Tag: Butler County

What the 1.1 Million Award to Kimberly Edelstein Means: A first-of-its-kind case in Butler County that celebrates individual Constitutional protections

I think we’ll find, as our society matures and grows into an understanding of its place in the universe as an up-and-coming power that is recognized as such, that the American Constitution is one of the greatest works of philosophy ever produced on earth or any place else. That is why I tend to love judges and the idea of law enforcement. Not necessarily law enforcement itself, especially once human frailties are introduced that are tied to social predilections rooted in collectivist causes, but the essential beauty of the Bill of Rights and what the concept protects in the realm of human imagination and its potential as a fully developed individual. That’s why this case where the former Butler County magistrate Kimberly Edelstein is painful because everything is wrong with the struggles of life everywhere. Judges in our culture are the ultimate philosophers in that they adhere circumstances to the application of Constitutional principles, which isn’t easy when the demands of collectivism are applied, ancient beliefs in protection within the herd (civic memberships, fellowship on a bowling team, back-slapping at the company picnic) and the conflict with the development of individual integrity. And no matter how the judgment that a jury found against Judge Greg Stephens is viewed, the failure has not been captured by any post-court analysis, which is a shame. Representing herself, Kimberly Edelstein made a successful argument to a jury over a two-week trial starting in January of 2023 and ending early in February, where they awarded her 1.1 million dollars for religious discrimination where Stephens behaved in a retaliatory manner when Edelstein requested eight days off for Jewish holidays. And from there, their relationship deteriorated, the application of law and order in Butler County, Ohio, was compromised, and over what, religious differences? 

By the time the dust settles on this case, it will likely cost the taxpayers over 3 million dollars. And when you look at the law firms who have been involved, it’s clear that they are the only ones benefiting. The way the legal community operates in the background of all this money reminds me of a case I was involved in years ago with Todd Portune, who would eventually become one of the county commissioners of Hamilton County. But in a serious legal matter that I was involved in, he was an attorney who was also on the Cincinnati City Council, and he was representing both the aggressive party and the victim simultaneously. When I confronted him about this, he simply explained to me that was how it was. Those were the rules of the game. And that is the case in this Butler County legal case; when it wondered why the media puts a spin on the story that doesn’t capture the real essence of it, that’s because they all have the same legal firms working in the background. The interpretation of the law, as I stated, is so beautifully captured in our American Constitution, specifically in our Bill of Rights is not the same as the feeble interpretation that comes to the minds of the compromised people who have not evolved well as individuals and find corruption at the heart of their decision making. And that’s what’s unfortunate with this case between Judge Stephens and Kimberly Edelstein. Instead of them using their religious faiths as a background of individual development to uphold the excellent standards of Constitutional preservation, it has turned into a religious dispute that a couple of kids in the first grade might have over baseball cards. Stephens, a former pastor and apparently a very devout Christian, found the Jewish holidays not conducive to the kind of bench he wanted to run, and peer pressure with those involved added their opinions to the matter into what became a “disruptive” work environment. And after Edelstein requested her Jewish holidays off for observance, she was terminated just a few days thereafter, leading to this court case six years later. 

When I hear numbers like 1.1 million dollars, it sounds like a lot of money. And there are disputes within Butler County, especially the prosecutor’s office, that want a redo. They want to rob the jury opinion away from the award because it’s an embarrassing loss for them. Kimberly already successfully argued the case; Stephens was found guilty in the matter, and it’s unusual in the audacity of it because usually, people don’t defend themselves the way the former magistrate did in this case, but the legal parameters are quite clear. A jury of her peers found that Kimberly Edelstein was improperly terminated, her own Constitutional protections were violated, which any judge in the world should have known better, and it harmed her for further employment. When you study as a magistrate, your employment options are sort of limited to civil service. It’s not like the next job is right around the corner. It tends to be a very specific field with limited employment opportunities. So taking a stand based on Constitutional foundations is risky. But I would say that our society is better for it. The case law in this situation should serve as a warning on how to behave in the office. If people need to take time off for religious observance, that’s one of their rights. Manage your subordinates appropriately and be as fair as possible in the process. That’s basic management 101. But don’t use power and position, then peer pressure from the local lodge to attempt to undo an award from a jury. When a mistake is made, admit to it and move on. 

Kimberly Edelstein has lost a significant portion of her life and income to this Constitutional stand, so if you divide up the money awarded to her by the amount, it’s not very much money for the six years she has been fighting it. I will never understand religious disputes. I have read most of the major religious positions worldwide, and there isn’t much to indicate that religions should be at war in their texts. In all their cases, the religious texts attempt to elevate the mind by reading them to more significant concepts of existence. They should never decline in value to an argument over work holidays. An individual obtaining spiritual development, no matter how they get there, makes for a better employee in the workplace. Not one that has to pick between spiritual enlightenment and an oppressive boss that has the ability to control your paycheck. And among judges in the legal community, this basic level of sophistication should be part of the formula before they ever put on a robe for court. Such silly disputes should never occur, and if they did, everyone should be learning a hard lesson here. The real cost to taxpayers is in the mismanagement of the employees and the burden that parasitic lawyers apply in the background. That is the essence of this case. Mistakes by public employees, such as judges, and disputes over the merits of religion, especially one with common root sources, only feed the lawyers who influence everything in the background. And it took guts for Kimberly Edelstein to represent herself, to not further feed the legal system that is rigged against the taxpayers and the Constitution, and to win. All judges and prosecutors should be celebrating such an action because it brings the purity of law and order to Butler County for the good of everyone. But the anger that has formed in the wake comes over the ability of social groups, peer pressure application of collectivism against individuals such as Kimberly Edelstein, to apply free will to a living life. And behind that assumption is a very sinister position that is as anti-Constitution as an example could be found anywhere. This is the real cost of a case like this and a warning to all applications of a society that seeks law, order, and fairness for individuals, not a legal community that is blowing millions and millions of taxpayer dollars to preserve a system of corruption that is just behind the curtain of civic duty. 

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

I Don’t Want Any Part of “The Club”: If Butler County Republicans aren’t serving the taxpayers, then they are serving corruption

Since the very corrupt prosecution of Roger Reynolds in Butler County, I have had more than a few people trying to rationalize it to me, “that the club likes musical chairs,” meaning they want a change in blood. And the sleight of hand that is going on with assigning Joe Statzer to the auditor role as a “temporary” assignment with a wink and a nod indication that after a short time, the Butler County Commissioners will just make that appointment permanent, is the kind of behavior that people have grown sick of. The media reporting on the matter made it quite obvious what was going on. The establishment types, I would go as far as to call them RINOs, lost now that Trump isn’t in the White House, are fighting for power and control. They don’t want people like Roger Reynolds looking through their books, and they have old scores to settle that go back to the David Kern days. It’s the kind of disgusting power people are afraid of in Congress presently, with the debate to not vote for Kevin McCarthy for Speaker of the House. People don’t trust these establishment politicians; in this case, I know most of them personally. They don’t see themselves as dangerous; they think of themselves as good people. But like the kind of horrible things we have seen come from abuse of power on the national level, we have certainly seen it applied to Roger Reynolds and to prevent Nancy Nix from being appointed that job by the Butler County Republican Party to keep the continuity of some very good work done at the auditor level, and rearranging the chairs that fit the party, not the voters who are supposed to be in charge. And people keep talking to me about this “club” idea as if it should matter to me. So let me just say I don’t work with politics to be part of the Club, to be invited to all the VIP events. I do it because I want to see good government in my town and for people to get what they expect for their taxpayer dollars. I personally like Joe, and I like the people around Joe, but he’s Sheriff Jones’ direct guy. It was Jones who wanted to push Roger Reynolds from his auditor’s office for all kinds of reasons, so this notion that two commissioners voted to appoint Joe Statzer as auditor of Butler County with a wink and a nod of making it a permanent position is not a good thing. 

Out of the three Butler County Commissioners who voted for Joe to step into that auditor role, two of them are what I’d consider hard Democrats, just as I consider Sheriff Jones a Democrat, a big union slug that is too expensive, and love to use power and force to intimidate political rivals into submission. And that kind of stuff works for people who want to be in the Republican Party “Club.” I am aware that people are only nice to me at social events because they’d like to invite me into the Club to have some control over my behavior. They certainly aren’t nice to me because they like me. I’ve been in business for many decades now and have dealt with a lot sharper tacks in the box than local politicians. Even national politicians. There are smart people out in the world, and these guys are not among them. I have sometimes played along because that’s what you do in all business meetings. You look for common ground and focus on that to build relationships. It’s my hope that those relationships end up working out well for the taxpayers, so it’s worth doing. But sucking up just to be in some stupid club, no thanks. I don’t need or want more friends, and I certainly would never put myself in a position to get a call late at night telling me how to think or feel so I could remain a member of a “club.” And it’s the “club” mentality that the commissioners were clearly protecting with the appointment of Joe Statzer to the auditor job. Only TC Rogers voted against Joe’s appointment; he understands what’s happening. The other two, Cindy Carpenter, might as well be the belt holding up Sheriff Jones’ pants, voted to protect the “club.” Take that belt away, and the Sheriff’s pants fall right off. And Don Dixon was the other one. Everyone keeps telling me what a great guy Don is as if I didn’t know him. As I say all the time, I love all Republicans until they aren’t. And for those who decide they are Republican all of a sudden, I welcome them. But it must be remembered that Democrats who become Republicans always have some Democrat still in them, and that is certainly the case with Don Dixon, who was a Democrat until 2000 when he switched parties during a time when it was obvious how things were going in Butler County, Ohio politically. 

I’ve known the Dixon family for a very long time. I see Don here and there, and I think he’s a pretty good guy. I don’t rush over to shake his hand for many reasons. I’ll always think of him as the guy who cost me the championship in the Soap Box Derby race in Hamilton, Ohio, in 1979, when I was around 10 or 11 years old. I was racing for the championship against Brent Dixon, Don’s son and the races were so close over three tries to determine a winner that the event judges just gave the win to the Dixons because of their political influence. That was told to my parents and me unofficially because that’s how the “club” works. That’s why many of these people want political power, so they can tilt the table in their favor when needed. In that Soap Box Derby race, we should have continued racing until a winner could be determined. But the judges were tired in the June sun and wanted to go home. So instead of another race, they just decided that the Dixon kid won. And I developed a hatred for “club” politics that would last the rest of my life. That next year Ronald Reagan ran for president, and I was the campaign spokesman in the 7th grade for our school and have been involved in politics ever since. My hatred for “club” politics likely started that day and still persists over 40 years later and will likely continue for another 40 years. (CLICK HERE to read more of this story.)

And that is what’s wrong with politics in general and why all the fuss over Kevin McCarthy. I live in a town where I have a lot of mutual friends who know John Boehner personally. I did not like John Boehner when he was the third most powerful person in the world, and I don’t like him now as a pot spokesman. It wasn’t personal, but I hated the “Club” as it was back then. And now, with Trump out of the White House, the bottom feeders have lost focus and are resuming their desire for corruption, to tilt the tables of power in their favor and with any means necessary, and they think that people will just put up with it. And I’d warn them otherwise. I have been watching this stuff for a long time, and people are much smarter about these things than they used to be. They don’t like corruption; this is why they voted for Trump because they want someone to stand up to this kind of behavior instead of just putting up with it. And on the local level, politics was never, and should never be, membership into a “club.” The only thing good about politics is what it can do for the people. The golf games, the fundraisers, and the “club” activity are all bad things in politics, and for my part, I have much better things to do with my life than to get my picture taken next to Sheriff Jones so that I can show people that I’m in “the club.” Butler County Republicans can keep their Club. They need to be worried about whether what they do serves the taxpayers. And if it doesn’t, such as this whole business of destroying lives just to protect “the club,” then they are doing the wrong things willingly.

And regarding that soap box derby race, even though I didn’t win the championship that day, I’d say because my family wasn’t in the “club,” I was very proud of what I did. I still have that car hanging in my garage, and I see it every day. My parents were proud of me; it was a fun day. My mom, who isn’t doing so well these days, brought it up as she was traveling down memory lane, and it was one of her good memories. And the lesson about the whole thing is that the Club might do everything to win. But people know who wins in life, and I’d rather live like that than be beholden to a bunch of corrupt people just to get the trophy. There are many kinds of winning in the world, and I view winning without the help of “the club” to be much more valuable than anything else in the world. Only weak losers need a “club” to help them along, which is precisely what we are seeing emerge in the Butler County Republican Party. And when those people are no longer with us, and the hearse goes by with their bodies headed to the graveyard, people won’t say, “look, there goes a great person who lived a great life.” They’ll say instead, “there goes a member of the “club” and one less corrupt person in the world who looked to politics to save their lazy selves from the scrutiny of public opinion.” Membership in the “club” disguises that reality from their minds, but when it is known what people really think, that is the reality that tyrants and the corrupt are hiding from with the illusion of social protocol. 

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

Killing the Sacred Cow of Military in America: Republicans have been suckers in supporting just another big government scam that only the United Nations benefits from

This one might be a little controversial, but we must discuss it because a trick is being applied that brings conservatives to mass collectivism and partners Republicans with diabolical America-hating Democrats with common ground. This was never more obvious than the bone that was thrown into the last bill that was passed in Congress to commit trillions of dollars more in debt over the nation just to get some defense spending that Democrats pretend to protest against. But in truth, it’s a bone they always throw to the dogs of Republicans they appease time and time again out of a misplaced sentiment toward the military. I’ve never been one of those “thank you for your service” kind of people when I meet people who serve. Entry into the military for me is just another government job, and I am always weary of the power government has to command individual lives toward mass collectivism. The first thing ritually that is done in the military during boot camp is to strip people of their individual selves, the people their parents made them, shave them, give them a uniform and integrate them into the system of the military, the yes sirs, no sirs of process and the blind compliance to a culture that gives orders and soldiers are to follow them without a thought. I don’t see much of anything good about that system, and I never have. But over time, the people who hate the American way have turned such a process into a representation of morality, and I find the whole thing reprehensible. 

Of course, when people hear my thoughts on it, they are quick to say, “but they died or committed themselves to it for your freedom.” Well, that is not how our military works, as exposed during the Trump administration, specifically in North Korea. The American Constitution is what gives me freedom, and our military isn’t fighting for it; they are fighting against it. The scam is that by selling themselves as advocates of American independence, our military then gets used as the world’s police, the military that the United Nations never could legally hold, and we do all that they have no power to do themselves. We get involved in all kinds of wars dedicated to globalism and disguise it as “global security,” and while everyone is too busy following orders to question it, or Fox News is doing the latest color ceremonies dedicated to those who serve, the real villains are stirring up war all over the world and counting on American troops to advance the needs of the United Nations one world government and using our money and troops to perform the task. When we were told for years that North Korea was the biggest menace on planet earth, then within a short time of taking office, President Trump was crossing the line into North Korea and shaking hands with the basketball fan who happens to love America very much, much more was revealed than just The Art of the Deal by Trump to break down barriers to negotiation. Our military, once the League of Nations was started in Europe and the United Nations was created, was not to serve the interests of America; it was built, funded, and populated with soldiers to fulfill the needs of progressive intent and then to use the reputation of America to take the hit as imperialists. And in that way, the political left could complain about American involvement in fighting communists in Vietnam while also pushing for big government solutions like what create a big military in the first place.  By default, Republicans filled that gap, just as the plan called for. American troops were now the empire builders England used to be accused of. Meanwhile, it was just announced that Vietnam is one of the fast-growing economies in the world, on par with China, another propped-up country by the United Nations types. The wars clear out political opposition, whereas international sympathy follows in the wake, and the communist regimes then take over in running those parts of the world. 

To get Americans to support such a structure, patriotism has been used to sell it, that our children join, get a free education, learn to become supporters of woke culture, take orders, wear the uniform, and in that way, we never asked the dreadful questions as to who does the American military support? If our borders aren’t important, as the Biden administration has made clear it’s not, then who does the American military support? Well, the amount of money we have been sending to Ukraine answers that question. Our military as it is today exists to advance the needs of the United Nations and big centralized governments all over the world. And it’s not patriotic to blindly support them. We should be looking to shrink their influence into something Americans could easily control with the Second Amendment. Because under the kind of political regimes we have in America today, as we have seen from our own FBI and CIA, our military is more of a threat than something we should be celebrating blindly. 

I’ve had to talk about our local Sheriff Jones a lot lately, and many people wonder why over time, I wasn’t closer to him within the Butler County Republican Party, just north of Cincinnati, Ohio. The truth is, we used to be until we found ourselves on opposite ends of a public union issue way back in 2012. At that point, our relationship had become very strained. Then we were at an event at the Ronald Reagan Center at the Voice of America in West Chester, and as he usually does, he led the ceremonies dedicated to the military, which he is very voraciously supportive of. As I usually do at these events, I shudder at the blind compliance that such people like him have to the saluting of the troops, the perfection of uniform compliance, and how quickly he was to accept that the individual is just a small part to a greater good, which in this case was the support of a military with the mask of the American flag on it. I have seen him perform such ceremonies at Republican events many times. Still, that particular time at the Ronald Reagan Center gave me the creeps, not just about him. Still, in how many people who call themselves Republicans are so quickly enticed like moths to the flame in supporting military service without a clear understanding of how that military service actually protects our Constitution when in fact, the people who most benefit from our military around the world want to see our Constitution destroyed. And there are plenty of Sheriff Jones types all over the nation, on Fox News, in every local parade, who sell the military to the public as something good. But I see it and always have as dangerous to the ideas of American values and the eventual erosion of Constitutional protections. Just as we saw during Covid, and forever supporters of the expansion of the NDAA, our military is the first body of government that often violates the Constitution they were sworn to protect. But in blindly supporting the orders of superiors, our own children are often used to shred that Constitution at every opportunity, especially when globalist forces like the United Nations declare something to be an emergency. Then, our military is turned on us, and we learn too late that it never served America. Our military serves the aims of globalism, and they have tricked us into supporting such a move by draping the flag over the effort and talking about sacrifice as if we were a civilization of bloodthirsty Aztecs. And we learn too late that our military never served us at all, but a sinister collection of globalism who fund the efforts of politics and have captured our elected officials in ways we could never have imagined. And because of blind patriotism, we never see the problem until it’s too late, and they are on our doorsteps kicking in our doors and violating our constitutional rights with a smile on their faces because they took us as suckers, and we proved them correct.

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

Nancy Nix for Butler County Auditor: The bad guys don’t want smart people looking through their books

The big news this week, going into the 2023 New Year, was that Joe Statzer was appointed to replace Roger Reynolds temporarily in the Butler County Auditor position. That doesn’t look good because Joe is a very close political ally of Sheriff Jones, and in this situation and many others, that isn’t a good thing. And good on T.C. Rogers as the lone Butler County Commissioner for having the intellect to vote against Joe. I know all the people in this case personally; everyone likes Joe. But this is about more than likes and dislikes. As I’ve said from the beginning of the Roger Reynolds case in Butler County, Ohio, the goal was for officeholders to get rid of the very popular auditor because they didn’t want to live up to the high bar that Roger had set. None of the characters involved, not Attorney General David Yost, Sheriff Jones, or even the court members, could have withstood the kind of political assassination that Roger Reynolds had to go through with the prosecution continuing to throw charges against him until something stuck. And of all the charges initially filed, Roger was found innocent of all of them. It was the final one that involved Lakota schools, yes, that same Lakota schools with all the same characters involved in the Matt Miller case, that had enough ambiguity in it to leave questions in the jury’s mind and get a 4th-degree conviction in having an unlawful interest in a public contract. During the trial, Jenni Logan, the former treasurer of Lakota and personal friend of Sheriff Jones, gave competent testimony. The Reynolds legal team was obviously unprepared for it since it had been a charge tacked on over the summer of 2022. It was obviously purely politically motivated based on the Jones press conference at that time and wasn’t as defined as the core of the case had been. Roger’s legal team was very well prepared for the rest of the case, the condition of a property transaction involving his father and an old neighbor. 

When people look toward the police and think of corruption, it is over cases like this. When the Attorney General of Ohio gets involved in trying to push people out of office, you can see what kind of game is being played. And for what reason? Well, as people have explained to me, it’s all about Roger’s policies on full disclosure that had politicians mad, and you could see that as soon as the jury returned with a conviction. It doesn’t sound like the conviction will involve jail time, but likely probation for Roger Reynolds, but the politicians involved in pressing this case, which started with a political hit piece by Channel 19 News in Liberty Township, Ohio, just ahead of a big election, was about removing the snoopy eyes of Roger Reynolds. And knowing the personalities personally, as I do, the real deal with the case was the political power of two extremely alpha males, not the legitimacy of legal parameters. Roger Reynolds can come across as bullish when he knows he’s right about something, and Sheriff Jones likes political power for the sake of having it to apply to people around him. I see the whole matter as a human resource problem, two people who just don’t like each other, and the reasons for that dislike is one of competency and nothing else. Roger did his job too well, and that made a lot of politicians worried. So wherever Roger stumbled his toe somewhere, the prosecution looked for a window to slide in some ambiguity and see if something might stick. They wanted to convict Roger of a charge so they could designate him a felon and get Roger Reynolds off their back forever. When Roger refused to resign, they proceeded with this court case. And when it comes to wealthy people trying to explain millions of dollars of tax money wrapped up in a fancy country club, it’s hard to explain all that to a jury, even if most of the conversation was just high-brow talk. Jenni Logan knew what she was doing when she provided testimony which is why Sheriff Jones, who had special knowledge of the case fresh off his relationship with Lakota schools, so they tacked on this extra charge utterly unrelated to the previous charges in July of 2022, just ahead of the election a few months later. Roger’s trial for these matters was moved into December as a backstop in case he won reelection, which he did, easily. But one way or another, the legal machine was determined to get rid of Roger Reynolds, which they managed to squeak out one conviction out of the original seven. Once convicted, that meant Roger would have to vacate his post, which is what his political enemies wanted all along. 

And if there was any doubt about any of what I said, within hours of the conviction, the political enemies of Roger Reynolds repeated what Sheriff Jones said about the case once it was over. Immediately the attention was leveled at Roger’s replacement, who most people think will be Nancy Nix, the treasurer of Butler County and a very competent person in every way that a person can be. Bruce Jones from West Chester wants the job, and the last time I spoke to him, a few weeks ago, he was pretty sure he would get it. Sheriff Jones obviously wants Bruce. But for those who want continuity of the kind of great job that came out of Roger Reynold’s auditor’s office, Nancy Nix is the personality who could best achieve that. But she, like Roger, is a Certified Public Accountant. Who wouldn’t want a CPA to run the money of Butler County? Well, if you are a politician that doesn’t want such tight controls on the money, you don’t necessarily want a Certified Public Accountant. So immediately, the political posturing went forth to smear Nancy Nix, just as the campaign was clear to smear Roger Reynolds from the start. And yes, Roger and Nancy are very good friends, just as Sheriff Jones has been friends with them both. I’d call all of them friends, so friendship doesn’t determine merit. Only actions do, and the resistance to a CPA in the role of the auditor of Butler County should alarm everyone. Sheriff Jones was too happy about being able to call Roger Reynolds a felon than he should have been, and it was disgusting to see how the law could be so abused as to take out political rivals for personal reasons rather than in upholding what’s best for the community. Remember, this is the same sheriff’s office behind the Matt Miller story at Lakota schools, so we certainly have picking and choosing going on here for political power, not what is best for the community. 

What’s great about Nancy is that she is every bit as competent but what she has that many political personalities don’t have is a wonderful character. Not that Roger Reynolds didn’t but being a person who deals with millions and millions of dollars, there are personality traits that come out that most people find abrasive. It’s a common trait with most financial people, and from the perspective of Sheriff Jones, it’s an easy trait to exploit under court scrutiny, which was undoubtedly the case in this judgment against Roger. But Nancy doesn’t have that stiffness that is generally associated with financial people; she is super nice, very intelligent, engaging, and tireless. I just spoke to her the other day, and even when she’s down in the dumps, as she was very sad about what happened to her friend Roger, she has all the optimism of a person who doesn’t have a bad thought in her head. As angry as I was at the case, she was very levelheaded and composed, which was impressive. I expect that out of her, but even under these terrible conditions, she always manages to hold it together. So, I think she would be a great replacement to continue Roger Reynolds’ work in that auditor role. I’m sure Roger will do great in the private sector. Butler County will miss his great work, but Nancy could continue that great work. And that is what those who don’t want that level of competency are afraid of. You can always tell a lot about a person by the enemies they have, and based on the early reaction toward Roger, Nancy Nix, and CPAs in general, the anger is obvious. There are a lot of politicians who don’t want intelligent people snooping through their budgets. And in the end, that’s all any of this was about from the start—the desire for corruption and getting rid of the people who might stand in the way of it.

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

The Political Assassination of Roger Reynolds: How courts are used to hide the real corruption

There is much more to the Roger Reynolds story than just that he was found guilty of a 4th-degree felony on the fifth count against him in a court case just a few weeks before Christmas 2022. That doesn’t begin to tell the story. The truth is that the corruption wasn’t what Roger Reynolds did, but it’s how the political machine works to get rid of people they don’t want in office, even after voters put them there with a popular vote, even knowing the facts. Ultimately it was the office of David Yost, the Attorney General of Ohio, who was doing a favor for a buddy in Butler County, Sheriff Jones, who personally prosecuted the case for one primary reason. Not to fight corruption but to push Roger out of his Butler County Auditor Office, likely for a few reasons that have been revealed over the last year. First, for revenge, Roger had terminated the employment of one of Sheriff Jones’ relatives who had stopped coming to work due to Covid protocols that has become a practice everywhere and is out of control. Roger did what I would have done; the employee stopped coming to work, so he let them go, and Jones wasn’t happy about it. The other thing was that as Butler County Auditor, Roger Reynolds had been pushing for complete transparency in the disclosure of budgets. And that made a lot of people mad. That set the table; then Fox 19 news came to Butler County and did a hit piece in the Republican stronghold, trying to pave the way for Democrats to do better in an upcoming election. Hence, they targeted a complaint leveled at Roger by a property owner that dragged a couple of Butler County Trustees into the mess to attempt to shape public opinion with a negative story.

Sheriff Jones then used that story to launch an investigation into his political enemies, leading to a six-count indictment against Roger Reynolds over an abuse of power case involved in that land deal. But just before this case was set to go to court in August of 2022, there was an additional charge that the Sheriff’s department leveled at Roger. They wanted Roger to step down from his auditor role and put Bruce Jones there instead, the fiscal officer of West Chester. And when Roger refused because he felt he had done nothing wrong, they turned up the heat, and David Yost got involved himself in the campaign to remove Roger from his job. It all amounted to a human resource scam between competing factions of employees who were trying to bend the rules to their advantage to get rid of a rival, in essence. I know all the characters involved and generally like them. But like most companies, employees don’t always get along; that was certainly the case here. But instead of human resources, these matters end up in court in front of a jury. In August, after Jenni Logan, the treasurer of Lakota schools, stepped down, obviously knowing that a lot was about to hit the fan over the Matt Miller case, she spilled the beans on a Lakota issue with Roger from back in 2019. Some tax money was returning to Lakota, and Roger suggested that the money be spent in a partnership with Four Bridges Country Club’s golf academy. Jenni checked it out, and the lawyers said it would look bad. So, they didn’t make a deal. And for just asking the question of Jenni Logan, that was the 4th-degree felony that the jury found Roger Reynolds guilty of, which wasn’t even the original charge. It was a fishing expedition to keep throwing charges at Roger Reynolds until something stuck. And keep in mind that these are all the same characters who decided not to prosecute Matt Miller, the superintendent of Lakota schools, for the revelations that he had sexual fantasies about three specific kids who went to Lakota and that he asked his wife to drug them, molest them, and video record it for him, according to police testimony. So, in that case, the police used the rationale that the well-liked superintendent was participating in consensual adult sex, even though minors who went to a school he had the authority over were involved. But all those same people found Roger Reynolds asking Lakota to invest in a golf academy which he thought would give kids an elevated social experience, was a felony. Not exactly a consistent presumption of the law. It involved all the same characters, but the standards were radically different regarding law and its enforcement.

In other words, he wants dumb people in the auditor job, so nobody is smart enough to audit him

By the time Roger won his re-election in November, the court case had been moved to December simply as a backstop in case they needed it to get Roger out of office. And by then, the indictments against Roger had been reduced to just five instead of the original seven. Roger’s lawyers did an excellent job procedurally; it’s not easy doing these kinds of things; there’s a lot that goes on in the filing process. And to get the charges reduced by the start of the trial was a considerable obstacle which they did well. Then regarding the original case, Roger was found innocent by the jury on all those accounts. The accusations made by Channel 19 at the beginning have cost Roger Reynolds many thousands and thousands of dollars in legal bills just for the accusation. But the additional charge involving Jenni Logan after she left Lakota and was in new positions directly involving Butler County and a relationship with Sheriff Jones facilitated was one that the legal team of Roger was much less prepared for because it came late in the process. It was harder to argue due to the ambiguity of the matter. Here was a bunch of political people in the six-figure income club talking about giving millions of dollars to a country club to contribute to a golf academy to which Roger belonged to. I cringed as I watched Roger’s lawyers try to argue these merits to the jury. You could tell that the legal team did not have their mind wrapped around that part of the case, and the jury could tell. In the end, Roger’s attorney didn’t explain it well; his task was to overcome the built-in prejudice that people have toward rich people and elite sports, and they didn’t do that. 

After an entire day of deliberation, the jury found Roger guilty on that last charge, essentially for asking a question that had the look of using his political authority to show an interest in a public contract. Jail time had been a real risk all through this process which is no easy thing to deal with, especially for a good person like Roger Reynolds, who has been a respected member of the community for many decades. And it looks like just over this 4th-degree felony conviction, he won’t have to do any jail time but will serve out the sentence with probation. But the bad guys got what they wanted, Roger will have to step down from his elected position, and the people who were afraid of transparency will now be able to appoint their choice rather than the voters picking. And that is what this case was about from the start, getting rid of Roger Reynolds from his auditor job.   If Roger is guilty of anything, it’s setting the bar too high, that his political rivals didn’t want to live up to that high bar, so they conspired to get rid of him, which they did through the court process. And if Roger’s lawyers had been able to argue the Lakota case correctly, he would have been found innocent on all counts. The critical thing to remember is that the original case that Sheriff Jones tried to build against Roger fell apart, and Roger was found innocent of all those counts. The real corruption is in using the legal system to destroy political rivals and in choosing enforceable or not laws depending on the people involved. With Roger’s talent, I’m sure he can make three times the money he was making as an auditor in the private sector. But it’s the point of the matter, he has had to deal with this expensive nonsense for a long time, and the abuse of authority isn’t in what he did. But instead, what was done to him to get rid of him and to fight to keep that bar very low for public employees so that they can have plenty of wiggle room for the real corruption that takes place. 

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

“Escapades of Doom”: Kristi Ertel’s Interview with Brian Thomas on 55 KRC

I’m very proud of Kristi Ertel of Protect Lakota Kids.com for her really good interview on 55 KRC with Brian Thomas. She was there to talk about the latest information on Matt Miller, the controversial superintendent from Lakota, and the trouble he has put himself into with his reckless personal life. Many in the Lakota district, over 800 people, have signed the petition to force Miller to resign. Miller and his radical union members at Lakota did the same thing to the new school board member Darbi Boddy just a few months before, having a petition to force her to resign essentially because they didn’t like her. Supporters of a conservative school board took exception and found out what kind of crazy sexual lifestyle Miller thought was normal, and it became public information at that point. So now the shoe is on the other foot, and I thought Kristi did an exceptional job representing the many people in the Lakota school district who have found how the school board has dealt with the issue reprehensible. And some people like Kristi, who is a fantastic Christian woman with very high standards, can’t deal with the level of morality exhibited by the Lakota administration and its school board. Even with the threats of lawsuits that the superintendent has lashed out at toward his critics, Kristi is the type of person who can’t turn away from a dilemma, which is asking the community to look the other way when reprehensible moral circumstances are imposed on everyone. And she’s not alone. But good for her to stand up for what’s right even when so much is wrong and horrible, and that has been threatened by the public employees as if they were ultimately in charge. When I read the cease-and-desist letter from Matt Miller’s attorney, and Kristi talked about this on the radio interview, I thought some alien from another planet had written it. It clearly didn’t consider any Constitutional provisions regarding free speech. And to the point discussed on 55 KRC, all the information was based on Matt Miller’s own words. But my conclusion reflects the microcosm that is essentially the macrocosm of global politics these days. 

It wasn’t just this interview with Kristi that had spawned a lot of attention on this story over the past week; Libs of TikTok was talking about it, which cascaded into it being covered by the very popular Louder with Crowder show, and Charlie Kirk. The story was always going to get out; when a very public employee exhibits such bad behavior, it was bound to. As if that weren’t bad enough, it’s the cover-up of that information that has presented itself as far worse, as if all the participants involved, the media, the school board, the police, the prosecutor’s office, a whole bunch of lawyers, its as if they believed that if they denied that anything happened, then sent out threatening letters to harass the public into submission, that they could somehow change the nature of reality itself. And if they believed that, then no wonder they thought they could do anything and get away with it. That is, after all, what we are seeing in international and national politics, that characters like Nancy Pelosi, Hunter Biden, or even the fact that Covid was made in a lab in Wuhan, China, and so long as the communist country pretended that nothing happened, then they could literally get away with murder. Or that election fraud never occurred in 2020 or 2022, even though Katie Hobbs in Arizona was caught certifying her own election by pushing all the complaints of voter irregularities past the certification date forcing constitutionally protected fraud in the process. What we saw happening at Lakota was essentially the same type of crazy, extremely liberal behavior. 

Yet the thing that gets missed in all these cases is that no matter what the administrative state does to contain information with public relations officials, lawyers, or open harassment through violence or other means, people are still going to have an opinion on the matter. Unlike in China, where they control every aspect of people’s lives, people in America still have free will and the ability to think independently. Just because authority figures say something is red or yellow when we can see it’s blue, we are not obligated to accept what those authority figures say just because they are authority figures. What’s fascinating about this Lakota cult of liberalism is that they really thought they were going to be able to contain the bad behavior of their superintendent and force good people like Kristi Ertel to act against her conscience, her strong belief system in goodness and the good of God, and accept evil right in front of her face, and that there was nothing she, or anybody could do about it. It’s as if Matt Miller and his army of wife-swapping administrators thought they were in charge of the whole community or something instead of employees within it. And that they could literally do anything, say anything, and push any kind of agenda onto the taxpayers, and they would be obligated to accept their reality without question. It was essentially the China Model but without the controls of a totalitarian regime controlling over a billion people in every way, shape, and form, upon fear of death.  It has been a head-scratcher because I know many of the characters involved. It has been bizarre to see them so consumed with the process and willing to accept outright evil because of some misplaced fear that the law was working against us all and that the big bad administrative state could destroy us at any time. Hey, read a book sometime, and get smart. Lakota schools, their public employees, lawyers, PR people, and the media tag alongs who have helped cover some really detrimental behavior have all contributed to making our community worse, making things more dangerous for children, and thumbing their noses at the community in general.  Lakota was already declining in quality before Matt Miller came along, and since he stepped into that superintendent role, the grades for Lakota have continued to drop. So why all these people would seek to protect a bad employee with a bad track record is beyond logic. But yet, what we have seen come out of all these liberal institutions is an assumption that so long as they control information and how people perceive it, they can hide their poor performance behind this strange veil of corruption. And that people wouldn’t form their own opinions on things. Well, people do have opinions on things, and free minds have arrived at the opinion that what has been going on at Lakota and public schools, in general, does not reflect what taxpayers want. And they are angry about it. I am very happy to know that many people like Kristi Ertel are free-thinking enough to form their own opinions and defend them when challenged by such nonsense as we have witnessed in this Lakota case. If not for free speech and people like Kristi, there would be a lot more corruption in the world, and now we see why things are so screwed up everywhere because there haven’t been enough Kristi Ertels in the world standing up for what’s right, and teaching children how adults should behave by condemning bad behavior when we do see it. And if more people did call out such bad behavior, it would at least force the perpetrators to keep it hidden from public view. But when bad people don’t fear the judgment of the public because they think the system will hide them from the guilt of their actions, well, then you get what we have seen at Lakota, and other places, wherever liberalism is out of control, and a war against God and goodness has been unleashed as if the pages of the Book of Revelations were manifest on the earth and the Devil himself were in charge of everything, and everybody. 

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

Atlantis Giants in Butler County Ohio: The Hilltop Earthwork of the Constellation Aries at Pyramid Hill, from 5000 years ago

I can’t tell you how happy I was to walk into the office at Pyramid Hill as I was asking about the status of the project that has been going on for a few years now and to get the look of concealment that I did. The workers that day were young people who weren’t sure how to answer the question, so they referred me to the Ancient Sculpture Museum, which is concealed deep in the woods down a large hill in a place that feels like it’s not even on this earth. It’s one of those little secrets in Butler County, Ohio, and is a treasure within a treasure. Noticing their cryptic reference, my wife and I proceeded to the museum and stepped into the first room and noticed immediately that finally, since 1836, when the site was first surveyed, finally the Butler County Hilltop Work was getting the attention it has always deserved. I’ve looked at that strange mound, which is around 250 ft tall and sits across from Joe Nuxhall Way on the west side of the Great Miami River, about 3 miles from downtown Hamilton, and always marveled at it. The museum staff already had an excellent display set up for an early 2023 opening that will connect the Pyramid Hill complex to this new massive ancient mound they plan to call the Fortified Hill. Sounds better than Butler County Hilltop Work. The staff person on hand that day told my wife and me that they were planning to open everything in January of 2023 if everything went well, which explained the cryptic looks at the main office when I mentioned it. There are very few people in the world who even know that the strange hill that looms large in Butler County, with thousands and thousands of people living around it, and driving by it every day, that it’s one of the most mysterious lost, ancient works of an advanced culture on earth. And yet, it’s been there before Christ was born as if dated celestially; it’s around 5000 years old. 

What makes it so exceptional in the world is that it essentially is dedicated to the constellation Aries that through stellar precession, shows a specific movement from the constellation Taurus through the Pleiades and into the age of Aries at a time when we have previously thought only of Indians marching in a steady stream toward civilization from hunters and gatherers and into city dwelling humans. I’m not one to disparage scientists, even the bureaucratic nonsense that often trails behind academia like the tail of a doomsday comet, because if not for them, there wouldn’t have been an attempt to preserve the Butler County Hilltop Work and opening it as a park would never have been possible. But science has been slow to acknowledge who these people really were who settled in Ohio as the center of a very advanced culture, who had an obsession with the stars and built all over southwestern Ohio many copies of earthworks that mimicked the constellations in the heavens on earth. These works are every bit as mysterious as the Nazca lines from Peru or even the Pyramids of Giza. Primarily, the reason for the big mystery is that they didn’t just build one of these sites that so accurately reflects an advanced knowledge of astrology. Still, the evidence is pointing increasingly to this same region, and that specific mound location, along with Serpent Mound off to the east, as the basket of an advanced culture that was eradicated likely during the Younger Dryas cataclysm, around 11,600 years ago. And what was left of these people who were interacting globally with all countries before the cataclysm is what we see during this late archaic presence in the Ohio Valley, which ended up a larger part of the Mississippi culture. These were the survivors of that cataclysm, and they marked the ground with a star map of the heavens with these massive depictions of, in this case, a wild boar, which they associated with the Aries constellation. 

Further, on top of the hill is where things get really interesting because the entrance to the effigy, to the north, has a maze that forces the participant to navigate it much the way that the spring equinox had to navigate the Pleiades constellation on its journey from the constellation Taurus into Aries. While on top of the earthwork, which you can see for miles in every direction, it becomes very obvious how difficult it was to shape that natural hill into the shape of a boar to match their celestial observations of the zodiac character of Aries. This was no small effort by any means. It was a massive undertaking, and for what purpose? Well, as I say a lot, remember Plato’s references to Atlantis, where the first god/king of their land was Atlas. And we all know from myth and mystery that Atlas was the creator of Astrology. And here was an obviously advanced culture that had enough leisure time not just to hunt, gather, and reproduce but to build all these magnificent earthworks all over Ohio. They seemed to connect into one grand mythology meant to be seen from the sky. A society obsessed with astrology, obsessed with an equatorial procession along the heavenly zodiacal belt where ages move by overhead every 2,160 years for a total zodiac year of 25,920 years. Society would have to be around for a long time to understand those kinds of time movements of the stars in a reliable way, to understand that their movements were not just coincidental, but over that length of time, were as reliable as a clock. These people did not spend their entire day trying to hunt a deer so they could eat by dinner time.  We have all had an image given to us by Hollywood and the progressive history of what an Indian is, a Native American or even an “indigenous person.” In truth, the reality is far more complicated, and by referencing the many books on Atlantis by Lewis Spence, a respected commentator on such things, or Giambittisto Vico of the great Vico Cycle, or the Bible, we know that very large people that smaller people called giants roamed the earth everywhere. We know Norse mythology had them, the Greeks called them Titans, the Bible referenced to them often living in the land of Canaan, and large people were everywhere dating back to the precise period of the earthworks in Ohio, precisely the one in Butler County formerly known as the Butler County Hilltop Works. Burial mounds all up and down the Great Miami River have reported the bones of people from 7 feet tall up to 10 feet many times, which can be found in Ross Hamilton’s outstanding academic paper called A Tradition of Giants: The Elite Social Hierarchy of American Prehistory which is available for free online. Just look up that title and print it out for yourself. It’s well researched and corresponds to the reports mentioned above about large people buried in the earthworks of Ohio, not just occasionally, but abundantly. I know of a case of a 7-foot person buried in a mound in downtown Hamilton as it was being built. It has been said in many of Spence’s reports on Atlantis that they were a large people and that once the Greeks and Egyptians inherited many of the myths of the lost Atlantis, their concept of the gods was forged in their cultures. Yet, those myths also talk of the Atlanteans coming from the west, and with them, they brought the pagan gods of astrology. There are mounds on the Butler County Hilltop Work site, just off from the top. In them, indeed, just as there is in the Middletown Mound up the river a few miles, then again at Miamisburg, even a few miles more up the same river, there are giant skeletons in them, and science has had a tough time dealing with the knowledge. Because it doesn’t fit our perceptions of who lived in America before America was what it is today. Instead, it looks like those who did live here moved all over the earth and took with them a massive religion of astrology to the far corners of the planet. And they did so long before Europeans were even thinking about building boats. And the natives of America that we call them today were likely global citizens 10,000 years ago, and the proof of their culture is there looming over Butler County like a ghost that is no longer invisible to the casual spectator, thanks to the great scientists and volunteer efforts to open it to the public with a great spectacle finally. 

Rich Hoffman

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Protect Lakota Kids.com and the Public Records that Show all the Evidence: Defending children from the extreme liberalism of Lakota schools

It’s not like the bad behavior at Lakota schools happened overnight. It took place over a long period of time. For those who have been wanting to see all the evidence from the Matt Miller divorce and the crazy sexual lifestyle of the superintendent of Lakota that has been much talked about, you can see it all down to the last public document at the excellent website Protect Lakota Kids.com.  CLICK TO Visit for yourself. I am proud of the great people who put that site together, and you better believe it; it was not an enterprise of a few lonely people. It’s a community effort; even better, over 600 people have signed the petition to protect Lakota Kids from the diabolical exploits of the radical progressives who work for all these government schools. This particular school is in our neighborhood, and it is challenging our values as a community, so it’s great to see people coming together to stand up to the vile behavior that has been on full display for quite a while now. The evidence of that behavior is reflected in the meeting segment shown below. A parent gave a very nice speech about the bad behavior of the superintendent, but additionally on the behavior of the school board members and other administrators. No wonder they didn’t see anything wrong with the superintendent’s sexual behavior because they are just as bad in many cases. What does that say about the people who run Lakota schools, especially when you can see for yourself just how bad that behavior has been for the superintendent? 

When the upset parent’s speech was given, I was working on getting new school board members elected. For me, that was the solution: to get better management on the board who would take the job a lot more seriously, not drink so much, and find themselves in compromising situations when they went to social events around town and out of town. The stories from some of these events have been horrendous and embarrassing to me. I like my community; I think there are a lot of good people who live in Butler County. I’ve been associated with Butler County most of my life. I could have lived anywhere in the world that I wanted, but I loved Butler County so much that I stayed in the area by choice. But these extreme leftist types who always come with more government expansion, especially in the public schools, do not represent the values of the community I have known for five decades. Many people moved to the area to be part of that kind of community. They did not move to Butler County to be embarrassed by the extreme liberalism of Lakota schools. For too long, they have put up with it to go along to get along. But after learning more about just how liberal and sexually reckless the people who run Lakota schools really are, there has been a very steady chorus of anger that has been building for several years now. To say the least, when Matt Miller was hired to be the superintendent in 2017, he reflected the values obviously of the people who hired him. And to understand what those values were, just read the voluminous public records on the Protect Lakota Kids website. We know the school board knew in 2020 just how bad things were, and instead of fixing the problem, they moved to cover everything up, which everyone should find alarming.

I had hopes that good management might fix some of these problems, but instantly the governing board gave the new school board members a fruit basket of friendship and worked to either bring them into the fold or to get rid of them. One of the newly elected board members seemed to like the fruit basket. The other one could care less, and instantly, Matt Miller and his partners on the school board worked quickly to get rid of her. And at that point, it was apparent that I had wasted my time trying to work with the board to have proper management at Lakota. Because the sexual deviants, the swingers, and the radical left loons who make up Lakota management wanted to protect their racket from the outside eyes of the holy rollers in the community and their pesky “Christian values.” They had no desire to listen to voters; they simply wanted to hide bad behavior from the public, and by reviewing the public documents at Protect Lakota Kids, it’s obvious that this was a common assumption, not an isolated behavior. With our tax money, we were funding the kind of behavior among the adults at Lakota that we wouldn’t endorse in our community otherwise except behind the innocent faces of our children. 

Yes, the title of that website, Protect Lakota Kids.com, is appropriate because if we don’t do it, who will? The school board certainly isn’t interested in helping kids find their moral compass in life. And if we aren’t teaching kids the basics of living a good, productive life, then what are we teaching them to be? If you leave it to the school, the role model they have in mind is Matt Miller. Obviously, the Lakota superintendent has serious sexual issues, as chronicled by the public records listed on the Protect Lakota Kids website. And you don’t have to live in Lakota to have an opinion about this matter. This is a problem in all public schools. Everywhere there are government schools, we see the same essential issues.

What is different about the school district of Lakota is that parents are taking control of their community. We have tried to elect good school board members. But the progressive types have rebelled against that notion. So, if parents can’t control their school board, they will create awareness with their own media, with websites like Protect Lakota Kids.com.   At that site, they are doing the job that the media should have been doing all along. But it’s not as if good people didn’t try to do things the traditional way. Speeches like the frustrated parent shown here have been going on for a long time. And it proves that the school board chose not to listen and to act to defend the bad behavior from the judgment of the public at all costs. And that isn’t acceptable. We aren’t paying all the money that we do in taxes to fuel this level of liberal politics. Butler County is a very conservative place in the world, and Lakota schools are a playground of liberalism that has embedded itself into our community in extremely unhealthy ways. It’s a fight worth having because, in the end, the product of the community is the children. Left to their own devices, the leadership of Lakota is intent on making kids into reflections of their own impoverished lifestyles, into the train wrecks spoken about by that concerned parent. I know that parent, and when she was talking about handpicking people from the GOP for the school board, she was talking about my work. She was frustrated with the results; she was ready to give up on the school way back then. I would say that it’s always good to try to fix something. But to her point, Lakota has been beyond gone for a long time now. And it will never get better if we allow them to govern themselves. Because given a choice, Lakota management will always pick the wrong thing.

Rich Hoffman

Protect Our Lakota Kids

The People I Hang Out With: Many people consider Steve Bannon to be the most dangerous person in the America

Before I go into a full-throated defense of Steve Bannon, the Trump strategist who recently was sentenced to 4 months in prison for defying the January 6th crooked court and the illegitimate Department of Justice put in place by Joe Biden and his plans to destroy America, I need to answer a question that the Butler County Sheriff’s department asked the Lakota school superintendent. While being interviewed by the police for his bizarre sexual lifestyle, the school superintendent was looking for help from his friend, the Sheriff, so he name-dropped me to remind him of a political rivalry within the Republican Party. It appeared to work because the police did not take further action even though the charge involved children; they blew it all off as “pillow talk” among “consenting adults.”  That is a subject all its own, but during the questioning, the police asked the superintendent, “who does this Rich Hoffman run around with” where the answer came back, “far-right winged” (people.)  As if I was hanging out in my spare time with lunatics who wear half-shirt tank tops in their backyard while cooking a dog to eat over an open fire with confederate flags flying over the house. (for people concerned with history, the Confederate enslavers were all Democrats, while the people freeing the enslaved people were all Republicans. Just a tiny little detail)  I usually don’t talk about my “behind the scenes life,” but since I saw that question posed by the police, I’ve meant to address it adequately because the Steve Bannon case reminded me of a dinner I was at that involved the prosecuted voice of the War Room that the Liberal World Order wanted so much to shut down. I’m proud of him, and I think this action against him will only help his cause.

Also involved in that police interview was the new Lakota school board member, Darbi Boddy, so her involvement with me in a posh dinner a few months ago where we were at the VIP table together has relevance. Darbi was sitting next to me; actually, her sister was next to me, and Darbi was next to her. In front of me was a senator. Next to him was a big-time political influencer. Next to him was a judge. Next to him was a political activist. Next to me at the following table was a State Representative. And next to her was other political bigwigs. The food was excellent.

The conversation was heavy. I was set to speak at this event, so we were in the center of the room. And you might say it was an event very much concerned about the affairs of our political order. It was hardly an event that contained a bunch of crazy right-winged loons. And as our conversations were focused on lofty concerns, I received a text message. As I saw it, I showed it to Darbi, and it caused even more discussion with a bit more weight added to the subject matter. It was a text from Steve Bannon, continuing a conversation we had been having all day, and as happens from time to time. I usually don’t think much about these things, but in the context of the police interview where the question came up, what kind of people do I “hang” around with? Well, that would be a good example. And I’m proud to include Steve Bannon’s name among them.

I figured out my role in the freedom movement a long time ago. I have a bedside manner that solves problems, whereas, on shows like the War Room and the old AM radio broadcasts that I used to participate in, the focus was on addressing an issue, but there never seemed to be much time to talk about the solution. For Steve Bannon, that is how the War Room works, talk about a problem and get people activated to help answer it with community activism. He and I had talked about this because there had been times when he was obviously considering me as one of his contributors. I shy away from those kinds of engagements because my gig is to give people the confidence that they need to take action with my bedside manner. For me, there is never a time to panic. There is never a bad guy who can’t be beaten in whatever way is needed. I am an optimist in every sense of the word. While my blog has millions of visitors, I consider what I do to be more of a slow burn than the urgent discussions that often make up talk radio content. People read and watch my stuff and think about it for a long time. And I like to keep the money out of the First Amendment business as much as possible because being small and nimble is more important than attracting an audience that advertisers would want. To do what I do, I need to remove as many woke influences as possible, so lean and agile are essential to my task, and I need the autonomy to work to my own schedule and subject matter. 

While Steve Bannon is on every day from 10 AM to noon, then from 5 PM to 7 PM to do his War Room podcast, he even works on Saturday from 10 AM to noon; my schedule is that my published content goes up at prime time, 8 PM each night, every night all days of the year, but I produce that content at my leisure. I have a busy life, so I usually do my work on these matters between 2 AM and 5 AM in the morning while the rest of the world sleeps. I have a very tight schedule during the waking hours that has something new going on every 15 minutes and lasts until well into the evening, past 8 PM. So, part of my thing is being able to control my time to do it instead of working toward a fixed schedule. I need that extra freedom to perform my task, whereas Steve Bannon is like a clock; he’s always on time and doing his work, even when the FBI is raiding him for harassment. So to additionally answer the question by the police about who I run around with, and some of the names I’ve mentioned, and talking about my daily schedule, it concludes with the obvious answer, I’m not this busy and spending time around those kinds of people because what I do isn’t heavily sought after. 

Suppose you don’t have a track record built over three decades of being right about things and having information that influential people find extremely valuable. In that case, you don’t find yourself talking to the kind of people I mentioned at that table. The political enemy wants to believe that everyone has the same problems that they do, so they imagine that people like Darbi and I are all about one political topic and that we spend the rest of our time waiting for someone to tell us what to do next, such is the life of the typical liberal. Rather, in my case, it is hard to give everyone the kind of time they want from me, and for me to do what I do, it requires vast amounts of flexibility to perform the task. But the need to perform those tasks is heavily sought after, and if I didn’t have a track record of truth and cutting through the fog so reliably, then I wouldn’t be at events like the one mentioned. And the only reason that I say it here is its relevance to Steve Bannon, who is considered by many to be the most dangerous person in the world. I don’t think he is. But I sure am proud of him and how he has stood up under heavy intimidation by an insurgent force in the White House. He has been tough. Darbi Boddy has been tough. And so have many thousands that I can think of off the top of my head who are fighting back against liberal tyranny wherever it shows itself. When I go to events like that VIP event, I think of how the people involved are answering a call that started with the Progressive Movement, and specifically Saul Alinsky. The radical left punched America first, and it took about 80 years for the America First movement to punch back. But that’s what we are doing now, and I would say I’m proudly “heavily” involved on many, many, many fronts. And I wouldn’t call any of the people I’m interested in as “fringe” or radical. They only have in common that they don’t like bullies, and they aren’t going to take it. And fighting back is the only answer, which is the kind of people I hang out with. Hopefully, that answers the question that the police were seeking. 

Rich Hoffman

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The Men of Butler County, Ohio Are Too Busy Getting Their Nails Done to Stand up to Bullies: Republican Party endorses Roger Reynolds for Auditor, Thomas Hall is found innocent of any ethics violations

The number one question I get asked lately is, “where are the men of Butler County, Ohio?” People see what happened to Roger Reynolds, the auditor of Butler County, who is running for re-election but has seven indictments against him pushed by Sheriff Jones. They wonder why nobody has stood up for Roger. The indictments are apparent abuses of power coming out of the Sheriff’s office, yet few people have stood up to the Sheriff to defend Roger, and many don’t understand why. The ethics investigation into Thomas Hall has resulted in him being found not guilty of any trouble, even though Sheriff Jones pushed hard to find something to bust the young man on. The Sheriff even went way out of his way to try to primary a replacement candidate during the re-election of the State Representative of the 46th District. Thomas had to hire a lawyer to help clear his name, which is part of the abuse of power game. These public employees love power because it gives them leverage over people to quell their thirst for the abuse of it, and it costs money to defend against that power in courts that are essentially run by the same forces. I backed Thomas when it wasn’t popular to do so, and Jones backed Matt King and put many of his resources behind the young challenger. But Thomas won anyway, despite all the dirty politics. Recently while the Lakota superintendent was being interviewed by police he sent a message to his friend, Sheriff Jones, hoping for help in the matter of him being caught having “pillow talk” about three kids who go to his school where he wanted his wife to “drug them, molest them, and video them” for his sexual gratification, he reminded Jones that I was the same person who supported Thomas Hall in the election that was an embarrassing loss for the Sheriff, implying that law enforcement should look the other way on his issue because of it. There is a whole heap of dirty politics to go around in just those few examples, and you better believe it, there are many more cases not even talked about. This is why many are asking where the men are these days, and I say they are out getting their nails done, filling out their Fantasy Football picks, and being nice little compliant progressives that the modern world told them to be, while crime, bullying, and evil go unmolested in county politics. 

I’ve talked to people involved on the inside of the dispute between Roger Reynolds and Sheriff Jones. They used to get along just fine until a couple of things happened, which we have to talk about because Jones is the one who decided to abuse his authority behind the law to try and destroy Roger Reynolds over ridiculous conditions. I saw an ad the other day asking the question ahead of the election, “would you support Roger Reynolds with your money even though he has seven indictments against him and is facing jail time?” Well, YES! I know why there are seven indictments against Roger Reynolds, and I think they are bogus charges by a rigged system by a political enemy who has sought power and position to use government to control people, and I don’t like it one bit. Roger Reynolds knowing what I know about the case, is an innocent man being prosecuted by a system of bullies who have used politics to destroy people for personal reasons. And with Roger, one of those issues was that he let go of a family member of Sheriff Jones because they had worked in the auditor’s office and stopped coming to work because of Covid. We have all seen many employees abusing the Covid protocols set up by the out-of-control CDC, and this was a person who needed to be at work. But they were following the government nonsense regarding Covid, so Roger let them go as a non-essential worker. Nobody can say what Sheriff Jones thinks or doesn’t but judging by his behavior and what he has said to others, he then used his power and position to destroy Roger Reynolds and teach him a lesson for not keeping his family member employed. But logic would say that Roger Reynolds did the right thing. 

Then there was the incident over disclosure where Roger and Sheriff Jones were talking about maintaining records for the public. Roger Reynolds is a full-disclosure kind of guy, but Sherrif Jones wasn’t. As he said to Roger, “I don’t want someone sitting on their toilet to know how I’m spending my money. If you do it, I’ll have to do it too,” or something to that effect, according to the witnesses. Well, Roger Reynolds pushed for it anyway, so it’s at that point that the political war between them moved into all the ugliness that led to those seven phony indictments that were led by Channel 19, who started the story. (they’ll do a phony story for the Sheriff but not a legitimate story about Lakota schools, how about that)  Then Sheriff Jones pulled all his strings to set the indictments into motion to get rid of Roger Reynolds and put Bruce Jones in his place, the current fiscal officer of West Chester. I know Bruce Jones quite well. He was the campaign manager for Venessa Wells, who was running for the Lakota school board before she got so sick of the politics and wanted to drop off the slate card with party endorsement.

Venessa also received all the divorce information that led to the trouble with Matt Miller, the Lakota superintendent and the pillow talk about children that have him in so much trouble. Do you see how all this connects? Yet we don’t see Sheriff Jones indicting Miller. The law is used as a weapon to protect public employees from public management, not as an instrument of justice, and that is what has people so upset. I like Venessa; I like Bruce; I even like Sheriff Jones. In my experience, Sheriff Jones respects masculinity and tough people. But if he thinks he can get by with pushing people around, he certainly will. I’ve never had a problem with him, but I hear about all these terrible stories from just about everyone leaving people to wonder where the men are to defend against such bullies.                                                   

I am happy to report that the great Butler County Republican Party has endorsed Roger Reynolds for the upcoming election despite the seven Sheriff Jones indictments. This is even with Sheriff Jones being in the leadership of the Republican Party. The thing about politics is that people aren’t supposed to always get along. There are supposed to be fights and testing of the resolve for it to work, and Roger Reynolds has certainly shown himself to be tough and not back down from a fight.   It shouldn’t have cost him many thousands of dollars as he has to defend himself in court. At some point, Sheriff Jones owes Reynolds a lot of money to compensate him for the political hit job he has endeavored to utilize as an abuse of office to inflict catastrophic political damage to an innocent man. Nobody trusts the law when they indict Roger Reynolds but lets someone like Matt Miller go free. People see what’s going on. Despite trying to destroy Roger Reynolds out of political revenge, the Butler County Republican Party’s Central Committee did the right thing and voted to endorse Roger Reynolds anyway. So, there is good in the world. Sheriff Jones might not like it, but who cares.   He has put himself on the wrong side of history and obviously acted in ways that were not on the side of right. In public life, all kinds of people abuse their power to control and ruin other people’s lives. Roger Reynolds certainly isn’t one of them. And when it comes to standing up for what’s right, voting for Roger Reynolds on November 8th is undoubtedly a step in that direction. I’ll be voting for him proudly.  As to standing for what’s right, it’s not people who fail to defend innocent children, yet prosecute public officials who promote full disclosure who anybody should fear. There is no reason for men to hide from such bullies behind the skirts of their women while trying to impress them with talk of nail polish and feminine napkins on sale at Walgreens. It’s the bullies who should fear the men of Butler County. And as things stand now, it’s mainly the women who are the only ones standing up for anything.

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

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