City Council candidate charged with forgery day before election. What’s next if he wins?
A candidate for Warner Robins City Council who was arrested and charged with forgery on Monday, the day before a runoff election, faces further potential hurdles if he wins a seat on Tuesday.
Eric Michael Langston, a candidate for the city’s at-large Post 2 seat, was held briefly Monday at the Houston County jail before posting $5,000 bond after his arrest on first-degree forgery and false-statement-in-writing charges.
If convicted, Langston, who works at Robins Air Force Base, could be sentenced up to 15 years in prison on the forgery charge and between one and five years behind bars on the false-statement charge.
The allegations stem from an episode last month in which Langston, 36, is accused of presenting an “altered letter purported to have been prepared by the Georgia Department of Revenue which showed a zero balance for the accused’s tax balance, when the original letter showed a tax balance of $4,783.74,” according to the arrest warrant.
Specifics and details about how the matter came to light were not immediately clear, though the charges were believed to have been brought by the revenue department.
Langston told The Telegraph on Tuesday that the allegations are “based on some tax information” that, according to the revenue department, “appears to them to be forged.”
He said he had been advised by a lawyer not to say more.
“I can’t really talk about that whole process anymore,” Langston said.
Langston faces Charlie Bibb in the runoff election.
“If elected, I am going to pursue all legal avenues that are available to me to ensure that I’m exonerated from these alleged incidences and these charges that I face, and we’re gonna move this city forward together,” Langston said.
Should Langston lose the election, his case would proceed through the legal system as anyone else’s might, with a possible indictment by a grand jury.
Were he to win a Council seat, however, a likely next step following any indictment would, as required by law, involve the Houston County district attorney informing the governor’s office of the charges and sending along a copy of the formal charges.
The governor would then likely convene a three-person investigatory panel to determine whether Langston would be suspended pending the outcome of the charges.