Tag: Roger Reynolds

Roger Reynolds Has His Conviction Overturned on Appeals: When people like Fat Alvin use the power of government to destroy political rivals

It was a rigged, political case in Butler County. And the prosecutors wasted a lot of tax money on a personal hit job.

I wish people would listen.  I feel like that frustrated parent who has all the answers but has to stand by and watch their kids make dumb mistakes that cause them much pain and suffering anyway.  And if you care about everyone, it can be a harrowing experience.  But essentially, from the beginning, the prosecution against Roger Reynolds, the popular Butler County Auditor, was as flimsy of a case and motivated by the same intentions as the Fat Alvin case in New York against President Trump.  These are purely political cases where the prosecutors are trying to use legal warfare to take out political rivals.  In this case, it was elements of the Republican Party in Butler County, even extending into the Attorney General of Ohio to exert power and position within the party.  It had nothing to do with any actual crimes committed.  Roger Reynolds found himself having the law used against him in a weaponized format, something that happens more often than people would like to think, over disagreements regarding family connections and how tax money is spent, just theorizing on such spending.  And for that Roger Reynolds has had to pay a fortune in legal bills, lose over three years of his life professionally, during his prime income-building years, and was popularly elected into a very powerful auditor position only to be removed from office because of a conviction on a last minute charge tossed over the fence to attempt to get anything to stick against him to get a jury to put him in jail for 30 days and ruin his political career for the rest of his life.  The case had nothing to do with justice but everything to do with power, who controls the legal system, and how they can then use it to take out political rivals.  And nothing more.

On Monday, May 13th, 2024 after many years of fighting for his innocence, a 10th District Court of Appeals in Columbus reversed the conviction against Roger Reynolds from a few years earlier, bringing somewhat to an end the long ordeal that started for him back during Covid when some of the people from Roger’s office as auditor stopped coming to work over Covid rules.  Now I get Roger’s position. I’ve talked to him about it, and I am even more traditional regarding the COVID rules for employment.  Doctors don’t run our economy and when they stuck their noses into our business with all these new globalist Covid rules, they were way over the line.  It was the job of science to figure out how to stop COVID-19 and its spread with science.  Not to shut the world down with a bunch of new rules to establish a new normal.  And some of these kids then, and now, thought that meant they could all work from home to avoid spreading the virus.  When Roger had to deal with that trend in his office, he let people go for not coming to work, and that made people mad.  People then promised their family members that they had the power of the law at their back and could get revenge on Roger.  At that point, an attendance issue then became a big labor one where communist policies seep into the assumptions of a government workforce, and the power of government is then weaponized against that assumption. 

At that point, Sheriff Jones made it his mission to go after Roger Reynolds, spend money on investigations, and waste a lot of money in court proceedings to destroy Roger Reynolds’s life in court.  Many different charges were thrown in Roger’s way, with the power of the Attorney General being added to the mix, trying to make the former auditor look like a corrupt official who had abused his power of office for personal gain.  But nothing was sticking, and Roger was found innocent of all charges.  At the last minute, this issue with Lakota schools and a country club golf connection came up, and Roger suggested to the treasurer that some tax money being returned to the school be applied to a venture that he thought would be a good idea.  It was just a discussion about how to spend tax money.  But Sheriff Jones and the prosecutors threw the weight of their office to destroy the life of Roger Reynolds in precisely the same way that Fat Alvin has been doing to Trump.  Over the last few years, we’ve seen it happening more and more as these same tactics have been used nationwide.  It has been the collision of why people pursue big government jobs to have immense power over innocent people, which is the problem.  When government is sought and used to give power to people who otherwise wouldn’t have it, abuse of government then becomes the subject, and the warning of why we never want to give any people, no matter who they are, too much power through government to abuse others over a quest for power.  In most cases, even if the prosecutors get a conviction, they are being overturned on appeals.  But by the time a defendant spends years trying to prove their innocence, their lives are destroyed in the process.  So, even if they don’t go to jail, they are destroyed in the process.  Now that Roger Reynolds has had his conviction overturned, where does he go to get his reputation back?

I am proud to call Roger Reynolds a friend through all this.  I’ve told him this when I’ve seen him throughout this process.  I am proud of how tough he has stayed in proving his innocence.  I want to see him get back into elected office and do good work because when political enemies see you as that much of a threat, I want to see people like Roger sticking it to those powers to keep things honest.  I would hire Roger Reynolds before and after this appeals ruling because Roger is one of the good guys.  And in a world run by evil and malicious people, like Fat Alvin in New York is against Trump, they are the ones who need to be punished and be fired from government work whenever possible.  I remember the day the indictments came down against Roger and the people who called me to talk about it, very haughtily.  These were small-government conservatives who were impressed with Sheriff Jones’s power to drum up charges to essentially take down a rival within the Republican Party.  And I was surprised how many people played along with it because it was wrong.  I knew it was a crooked case from the beginning because I knew all the people involved and understood the rivalry in ways that weren’t reported in the media.  But what surprised me was how vicious the ordeal became, where the lawyers were the only ones who profited.  They are pleased to have millions of dollars wasted on their services over an issue that essentially was just a family rivalry within a political party.  And this is why we must always watch how people use government power, and why we can’t give too much of it to any one person.  Because they can’t handle the temptation to abuse it.  However, in the case of Roger Reynolds, he was always innocent of those ridiculous charges.  And it’s fantastic that the appeals court saw the case for what it was and reversed the conviction.  Justice still works, even if it takes a while, and a lot of money has to be spent on it to get it.  Let’s go back to dueling, as I say more often.  It was a lot cheaper, and the real bad guys usually went away, saving taxpayers a lot of money in the future.

Rich Hoffman

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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

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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

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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

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Making The Butler County Republican Party Great Again: People don’t want to think of Boss Hogg when they think of politics

At first, I thought of the complaints as leftovers from contentious issues that have divided the party, such as the Thomas Hall battle with Matt King and the obvious rift with Sheriff Jones and Roger Reynolds. I tend to view those kinds of things as family squabbles within a household. Usually, people get over things and move on, which was happening with that nice event for Thomas Hall. But when people who don’t usually deal with the Butler County Republican Party are complaining, they don’t know about the details, only their experience with it. And that experience has not lived up to the reputation of the past, where Butler County had a lot of volunteers, high engagement, and the kind of national reputation that made President Trump want to come and campaign in the area. But the reputation that was developing, because of all the rifts from leadership that was flowing out into state and federal politics, was not a good one. For a community of over 400,000 people, small-town politics was back in fashion where a few party leaders had turned the wonderful Butler County Republican Party into something that would make Boss Hogg from the Dukes of Hazzard blush. And that was embarrassing to hear. I had been hoping that after the 2022 election, many of those trends would level out and that much of the problem had been not having the unifying factor of Trump to rally behind. Without Trump, the party has reverted back to the differences that it had during the early 2000s. But now that Trump was running again, my hope was that the party would unite again behind him. However, this time there appeared to be a different kind of problem. Many older people in leadership now are in the way of younger and hungrier personalities, and those elements feel restricted in their ambitions, which is not a good thing for future growth.

This problem reminded me of the Cincinnati Bengals and how the Brown family just can’t get out of their own way for success. Sure, they have had some good players over the years, but they just have not been able to put together a successful string of seasons to show fabulous organizational presence. They went to the Super Bowl last year and had a pretty good season. They had the whole off-season to get better and improve on the previous year with essentially the same players. The Bengals invested in a new offensive line, but the results were not good. The quarterback, Joe Burrow, has been sacked more than any other NFL quarterback. So the Bengals didn’t get better because the problems with the Bengals were in their coaching and front office. Not the players on the field. So if leadership was always the problem, the Bengals didn’t help themselves by investing in an offensive line; if they didn’t have the kind of coaches who could take advantage of those improvements, then, of course, the problem would still present itself as a problem. Obviously, the Butler County Republican Party was having the same issues. Many new talents are coming into the party who can network and connect with the world. There are lots of MAGA Republicans across the state who are newly engaged in politics and are looking for jobs to do. But then, when they interact with Butler County, we have this Boss Hogg image that people have of our elderly leadership, and it turns them off, and it’s starting to show to the outside world. 

It was good to see a nice GOP event in Butler County dedicated to a victory celebration for Thomas Hall at the Majors Barn. It was a tough election season, and some hard feelings emerged during that race, which clearly split the Butler County Republican Party in half. But several people supported Matt King, who ran against Thomas for the 46th Representative Ohio seat. They were there to congratulate Thomas and to show leadership in coming together as a party now that the election was over. There were people there that I could speak with where things got pretty heated, and we had some nice conversations, and everyone made up. I know everyone couldn’t come, people were busy, but you could tell a lot about Republican Party leadership by who was there and who wasn’t. I can tell you someone, who was there, Roger Reynolds, was, and we had a nice conversation about the horrendous problem that was happening to him. I asked him if Sheriff Jones was going to pay for all his massive legal bills for the phony trial coming up for him in December of 2022, which to me looks like a complete political hit job. That is not the kind of thing that makes the Republican Party better, but something that has made it worse. Roger kind of smiled at me and shrugged his shoulders. He’s one of the good guys, and his only focus was on getting that mess behind him so he could live his life again. And Thomas and I spoke about the new Speaker of the House and what an excellent relationship those two had together, which was encouraging. Good things were happening. But I also received reports from some of the state people and the federal people who deal with Republican parties all over the country. Their impression of the Butler County Republican Party was not a good one. There were a lot of complaints about engagement, phone calls, appreciation letters, and just basic organization, and while I kept up a happy face inside, I was pretty mad. I am proud of the Butler County Republican Party and don’t like hearing people say bad things about it. 

Hey, I get it; we all get older. You look in the mirror and what looks back is a person falling apart. Age can be cruel. And when the dog doesn’t respect you, and your wife is complaining about you leaving your socks in the corner by the bathroom, and nobody thinks you’re all that special, it can feel great to go to a Party meeting and have everyone worship you for all the things you have done in your life. It’s hard to be big enough to get out of the way and let younger people step in and show their ambitions.   That has always been the Bengals problem; the Brown family has always gotten in the way of its own success. And that is what is happening with the Butler County Republican Party. It’s not just from the direction of the police, but there are commissioners, trustees, and many others who are holding positions as placeholders, then getting mad at the youth for nipping at their heels. And my advice to them, the elders, is if you really love the Republican Party, you would want to do the right thing, and that is to get out of the way and let those with the most ambition and freshest eyes step into leadership positions. Sometimes being a great leader is in getting out of the way. And hanging on to the past and living off a reputation to hide the aging process from your own eyes isn’t love. It’s selfish, and the only result is that you become the latest Boss Hogg in the world and become known not for good deeds but for corruption and ill-advised political fights that ruin everything a lifetime took to build.

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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Abuse of Power in Butler County: And it’s not Roger Reynolds doing it

I’ve talked about it before; I sympathize with the Steve Bannon contempt of congress case that is happening at the end of July 2022 more than other cases because it’s personal for me. I don’t communicate with him a lot, be we occasionally do. He has shared some of my articles on social media, and we have exchanged text messages on occasion, so it’s more personal to me to see what is happening to him than it would be if I didn’t know something about the person himself. As I watch him go to federal court every day and the judge lecture the defense about not making a circus out of the case, it is bewildering to think that Eric Holder was found in contempt of Congress in 2012, yet no punishment ever came his way. But because Bannon is a member of the Trump White House, he is being treated like a criminal, guilty before proven innocent, just by association. And all this has made me think of the case of George Lang several years ago, who was facing jail time just for knowing John Boehner, who was poised to be speaker of the house, and the Democrats wanted to sink him through his friends. George, of course, was found innocent, but it was scary for sure. We could all point to misconduct in court proceedings that were purely politically motivated and shake our heads. But we often don’t say much about it because we fear that injustice being turned in our own direction, so we just move along and try to ignore it. Yet, I see the same thing happening to Roger Reynolds in Butler County, where political rivals are accusing him of corruption in his office. And I just don’t see it in any of the indictments, for which a 6th came out just recently to add to the pile, intent on knocking him out of office. It’s an election year, some rivals want Roger out as a political character, and they’ll do what they must do to sink him. 

Believe me; I’d rather talk about a million other things than this case, which I’ve discussed in detail. I’d prefer to leave all this mess to the courts to decide but based on a ridiculous article by Jennifer Edwards Baker from Fox 19 about the details of the 6th indictment against Roger Reynolds, which now involves Lakota schools, the issue is so preposterous that we just can’t ignore it. Obviously, the prosecution in the case against Roger, much like the case against Steve Bannon, doesn’t have much to go on, so they are prosecuting the case in the court of public opinion through reporters who might sway public sentiment ahead of upcoming elections. And that is the entire goal of the proceedings. And we can’t ignore the case because it could be any of us falsely accused. It’s not that I love Roger Reynolds. I think he has been an excellent auditor. But he’s made political enemies over the years, which is all part of the blood sport of politics. I think he could handle many things better regarding social interactions, but I recognize that he’s an A-Type personality, as is Sheriff Jones, and a clash among those types of people is bound to happen. I see it as more of a human resource problem than a legal one. If those two people have problems, they should resolve them in some other way than in political tricks ahead of elections and wasting the time of courts for personal vendettas, which is clearly the case with this indictment against Roger involving Lakota schools.   

The Fox 19 article says many things that could easily be misconstrued, leaving out all the relevant factors, such as all the axes to grind among public employees, especially those who handle money. The indictment indicates that Lakota schools were due to get back $750,000 from the auditor’s office. Roger suggested to the treasurer Jenni Logan that they spend that money on the Four Bridges Golf Course in a partnership. A whole series of emails between Jenni and the school attorney show an interest in Roger’s proposal. Ultimately, they decided it probably wasn’t a good idea, so the concept was rejected. That was back in 2017, a long time ago. So why is this story coming out now? Jenni is retiring on August 1st, 2022, and this is something for the road that fits into the motivations of Sheriff Jones and his political needs regarding putting someone else in the seat of the Butler County Auditor. So, they completely made up the word “coercion” in the indictment and tried to build a case that forced Roger to prove he wasn’t guilty of it due to pressure from public opinion, rather than proving that Roger actually used coercion in any way during the proposed spending of the money. When people see $750,000, they might think that’s a lot of money, but in reality, within the budget of Lakota, it’s much less than 1% of their expenditures and is actually about 11 or 12 teachers. Teachers make a lot of money, despite what the unions say about compensation. I can easily see how Roger would suggest that Jenni spend the money on something more useful, like an elevated lifestyle for the students of Lakota, rather than just blowing it on more activist teachers. Jenni must have thought the idea a good one because she pursued it through emails which are part of the case. But she did so voluntarily. That is not coercion; it’s a discussion among professional adults. 

All this doesn’t change my opinion of Roger Reynolds. As I indicated, I could tell stories all day long about court cases that were purely intended to destroy a political rival and had nothing to do with actual justice. I mentioned a few here based on personal experience. But it’s quite common as a practice. I’m all for law and order, but justice should be blind. What is going on with Roger Reynolds is that laws are being applied against a political rival instead of uniformly applied. It’s an abuse of authority, but it’s not Roger doing the abuse. It’s the accusers, not the recipient. I’ll still be voting for Roger Reynolds in the upcoming election. All the people participating in the investigation against him should be trying to work with Roger instead of getting rid of him over their personal problems they might have. Destroying people’s lives is not the way to solve a problem. It might be common, but it’s certainly not right.

The courts are not private playgrounds to bully people into fight resolution that might have been settled on a playground when everyone was kids. As adults, judges, attorneys, and media bottom feeders are not replacements for fists to the face. When the courts are abused, as they are clearly being abused in this Roger Reynolds case and the case of Steve Bannon, that gives politics and our justice system a bad name, and everyone involved should be ashamed of themselves, as far as I’m concerned, all six of these indictments against Roger Reynolds are political witch hunts. If I had been Roger, I would have handled things differently, where there was no question as to blurred lines. But social mistakes aren’t against the law. Intent to commit a crime is, and to assume intent where there clearly isn’t any evidence, just for the political theater of altering an election is despicable at best and gross abuse of authority at the very least. 

Rich Hoffman

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Butler County’s Version of Liz Cheney: As Thomas Hall said of Sheriff Jones, “he’s a bully, using his office for political motives until people stand up to him”

When I first heard about this sixth charge from the Butler County Sheriff’s Department, as they have been investigating Roger Reynolds as the auditor for several accusations of corruption, I thought it was ridiculous before. But now, it had become just as much of a kangaroo court as the January 6th Commission for which Liz Cheney was leading in an attempt to keep President Trump off the 2024 presidential ticket. Roger Reynolds has been an excellent auditor in Butler County for a long time, and he has a political rival in Sheriff Jones who wants to show him how much political power he has, and the two have been at it for well over a year now. And instead of fighting in a parking lot somewhere, this is how modern bullies fight; they use the legal system as a weapon against their political opponents. I watched in bewilderment how a grown man like Sherrif Jones could have such a press conference announcing so much of nothing as he did with this latest stack of accusations against Roger, declaring that this latest one on the pile was some kind of big crime of corruption in line with the recent case of P.G. Sittenfeld from Cincinnati who was just found guilty of similar charges. In Roger’s case, he is nothing like the dirty politicians like P.G. Sittenfeld or the very dirty politics that occurred in the FirstEnergy case in Columbus, which isn’t about money at all. The FirstEnergy controversy is an attack by the political left against the Ohio energy grid and using political infighting among Republicans to hide it. When you see cases like this, where a Sheriff is so personally involved in finding anything to knock off a political rival within the Republican Party, you can tell easily that it’s not a case about the crime but about power and control over other people.

I know the characters involved in the new indictment, such as Jenni Logan, the treasurer from Lakota schools. She stated she thought Roger Reynolds was asking Lakota to invest money owed back to the District into a golf academy at Four Bridges. Ben Dibble, who was president of the school board around that time in 2017, was involved as well, according to the liberal activist from Fox 19, Jennifer Edwards Baker, who would love to erode away the very good Republican Party of Butler County any way possible. She’s been at it for a while, and area Republicans have been targeted for anything resembling impropriety. Of course, that’s tough because many of the modern Republicans are not like they were back in the Michael Fox days or when Bob Shelley was a trustee in Liberty Township. Lakota has their own problems, and if there was some incidental conversation about a golf academy from money coming back out of the auditor’s office, which Roger Reynolds represents, it was likely out of polite conversation. I’ve seen the lunch circuit Jenni Logan has been a part of for a long time, and I understand how talk can be made. For a while, especially before Covid, almost everywhere I went to lunch, I saw Jenni Logan and Matt Miller, the Lakota superintendent, there talking with other people. I can easily see in such meetings how talk about how money should be spent would occur. Is that legal or illegal? Well, suppose we start picking pepper out of fly droppings like this over legal issues meant to show the sheriff’s department’s power over things people say and go from there. In that case, we will likely create a business and political environment where nobody can talk to anybody about anything anywhere. Knowing the characters involved in this latest indictment, it didn’t change a thing about my opinion about Roger Reynolds. I will still happily vote for him and support him in the upcoming elections. I care more about what good of a job he has done for my community than what kind of political enemies he has made along the way. And after that press conference by Jones, I could only conclude that he has now become Butler County’s own version of Liz Cheney, who hates President Trump so much that she would attempt to bend the law and waste endless amounts of money in investigations just to keep him out of the political theater.

The level of ridiculousness really overflowed when Sheriff Jones tried to bring up Thomas Hall, who is a current State Rep running for the 46th District, which now includes Liberty Township.   Jones indicated he was continuing to investigate Thomas Hall for conflicts of interest even though a recent Keith Faber report from way back in 2018 and 2019 failed to show anything wrong, even under a microscope of a state audit generated based on what people “say.” Those old-style political hits aren’t going to work in this new world where people have seen so much done against President Trump. The public is much more savvy about these things than they used to be. In reaction to Sheriff Jones indicating he was going to continue investigating Thomas Hall, whom Jones is supporting a rival to run against Hall in the primary on August 2nd, Hall simply called Jones a “bully.” Hall said specifically to the Journal News, “this whole thing is ridiculous, for the sheriff to want an investigation I think is wrong, using his office for political motives when there’s an election 19 days from today. (when the statement was made and referring to the August 2nd primary race)  The sheriff is a bully and will continue to do what he wants until people stand up to him.” That’s one of the reasons I’m supporting Thomas Hall; he’s a good, sharp young man who can handle the heat in the kitchen and make a wonderful meal with it. And the sheriff doesn’t like him because he won’t kiss the ring and allow Jones to be a token kingmaker. 

I’ve talked to Roger Reynolds, and I know why Jones doesn’t like him, at least from Roger’s perspective. Roger runs a great auditor’s office in Butler County. People say all kinds of things, and if the roles were reversed, Sheriff Jones could easily find himself on an indictment list based on “what people say.” People could say that Jones is a bully because he wants to put the fear of the law into local trustees who vote on budgets from which his family and friends benefit. Jones has family and friends employed all over Butler County, and he doesn’t like it when they get laid off for not showing up for work. I know Roger pushed for more transparency on how money gets shown to the public, and Jones wasn’t a fan. And from there, their relationship, which had been a good one, fell apart. Those things happen; I see it as a human resource issue of county employees fighting over power and prestige. But when that hatred escalates to the level where a sheriff is willing to abuse his power to the extent he has with Roger Reynolds and Thomas Hall, purely over political power within the Republican Party, then it becomes a big problem. What we really have is a Butler County version of Liz Chaney. This name used to have significant meaning in the Republican Party until she was revealed to be a liberal hack by the Trump administration. And the phony hearings happening now in Washington D.C. are the same phony hearings that have been thrown at Roger Reynolds because he has pushed for more transparency and accountability for public officials. Not less. And for all the reasons that the political establishment hates Trump, they hate people like Roger Reynolds and Thomas Hall. And when it comes time to vote for them, I will happily pick Roger and Thomas every time over the opinions of Sheriff Jones. 

Rich Hoffman

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The Watergate of Butler County: When politicians try to get rid of other politicians by abusing the law

There have been many problems with the Roger Reynolds case in Butler County, Ohio since Fox 19 did a story during the 2021 election season featuring several prominent Republicans in a corruption scandal. One of which was a guy I have known for a long time to be an excellent auditor for the county in Roger Reynolds. Reviewing some of the details of the case, I considered it a simple land dispute among long-time neighbors. Reynolds has lived in Butler County much of his life, and sometimes, relationships like Thanksgiving dinners can get wobbly. And when you have family involved and emotions, and you are trying to be a public servant still, sometimes the gray areas can blend in the lines a bit. But as I said, when I think of Roger Reynolds, I think of high quality, competent public service, the best that government can offer. I have always been and continue to be very proud to have Roger Reynolds as the auditor for my county. I am proud of how the public officials generally conduct themselves in Butler County. I understand everyone doesn’t get along all the time, but for government, I think the public officials in Butler County are some of the best in the country, so I took exception to the hit piece by Fox 19 in Cincinnati. And how that real estate case ended up with charges from a grand jury of three felony indictments and two misdemeanors related to corruption, which could lead to 7 years in jail, was baffling. That is until I read a fantastic book by Geoff Shepard about Watergate called The Nixon Conspiracy. 

We all know Watergate, the breaking in of the DNC headquarters by G. Gordan Liddy and others on behalf of President Nixon to do opposition research. As it turned out, Nixon was innocent of the whole thing. In documents released in 2018 finally by Geoff Shepard, who worked on the case for 50 years trying to defend President Nixon from the embarrassment pushed upon him, we have learned that the prosecution didn’t like Nixon. They conspired with the law to get rid of him. Nixon never knew what the prosecution had given by way of a “road map” to the Grand Jury. And that forced him to react in all kinds of ways that looked guilty, leading the court of public opinion to put so much pressure on Nixon that he just resigned for the country’s own good. And after getting to know the situation involved in this Roger Reynolds case, that is precisely what has been going on against him. The law has been abused by many political rivals, the mushy Republicans who just don’t like Roger for several reasons, which I’ll get into. But they have taken the complaint of someone and blown it out of proportion to fulfill a politically motivated manipulation of the law and gross abuse of power that really is unforgivable. How do I know? Well, I know the players on all sides. I generally like them all. I view the situation more like a human resource problem than a legal one. But the abuse of power and manipulation of the legal system to be weaponized is another matter. This one goes all the way up to the Attorney General of Ohio, David Yost. The pressure campaign coming out of Yost’s office was essentially the same applied to Nixon. 

I wouldn’t have let myself think any of that was possible until I found out about the Grand Jury submission by the prosecutors in the Nixon case that was completely fabricated. We all would hope that journalism would have figured all that out a long time ago. It shouldn’t have taken 50 years to figure it all out. But it makes you wonder how often that kind of thing goes on, especially by those who knew they got away with destroying a president. They tried it again with President Trump. And apparently, that tactic is used all over the United States by politically motivated prosecutors and law enforcement that think it’s their right to override the voters’ opinion by destroying the lives of the politicians they elect, just because they don’t like them. In Roger’s case, he’s really good at his job, which certainly makes politicians who don’t want to work that hard to be upset. Roger is a total disclosure guy who opens his books to show all how he spends money. And many don’t want to open their books up in such a way.

Additionally, politics can be friendly. Everyone shakes hands at the picnics. They hire each other’s family members out of kindness. That is until Covid comes along and re-wrote the attendance rules. Roger’s office let go some of those family members because they stopped showing up for work, and of course, that upset other elected officeholders who decided that they’d get Roger back. Now to me, that’s an easy problem to solve. People can shake hands and smooth things out. But things get out of control when they take the law into their own hands to try to destroy people’s lives out of pure meanness. Clearly, David Yost and his advocates wanted to force Roger Reynolds out of office just as Nixon had been pushed. Roger has done the right thing and stayed on the job to fight this out. And this past week, the Supreme Court supported him.

At the heart of these accusations of corruption is an audiotape, which I have included here. On it, Roger supposedly asked for a 200K consulting fee to help navigate the developers through this real estate endeavor. I’ve listened to that recording many times, and I only hear a very astute professional talking business with businesspeople. Now for some career politicians who want to destroy the life of a guy who is a pain in their neck, I think they heard what they wanted to hear. When you read the paper trail of the case against Roger Reynolds, it becomes quite clear that there are a lot of “feelings” articulated in the accusations. This is what courts are for, and without all the political tampering that has been injected into this case, resolutions would smooth out on their own. But what has happened is that the case was taken over by political activism in how rival employees try to sabotage each other in the workplace. And it is not reflective of the Butler County Republican Party. Instead, the pressure of an outstanding elected representative in Roger Reynolds has challenged many who aren’t so good and don’t like it and have plotted his demise. And that’s not how things are supposed to work in politics. Aside from the pending case, which is Roger’s business with the other parties involved, he is also up for reelection, making this recording all the more critical. I’ll be voting for Roger Reynolds again. I think he has done a fantastic job. I like his rival in this election, Bruce Jones. I have a lot of good history with Bruce. But on this election, the guy on the recording included here is the kind of guy I want doing the business of auditing in Butler County. And if he makes other politicians mad with the pressure of his greatness, then that’s all the better and a job very well done.

Rich Hoffman

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The Indictment of Roger Reynolds: Is it the pursuit of justice, or a political hit

I brag all the time about how great the Republican Party is in Butler County, and with the corruption indictment of Roger Reynolds that is the hot story this week, I still feel that way. Yet, I’ve known Roger for more than a decade, and I know him to be an excellent auditor for the people who elected him. As I said before, I view the land story that Channel 19 covered back in September of 2021 as a hit piece by Jennifer Edwards, who looks to target Republicans often in stories pitting people against each other to make news, not just reporting it. Her hit piece against Roger and other members of the Liberty Township trustees was obviously political, to attack the Republican brand ahead of the November election. Essentially as I see it, the Roger Reynolds story is one where old family entanglements can get mushy with the duties of an elected office. I find much of it hard to believe, and I think the story is mainly about emotions than logic. But for me, it doesn’t erase all the good work Roger has done over the years. And as I always say, the law is the same at 9 AM as it is at 9 PM or any other day of the week or year. If Roger broke the law, then the law should apply. However, watching Sheriff Jones’ face glow with glee during the indictment announcement made me think of some hypotheticals. Jones was too happy about the indictment, and some of the ways he said words in his presentation triggered questions that are worth consideration since what we are all talking about here are the ethics of an elected office and whether or not Roger Reynolds actually broke any laws, or that the case is a legal dispute between two parties over land. Did Roger abuse his office? Well, if we conclude that he did, doesn’t it open up a whole lot of questions about Sheriff Jones?

I’ve often thought of Sheriff Jones as a great asset to Butler County. But, since Trump left office and Joe Biden has been in the presidency, Jones has turned more into a Democrat than the guy who plays a Republican on TV and at public speeches. The way that Jones went after Congressman Thomas Hall over a voting record, with name-calling and sheer intimidation in public, comes to mind as an abuse of power of an elected office. Voters picked Thomas, yet the Sheriff made quite a public spectacle out of destroying his credibility on WLW radio to many thousands of people. I thought Thomas defended himself well, but the question remains about Sheriff Jones, what was he thinking in doing so? Was he trying to intimidate an officeholder, to exert power over the Republican Party of Butler County in ways that didn’t represent the voters? Surely not. But based on the kinds of things that Jones said in his press conference about the indictment of Roger Reynolds, doubt was indeed cast on the situation. Why would Sheriff Jones be so happy to bring about an indictment of a fellow Republican? His glee sounded as if he were a Democrat about to put a Republican in jail over some bogus charge, an allegation anybody could make against anybody. Given how the Sheriff treated Thomas Hall, might it not be logical to conclude that the Sheriff took a particular interest in the Reynolds case for some strategic move? For a local land dispute to make it to the Attorney General of Ohio directly, some political investment would have to be involved, raising eyebrows. 

Then there was the strange action on Sheriff Jones’ mask politics, where he had been leading the country against mandates. Suddenly, a few weeks ago, as the new school board at Lakota was getting set to vote to remove mask mandates, and the teacher’s union was all upset about it, Sheriff Jones flipped his position. It was an extraordinary move for him. What was going on? Well, I know more than I’m letting on here. But for the sake of the hypotheticals of this evolving case, questions are good to ask, especially in public figures who are declaring injustice among long-time Republicans in the team-building of party politics. I remember years ago when I published the pay rates of the local police departments, and I was shocked by how many family members Sheriff Jones had in many townships. It brought a question to my mind about Sheriff Jones himself and his relationship with members of Congress, senators, and area trustees. What was he really saying when he bragged about beating down some politician like Thomas Hall on city-wide radio? “Don’t get on my bad side. Or the same thing will happen to you.”  Whether or not that was the intention, I can say that I know many politicians who feel that way. Was that feeling created on purpose by the Sheriff? Is that part of his brand within the party? And is he really a Democrat trying to infiltrate the Republican Party with liberalism disguised as good ol’ fashion police work? 

Watching Jones stumble over the word “start” in his press conference, I couldn’t help but wonder if he was getting stuck trying to justify to himself how the investigation into Reynolds even started. By the way, I watched his body language. He acted like a guy who knew he was doing something wrong yet was trying to hide it behind justice. Thinking of all these things, I couldn’t help but wonder if some family member of Jones had worked in the office of Roger Reynolds and maybe had a falling out like many employees do with their bosses. With so much family on the government payroll, it would certainly be a conflict of interest if Jones was out in the county intimidating public officials into behaving the way he wanted them to, to protect his family members employed by some of those politicians. And if that were the case, which it may or may not be, how would it be different from what Jones was accusing Reynolds of doing, based on a Channel 19 report, meant to smear area Republicans and refer the investigation up the food chain to the Attorney General’s office, and smear the headlines all over the national news? It comes out looking like a lot of “unlawful use of authority” to me and many spoonfuls of “conflict of interest.”

If the law was broken, everyone should pay for their incursions. If Roger is guilty, then he is guilty. I would be surprised if he were, but I’ve seen plenty of railroad cases before, and this whole issue has the smell of a political hit. It looks like some kind of revenge scheme that is being hidden behind some token law and order façade. I hope that’s not the case. But if Roger is guilty, then where do we draw the line between public life and protecting family concerns? Roger might have made mistakes with his case because of family entanglements, things that he wouldn’t usually find himself involved in. But couldn’t the same be said when an officeholder, such as a sheriff, intimidates officeholders who employ family members? And what happens if there is some termination of employment? Would the Sheriff get personally involved? Would he retaliate? Well, he has shown the signs of that behavior. I’m sure we’ll find out. For now, I feel I need to defend my political party in my hometown from this embarrassment that the Sheriff has communicated to the world. Should we be mad at Roger? Or should we be angry at the Sheriff? Well, I want to see all wrongdoers get punished for their crimes. But are we talking about crime here, or are we talking about revenge? Time will tell, but politics is a blood sport, and to my way of thinking, I think these kinds of debates are necessary to make the best party possible under the most divisive circumstances that may emerge. 

Rich Hoffman

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