Fact checking the ‘Call Wiley Nickel’ attack ads’ claims about NC candidate’s clients

A series of attack ads that have aired on TV in recent weeks claim that Wiley Nickel, a Democratic state senator and criminal defense attorney who is running for Congress, has represented people accused of crimes such as domestic abuse, rape, and child pornography.

The ads, paid for by the National Republican Congressional Committee, claim that Nickel has experience in defending people charged with committing assault, domestic abuse, and sex crimes including rape, selling child pornography and taking indecent liberties with a minor. The most recent ad, launched Tuesday, claims Nickel supports “defunding the police” and ending cash bail.

Nickel’s campaign has denied that he has taken cases involving rape, child pornography or other charges, and says the ads are a “nasty” attempt to mislead voters about the kind of legal work Nickel has done since launching his Cary-based law firm in 2011.

The News & Observer reached out to both the Nickel campaign and the NRCC to determine the basis and truthfulness of the several claims made in the three ads that have aired in September.

A review of the website for Nickel’s law firm, the main source cited by the NRCC, shows that the law firm defends against many of the charges brought up in the ads, but that many of those cases are handled by other attorneys at the firm, something not mentioned in the ads.

Ads tie law firm’s business to Nickel

The first ad launched in the 13th Congressional District, where Nickel faces Republican Bo Hines in a close race that both parties view as a top target in their efforts to control the U.S. House of Representatives, claims that Nickel has experience taking cases involving domestic abuse, selling child pornography, and removal from a sex offender registry.

“Have you been arrested for beating your wife? Call Wiley Nickel,” a narrator says in the ad, as upbeat music plays in the background and a large image of Nickel pops up on the screen.

A second ad, launched on Sept. 20, claims that Nickel has also taken cases involving assault, even on a police officer, and possession of marijuana and other drugs.

“Assault and battery? Even if you punched a cop? Wiley Nickel will make those charges stop,” a narrator says before referring viewers to wileyforcriminals.com, a website set up by the NRCC to show “a complete list of Wiley’s services.”

The website contains multiple screenshots from the website of Nickel & Granados, PLLC, the law firm Nickel launched more than 10 years ago, which now employs at least four attorneys and three legal assistants. One of those attorneys is Lindsey Granados, a criminal defense lawyer who joined the firm in 2020 and became a partner in July.

The NRCC points to many of those screenshots to substantiate its claims about the kinds of cases that Nickel takes. But screenshots of multiple pages on the law firm’s website, advertising that it defends against charges such as rape and child pornography, advise potential clients to contact Granados, not Nickel — something that isn’t mentioned in the TV ads, which claim that Nickel himself takes these kinds of cases.

Granados is also mentioned as the attorney people should contact if they are charged with statutory sex offenses, statutory rape of a person under 15 years of age, or if they want to petition to be removed from a sex offender registry.

Also listed under the firm’s “practice areas” are drug charges and domestic violence, but these pages don’t mention a specific attorney who potential clients can contact.

In an email, the Nickel campaign told The N&O that Nickel had never defended charges such as rape, child pornography, indecent liberties with a minor, and had never taken a case involving sex offender registry removal. Asked what kinds of cases Nickel does take, the campaign said his practice areas were low-level offenses and misdemeanors, as well as traffic violations and expungements.

On the law firm’s website, Nickel’s bio says he “devotes the majority of his practice to the areas of criminal law, expungements, traffic tickets and DMV issues.”

The bio for Granados mentions that when she joined the firm in 2020, she expanded its areas of representation to include “high-level felonies” such as drug offenses and drug trafficking, as well as “sex offenses, felony hit & run, habitual felon offenses, felony domestic violence offenses and child abuse offenses, federal crimes, sex offender registry termination petitions, just to name a few.”

Responding to the ads, Abby May, Nickel’s campaign manager, said the claims made by the NRCC were “patently false, in bad faith, and a blatant attempt to mislead North Carolinians.”

“Wiley Nickel is proud of his record of standing with law enforcement and pushing for a fair criminal justice system, and voters will see right through this desperate smear,” she added.

Nickel’s clients

Asked if the NRCC had any sources to show that Nickel had personally taken cases of the kind mentioned in the ads, a spokesperson replied with multiple screenshots from the law firm’s website, including some of pages that no longer appear on the website, which the NRCC said it had accessed earlier this summer.

The NRCC provided links to archived versions of those pages that can still be accessed through the Internet Archive.

For charges such as drug charges, sex crimes including rape, and child pornography, the NRCC said “Nickel and Granados, PLLC” advertised it took such cases, and referred The N&O to the pages on the law firm’s website that either didn’t mention an attorney who could be contacted, or if it did, mentioned Granados.

For other charges mentioned in the ads, including assault and domestic abuse, the NRCC provided sources that showed that the law firm specifically advertised or mentioned Nickel taking those cases.

One of those sources is a screenshot of an archived page from the firm’s website, accessed through the Internet Archive, which describes Nickel as a “Raleigh, NC assault lawyer” and states that the “Law Offices of Wiley Nickel” has experience helping people looking for a domestic violence lawyer in Wake County.

The section about domestic violence continues: “Wiley Nickel is a former prosecutor and will put that experience to work as we strive to keep you out of prison, avoid fines and keep your record clean. That is our promise to you. Our goal is to erase all records of the charge if possible.”

The NRCC also pointed to another archived page which mentions a number of assault charges the firm defends against, one of which is “assaulting a police officer or government official.”

In a statement, NRCC spokesperson Camille Gallo said: “If Wiley Nickel, a self-described ‘domestic abuse lawyer,’ is worked up about North Carolinians knowing he represents rapists, wife-beaters and child porn distributors, then he should shut down his law firm that represents rapists, wife-beaters and child porn distributors.”

After going through the archived pages that mention assault cases, The N&O asked Nickel’s campaign if the pages had been moved, archived, or removed.

In response, the campaign said the pages in question were no longer available on the law firm’s website because the site was renovated after Granados joined the firm as a partner this summer.

Addressing the pages that described Nickel as an “assault lawyer,” the campaign said Nickel has taken assault cases, including some he was assigned when he was included in a list of court-appointed attorneys. The campaign also said Nickel has represented victims of domestic violence, and has helped clients obtain domestic violence protection orders.

Police funding claims

A third ad, which the NRCC released Tuesday, claims that Nickel voted against legislation to fund law enforcement and supports ending cash bail.

The bill cited in the ad, Senate Bill 105, is the 628-page state budget that was passed and signed into law by Gov. Roy Cooper in November 2021.

In response, the Nickel campaign said Nickel had voted against the budget in opposition to a provision that would gradually phase out the state’s corporate income tax rate over six years, which the campaign said would “cripple North Carolina’s ability to fund critical public safety programs for years to come.”

“Here’s the truth: I’ve never voted to defund the police, and I never will,” Nickel said in a statement.

Nickel’s campaign pointed to a number of bills he has supported, including a bill to provide all state employees, including law enforcement officers, with eight weeks of parental leave, and a bill to provide local police officers with a one-time “appreciation and retention bonus” for their service during the pandemic. The campaign also pointed to N.C. Police Benevolent Association’s endorsement of his state Senate campaigns in 2018 and 2020, as proof of his “work with law enforcement.”

The NRCC ad also cites an August story in the Washington Free Beacon, which mentions Nickel’s signing of a pledge by a group called Future Fund Now, in 2019.

The pledge no longer shows up on the group’s website, but an archived version from November 2019 shows Nickel as one of 748 candidates and elected officials from across the country who signed the pledge.

At the bottom of the page, the group lists seven broad goals candidates were pledging to achieve in their states by 2030 or sooner. None of the goals mention separate policies the group would later promote on its website, including examining and reallocating funding for police, or ending cash bail.

Although the pledge Nickel signed did not say anything about cash bail, Nickel did tell Indy Week in October 2020 that cash bail should be eliminated.

For more North Carolina government and politics news, listen to the Under the Dome politics podcast from The News & Observer and the NC Insider. You can find it at https://campsite.bio/underthedome or wherever you get your podcasts.