West Virginia daily

The U.S. attorney for southern West Virginia abruptly left office this summer after the Justice Department began investigating e-mails in which he offered to secretly assist a candidate for county prosecutor, a legislative audit released Sunday shows.

"Let me try to steer some contributions your way (gently) and perhaps use a family member with a different last name to make my contribution," Karl K. "Kasey" Warner wrote in one July 2003 e-mail to the candidate, Bill Charnock, according to the audit.

Auditors found the series of e-mails on a laptop computer issued to Charnock while he was head of the state-funded Prosecuting Attorneys Institute. Charnock, 36, was the institute's executive director from 1999 until late 2004, when he was elected as Kanawha County's prosecuting attorney.

The audit also said Charnock had used taxpayer-funded resources, including staff, to run his 2004 election bid, and had done the same during prior political campaigns of two family members.

Auditors had forwarded the e-mails to the Justice Department, which replied July 5 that it was opening a formal investigation, the auditors' report said.

Neither Warner nor the department has explained his sudden exit, and Warner did not return phone messages left at his home Sunday seeking comment. Warner had made election fraud a target of his office after President Bush appointed him chief prosecutor for the district in 2001.

Legislative Auditor Aaron Allred told legislators Sunday that his office had also sent its findings to the State Police, the state Ethics Commission and the Secretary of State's office, which regulates state elections.

Besides possible ethics and campaign finance violations, the findings reflect possible evidence of criminal fraud and embezzlement charges, Allred told lawmakers.

Last year, Charnock blamed partisan politics when auditors said he had misused Justice Department grants awarded the institute, spending the money assisting county prosecutions, but not on the types of cases for which the grants were intended.

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