The fact that the Republican U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Ohio, David DeVillers (a tRump appointee no less), had agents from the FBI make a bombshell arrest of Republican Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder and four other high-ranking political operatives of the Ohio GOP just four months before the presidential election leads me to believe that something remarkably strange is going on politically in the Buckeye State.
The arrests are the culmination of a large-scale bribery investigation that has been on-going since 2017. So my question is, why didn’t the Republican law enforcement officials wait until after November 3 to make the arrests? None of the suspects were going on the lam, drugs were not being brought into the country, weapons were not being sold in neighborhoods, and no child was at risk of being sexually exploited — so why the rush to arrest? Put another way, what difference would waiting another four months make in the scheme of things?
Take this from someone who has done the perp walk on more than one occasion, anyone who knows anything at all about federal investigations and prosecutions will tell you the feds are never, ever in a rush. Never. So why would they make arrests that will, without a doubt, impact on the upcoming presidential elections?
My personal opinion is that DeVillers (and the other law enforcement officials involved in executing the arrests in this case) are George Will “White Hat” type Republicans, meaning they’re decent, honest men who believe in the rule of law and the Constitution and have been sick to their stomachs over the direction tRump has been taking the country in the last three years, and this was their way of sending a message — one they had to know would impact the outcome of the election.
As the ugly headlines of greedy Ohio politicians working for and taking bribes from a big energy company (while passing legislation that screws the citizens of Ohio on their energy bills) continue to rain down in torrents in the coming months, there are probably going to be some former diehard Republicans who are going to be too embarrassed to even show up to the polls on Election Day. Good.
This scandal could quite literally turn Ohio from a red to a blue state in the upcoming national election, and perhaps keep it blue for years to come. Take my word for it, there are Democratic politicians who are already preparing to circulate petitions to run in some of the 21 statewide districts that will be vacated by Republicans who soon will vacationing for a couple of years — all expenses paid — at a “Club Fed.”
To show what a decent guy I am, I’ll give these scumbags a piece of free advice: As part of their guilty pleas (come on, the FBI had an informant on the inside wearing a wire, they’re all dead meat), they should negotiate to be allowed to serve their sentence at either the minimum-security prison camp adjacent to Eglin Air Force Base, or the camp in Montgomery, Alabama, where convicts are allowed to walk down to the lake and do a little fishing after they finish their daily chores.
And they should always remember what a Secret Service agent once told me: “One day you’ll look back on this and laugh.” It turned out to be true, albeit it did take a while. Man, oh man, we are indeed living in some very interesting times. More later.
4 Responses to “MANSFIELD: Highly Unusual and Indeed Suspect Timing”
Jeff Hess
Great piece, Mansfield.
You’re spot on.
Jeff
JP Larson
I’m no political expert, but I can’t imagine any other timing being more advantageous to Democratic candidates. The arrests happened 1.5 months before early voting starts (miliary/overseas), to give those folks something to chew on, and 3.5 months for election day voters to hear plenty as the Ohio media churns on this (I hope). My main hope is that state offices shift hard to more bluish tint and becomes the start of how we finally dismantle the GOP gerrymandering.
Harry Banks
Mansfield, right on time. I wholeheartedly agree with your analysis. Cleaving back to the party of Lincoln? They never left, don’t forget the Grant administration, and Ike did send federal troops to Little Rock, right? I’ll make my point after reading your “More later”.
Jerry Dolcini
Right On, Mansfield. While volunteering in Medina to gather petition signatures to fight against HB6 I was approached by a “Blocker” who offered to buy the 17 signatures on my clipboard. I laughed and asked him to sign but he said he was from another county. I asked if he were being paid and he said, “Yeah,” as he left.