That’s my personal opinion.
Don’t know what else happens when you, the State Frickin’ Auditor, have a preliminary finding in January that says the out-going governor’s wife is being overpaid by a state university controlled by appointees of the governor, yet you sit on that finding for 60 days until you kill the audit, testifying to a federal grand jury that the reason you do so was that the feds were investigating same, in direct contradiction to what the state investigator on the case says happened.
Oh, and bonus hint, there is no “integrity of the Office of the State Auditor” left to protect.
The died in March, along with the state investigation in Mary Easley’s NCSU job.