RALEIGH, N.C. — Wake County District Attorney Lorrin Freeman announced Thursday her office has closed its investigation into North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein, over an allegedly false campaign ad for which her office was preparing to indict the high-profile Democratic official last year.
Freeman’s announcement came a day after a federal appeals court issued a ruling in favor of Stein’s campaign, which has argued since July that the 1931 state law his campaign supposedly violated runs afoul of the First Amendment’s protections for political speech, and should be found unconstitutional.
A three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said in a unanimous ruling Wednesday that the obscure statute was likely unconstitutional. The ruling keeps in place a temporary injunction granted by the appellate court in August, and means that for the time being, prosecutors are still blocked from charging Stein with violating the law.
