Just one day after Joey Gardner filed a whistleblower lawsuit against the DMV, Commissioner George Tatum has resigned. Background on the lawsuit is here:


An assistant director at the N.C. Division of Motor Vehicles filed a whistleblower lawsuit in state court today, saying he is being retaliated against after he reported that DMV Commissioner George Tatum sought to help a friend get a vintage truck title for a replica.

Shortly after making the allegation last month in a DMV memo, Joey Gardner was interviewed about it by two internal affairs officers. Later that day, two of Gardner’s superiors told him he was suspended with pay and ordered to undergo a psychological evaluation. They took his badge, gun and keys to his state car.


Gardner is ably represented by my friend Michael Byrne, who noted that the forced psychiatric evaluation “reminds one more of the Soviet Union than of North Carolina.”