Tennessee’s agriculture commissioner used his position to pressure the Tennessee Farm Bureau to cut ties with an agent after a personal dispute, a lawsuit filed in Weakley County alleges.
Bryant Rhodes, a Weakley County insurance agent, filed the lawsuit on July 15 alleging state Agriculture Commissioner Andy Holt, after an altercation at a land auction, pressured the Farm Bureau to cut ties with him.
“Holt, understanding his influence over (the) Farm Bureau as Commissioner of Agriculture… began to use this false story he created to pressure Farm Bureau into terminating Rhodes,” Ross Webster, Rhodes’s lawyer, alleges in the complaint…