count III.    In other words, because there was at least some

evidence from which an inference could be drawn that would support

the allegations in Counts I and III that Paine violated Rules 3.4 (g)

and 8.1 (a), the Special Master’s statements that there were “no

facts” to support the violations set forth in Counts I and III were

clearly erroneous and the Special Master’s conclusions must

therefore be discarded.8

     We acknowledge that the Special Master may have been overly

broad in stating that there was no evidence to support Counts I and

III, because there was some evidence that could support them,

depending on the inferences and credibility determinations drawn

     8
       Of course, “some evidence” is not the proper legal standard the Review
Board should have applied. The following point illustrates why the proper
standard matters: even though there was some evidence that could have
supported an inference that Paine knew about the attorney-client recordings
made in this case, the key is that the Special Master did not draw that
inference based on the evidence presented, and instead credited Paine’s
testimony that she did not know that the privileged conversations were
recorded here. To satisfy the proper standard, the Review Board would have
had to explain why the permissible inferences the Special Master drew, and
the credibility determinations the Special Master was authorized to make,
were clearly erroneous. The Review Board did not do so here.
                                         21
from that evidence.    But the Special Master made the relevant

credibility determinations and rejected the very inferences the

Review Board seems to rely on to make its case, and the Review

Board’s rejection of the Special Master’s overly broad statements in

this regard did not give it license to then ignore the inferences the

Special Master drew and the specific factual findings the Special

Master made.

     As relevant to Counts I and III, the Special Master’s specific

findings—which the Review Board did not acknowledge—include

that Paine did not cause the defendants to be transported to CID

and did not invite their attorneys to meet them there; that she did

not participate in any recording of the attorney-client meetings; that

she was under the mistaken belief that the audio recording of the

CID interview rooms could be stopped; and that she was not aware

that any of the CDs contained audio recordings of the attorney-client

conversations when she burned and then distributed them. Given

the testimony and other evidence presented at the hearing, we

cannot say that those findings were clearly erroneous—and the

                                    22
Review Board has offered no basis for concluding that they were. As

such, the Review Board erred by not deferring to them. See Bar Rule

4-216 (a).

     Like the Review Board, the Bar appears to ignore some of the

Special Master’s findings in its briefing before this Court.

Specifically, the Bar fails to acknowledge that although the Special

Master found that Paine was “aware that the interview rooms at

CID were recorded, both audio and video,” the Special Master also

found that Paine was “under the mistaken belief that the audio

could be stopped” and credited Paine’s testimony that she did not

know that conversations between attorneys and clients were being

recorded. These findings demonstrate how Paine could know that

the rooms were generally recorded but not know that the privileged

conversations at issue in this case actually were recorded and were

thus copied onto the CDs. And in arguing that Paine caused the

defendants to meet with their attorneys in the CID rooms, the Bar

ignores the Special Master’s finding that Paine had no involvement

in—or influence over—the decision to transport the defendants from

                                   23
the jail to the CID and did not invite defense counsel to meet with

their clients in a CID interview room.

     Viewed properly, these findings made by the Special Master

are consistent and support his conclusions that Paine did not “use

methods of obtaining evidence that violate the legal rights of the

opposing party or counsel” in violation of Rule 3.4 (g) and that she

did not violate Rule 8.1 by stating that “she had no knowledge of the

recordings of privileged conversations until the media started

calling” and by stating that she was not involved in transporting the

defendants to the CID. The Bar’s decision to ignore such findings is

as inexplicable as the Review Board’s decision to replace the Special

Master’s factually supported findings with its own findings.

     Affording the proper level of deference to the Special Master’s

factual findings and credibility determinations, see In the Matter of

Eddings, 314 Ga. at 416, we agree with the Special Master that the

Bar did not prove by clear and convincing evidence that Paine

violated Rules 3.4 (g) (Count I) and 8.1 (a) (Count III). We therefore

reject the recommendation of the Review Board that a six-month

                                    24
suspension be imposed and the recommendation of the Bar that a

public reprimand be issued. See In the Matter of Lee, 301 Ga. 74,

78-79 (799 SE2d 766) (2017); In the Matter of Cleveland, 285 Ga.

527, 528 (678 SE2d 91) (2009). No discipline is imposed, and this

matter is dismissed.

     No discipline imposed and case dismissed. All the Justices
concur.

                                 25