Mobile County License Commissioner Kim Hastie and her husband were set to head to federal court for the first phase of a lengthy criminal case, opening with a tax evasion charge just days after one of Hastie’s key defense attorneys withdrew from the case entirely.
The attorney stepped aside from the proceedings after a federal judge ruled prosecutors could call him as a witness, given his past communications with Hastie regarding use of a government account. Court records show the attorney had previously advised Hastie in writing that she should not use taxpayer funds the way prosecutors allege she did, a letter jurors are expected to see during trial.
Hastie faces 18 total criminal counts spanning multiple alleged schemes. The trial opening this week covers a single tax evasion count tied to unreported income; a separate trial covering the remaining 17 counts was scheduled for late May. The same federal judge in the U.S. District Court in Mobile is set to preside over both proceedings.
Hastie and her husband were indicted earlier this year on allegations that they failed to report more than $58,000 in income to the IRS, stemming from land brokering and timber-clearing work. Additional charges filed in January accused Hastie of orchestrating a scheme to funnel thousands of residents’ email addresses, obtained through her county office, to a political consulting firm working for a 2013 Mobile mayoral campaign.
The consulting firm’s chief executive has maintained that the campaign’s operations were entirely proper. Still, two Mobile residents filed a federal lawsuit days before the trial’s start, alleging Hastie and the consulting firm violated their privacy rights by releasing their email addresses without consent. The suit seeks tens of millions of dollars in damages and claims Hastie provided the firm with tens of thousands of email addresses gathered through her office.
Hastie’s remaining defense team declined to comment on the civil lawsuit, saying it had no bearing on the criminal proceedings set to begin. The consulting firm’s leader disputed the lawsuit’s allegations, saying the campaign operated transparently and within the rules throughout.
Separately, Hastie was charged last fall with improperly using taxpayer money in connection with a proposal to merge the county’s license and revenue commission offices, a change that would have resulted in a pay raise for her if approved. Prosecutors allege she used a government account to pay a consulting firm to help draft legislation supporting the merger. A deputy commissioner in Hastie’s office also faces separate fraud-related charges tied to the office’s operations.
The case has drawn significant attention in Mobile County as it moves through multiple phases of pretrial motions, witness disputes and now trial, with the broader set of charges still to be litigated in the weeks following the opening proceeding.