CLEVELAND, OH – If you’re like most Ohioans reading my EJBNEWS headline the revelation that your governor’s first name is “Richard” and middle name is “Michael” is a surprise. But the names Richard Michael DeWine are on “Mike DeWine’s” title to his home, drivers license and the attorney directory for the Supreme Court of Ohio. He’s been running for and holding elected office under a pseudonym in a state where election laws require candidates to seek office under the same name that’s on the drivers license they show deputy registrars to vote. They are among some of the state’s laws that didn’t work for this Irish Catholic politician; so he didn’t enforce them.
If Richard Michael DeWine’s not straight up about his “real name” then thoughtful Ohioans should have very hard questions about the 100,000 coronavirus infected estimate he offered as the basis for illegally shutting down and disrupting the state’s primary election and economy. Are nearly 12 million Ohioans being asked to “shelter in place” over a lie told by a duty-exceeding governor with no legal authority to suspend any general law?
It’s been more than two weeks since DeWine floated the 100,000 coronavirus infected estimate. Since then 442 Ohioans have been “identified” as carrying the coronavirus. 104 hospitalizations. 7 dead. The recovery rate in this state is over 95 percent.
Taking normal doses of vitamins, minerals and a zinc supplement boost daily keeps your body’s immune system fed and fighting coronavirus and most every other “normal” virus or bacteria we encounter. You want to keep your lungs dry and free from mucus and inflammation. An herbal supplement like “Astragalus” is excellent for its immune enhancing and mucus drying properties.
The bottom line is the ailments that come from this SARS or coronavirus are highly-treatable. More people in the U.S. and worldwide have died from the flu. It’s understood that people with nutrition-starved bodies and weakened immune systems would be more affected than members of the general population. 12 million being told not to leave their homes over 7 dead Ohioans is not rational.
President Donald Trump has offered that this SARS or “Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome” as a coronavirus is different than the other ones we’ve encountered because it’s man made. Even though he may be right, and that all the “shelter in place” drama is unnecessary, Trump’s got a credibility problem after three years of being dismantled as a liar that’s made his words nearly irrelevant.
Citizens are halfway listening to politically-suspicious governors like DeWine they don’t really know. They’re barely listening to reporters with un-American names working for foreign media owners Trump has correctly identified as peddlers of “fake news.” Trevor Noah is a South African living in the U.S. on a green card who has no right to vote in any state’s elections. Like the producers of Russia Today, Noah and his producers should be required to register as foreign agents with the U.S. Department of Justice under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
DeWine can claim the decisions he directed his health director, Dr. Amy Acton, to make reduced his 100,000 estimated coronavirus carriers to significantly less, but there’s no proof the estimate was real and the only authentication is in his own words. Because he’s had a longer political career than many of the young and foreign born reporters covering him have been alive, adults or even residents of the nation, DeWine’s words are being taken at face value instead of questioned.
It’s not the job of reporters to praise duty-exceeding elected officials for “doing a great job.” History didn’t begin with their “new” careers as “know it all” talking heads. [NOTE: DeWine joined politicians like former President Gerald Ford, Ross Perot and others in submitting columns to my Political Reporter newspaper from 1994 -1997]
The reality is DeWine’s “shelter in place” demands on Ohoians could be some publicity-motivated bullshit he made up like he’s done at least twice in the past. The problem is no other voice but his is being heard.
DeWine was the state’s attorney general in May 2012 when he flew into Warren, Ohio with Bureau of Criminal Investigation (BCI) employees to shut down 8 spas whose Asian Buddhist owners he’d recklessly accused of operating human trafficking rings. Activist local citizens funded by Raymond Wean Foundation money wanted the businesses shut down and the “human trafficking angle” was their hook into using law enforcement to achieve the goal.
These good citizens didn’t like the “image” of Warren being a destination location for men who enjoyed spa bathing. DeWine wanted the political support and publicity. No one cares about the Asian Buddhist vote.
Anti-spa organizers operated next door to my downtown Warren restaurant. The bottom line for the organizers was that Asian Buddhist immigrants smeared as pimps and “mama sans” by right-wing Catholics were an easy “alien” target in a Catholic-controlled county.
All of the duties of Ohio’s Attorney General are found in Chapter 109 of the Revised Code. None of them authorized DeWine to assign BCI employees even as “law enforcement officers” to investigate citizens who entered spas that were operating lawfully within the city’s boundaries.
DeWine’s “human trafficking” duty as Ohio’s attorney general in 2012 was found in Section 109.645 of the Revised Code. In it state lawmakers specifically instructed the attorney general to “train” peace officers across Ohio on six procedures for investigating and handling violations of Section 2905.32 of the Revised Code. It exists under the heading, “Trafficking in persons” and was enacted on June 27, 2012; a month after his May 2012 Warren raid.
So when DeWine authorized BCI employees to place surveillance cameras outside businesses Warren officials had licensed to operate, and authorized customers to enter, they were knowingly and recklessly exceeding the authority of the ‘training” jobs they held as he misdirected them to obstruct the city’s duly-enacted home rule laws. Specifically, DeWine had violated R.C. 109.541(1).
“No state official shall command, order, or direct an investigator to perform any duty or service that is not authorized by law.”
DeWine had no “reasonable articulable suspicion” that the men entering the legally-licensed spas were buying sex; or if the Asian women employed in them were “human trafficking” victims. The surveillance cameras BCI agents installed outside the facilities to spy on spa customers were unconstitutional and 4th Amendment violating. DeWine acted as if the Supreme Court of the United States’ ruling in Katz v. United States 1967 didn’t exist when he misdirected BCI employees to install them.
In Katz FBI agents wiretapped a telephone booth and listened to bookie Charles Katz placing bets and arrested him. The Supreme Court in 1967 told law enforcement officers the nation’s streets are “constitutionally protected areas” where citizens have a reasonable expectation of privacy even in public telephone booths. Not surveillance. Not automatic license plate scans. Not warrantless investigations of a business’ patrons by unauthorized BCI employees. DeWine has fostered just the opposite of Katz as a law enforcement environment in this “surveillance state.”
In 2011 DeWine’s misuse of BCI employees to track men to their homes and families to intimidate them into answering questions was remniscent of Adolph Hitler’s secret “stasi” police and John Edgar Hoover and Cartha DeLoach’s lawless control of the FBI. Right out of his “Mein Kampf’ playbook, DeWine’s misdirected BCI “agents” were using sexual intimidation as a law enforcement tool to build “cases” against Asian Buddhist aliens built on exceeded duties and violated rights. His duty-exceeding acts were a reminder that Irish Catholics backed Hitler’s Nazi’s against Irish Protestants during World War II.
I shot pool at the bar that shared an entrance with one of the spas BCI employees investigated. The idea that pictures of my image, car, license plates and a file with information I don’t know about could be stored in the attorney general’s office underscores the extent of DeWine’s unconstitutional and duty-exceeding acts. It’s especially so since these unlawful law enforcement tactics are banned in the 4th Amendment and in federal laws DeWine’s chosen to not read and obey.
The 1974 Privacy Act pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 552a makes it unlawful for a non-disclosed system of records to exist in any government agency. It makes the release of the privacy-protected information governments store on private individuals unlawful without their written permission. BCI agents operated with no legal authority to install surveillance cameras and access the NCIC or LEADS databases to investigate individuals entering businesses Warren officials had inspected, permitted and issued Certificates of Business Occupancy to exist upon receipt of payment.
Warren attorney Gary D. Rich and I share the exact same birth date and he represented the two spa operators whose businesses didn’t close. He knew from the beginning the case was going nowhere and that city prosecutor Greg Hicks couldn’t charge the spa operators. Neither could Trumbull County Prosecutor Dennis Watkins.
Instead of prosecuting DeWine and the BCI investigators for exceeding the duties of their public offices, and violating the constitutional rights of the falsely-accused Asian business owners and their employees under the color of law, both Hicks and Watkins engaged in federal misprision of felony law violations by ignoring their 18 U.S.C. 4 duties to protect the rights of the business owners and their employees. They covered for DeWine and his errant state workers. Cops split the $108,000 in cash from DeWine’s raid as “uncollected” funds.
U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Ohio Steve Dettelbach was busy prosecuting the Security & Exchange Commission’s complaint against Diebold’s Walden O’Dell in 2011 for bribing Russian government officials from his Moscow office while selling electronic voting equipment in states like Ohio, Illinois and South Carolina. Enforcing 18 U.S.C. 4 against DeWine, Watkins and Hicks wasn’t on his office’s radar.
“Whoever, having knowledge of the actual commission of a felony cognizable by a court of the United States, conceals and does not as soon as possible make known the same to some judge or other person in civil or military authority under the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.”
Richard Cordray had every right to ram each Ohioan’s death from fentanyl or a heroin overdose down DeWine’s throat in their 2018 campaign to lead the state as governor. DeWine had defeated him in 2010 for attorney general. There was no overdosing crisis when Cordray’s term ended on December 31, 2010 and 84 Ohioans died of narcotic overdoses that year.
DeWine was in office for 73 days as Ohio’s attorney general when he identified Dr. James Lundeen as a “drug dealer” and directed BCI employees to raid his 12 clinics in and near Portsmouth on March 15 and 16, 2011. Lundeen hadn’t been under investigation by Cordray and there was no complaint against him before the Ohio Medical Board that had been directed to the licensing body by a patient who’d complained about his treatment. There was no “probable cause” for DeWine to “suspect” Lundeen of being anything other than a successful southern Ohio physician treating Appalachian White Anglo Saxon Protestant Christians.
In a February 16, 2015 interview he conducted with an official of the Ohio Task Force Commanders Association, DeWine offered the story that “overdoses” were the basis of his 2011 investigations of physicians like Lundeen.
“We still have a number of cases under investigation. What we found is there were doctors who were really just drug dealers. Sometimes it was cash, sometimes it was Medicaid. Many times, taxpayers were paying for these overdoses.”
DeWine’s attack on physicians like Lundeen and the 60 others 73 days after he was sworn in as attorney general in 2011 was unsupported by evidence of a heroin addiction problem embedded in the state’s 2010 health statistics. A 73-day investigation of the Medicare billing of 61 physicians would have revealed nothing about their treatment practices.
In a Twitter post during their 2018 campaign for governor, Cordray blew apart DeWine’s overdosing cover story when he shared that 77 Ohioans died a year from fentanyl before DeWine replaced him on January 1, 2011. 3431 in 2017 under DeWine.
Cordray had offered an insight about DeWine and the job he’d done as attorney general the state’s reporters didn’t understand enough to carry forth as a sustained and necessary public discussion. What the state’s former attorney general revealed was that Ohio’s fentanyl and heroin deaths did not increase until DeWine drove Lundeen and 60 other physicians out of business; and sent their patients to the streets looking for illegal narcotics.
By 2014 and the end of DeWine’s first term in office, heroin and fentanyl deaths had grown from less than 84 a year to 504. 1155 in 2015 to 2357 in 2016. Overdose deaths overall in Ohio topped 4854 in 2018 for a total of 20,000 dead Ohioans who could be directly traced to DeWine’s completely unprovoked and unsubstantiated 2011 attack on the state’s pain management physicians.
In his 2015 telephone interview DeWine seemed to acknowledge some responsibility for his deadly and reckless lies against the state’s pain management physicians.
“We certainly don’t want to deny these pain medications to anybody who really needs them, but they can be very addicting. Many times, these people who were addicted to pain medication would switch to heroin because heroin is cheaper. Babies are born to addicted mothers.”
What he offered as a “moral” answer was again the driving force behind his illegal acts in Warren, against the falsely-accused physicians and now with his “shelter in place” orders in dealing with a simple SARS virus. DeWine’s brand of Irish Catholic morality supersedes state laws and is offered as justification for his duty-exceeding acts and abuse of the public offices he’s held.
Consider that there have been more Catholics victimized by sexual predators in the church than the number of dead and infected Ohioans from the cornoavirus. DeWine’s never used the authority of the state attorney general’s office for an investigation of this state’s Catholic churches like the attorney general in Pennsylvania.
DeWine’s 2015 admission that his political grandstanding may have triggered the state’s heroin epidemic is exactly what Lundeen claimed as one of the medical practitioners he attacked. Lundeen ripped DeWine in his appeals to the state’s courts for targeting Ohio physicians for investigations without probable cause; and for conducting raids of physician’s offices for incriminating evidence that didn’t lead to prosecutions. Lundeen has never been charged for any violations of law.
Lundeen in an appeal said DeWine secured search warrants based upon unspecified false statements made by unidentified individuals. DeWine, he claimed, then directed BCI employees to remove items that were beyond the scope of the warrants.
The accuser in Lundeen’s case before the medical board was “DeWine” and not any of Lundeen’s patients. It was also DeWine’s attorneys representing the state’s medical board against the physicians their boss was accusing.
DeWine “found” two patients to testify that Lundeen had dispensed narcotics to them without an examination and that they’d become addicted; but neither patient had filed or thought to file a complaint against the physician.
Based on DeWine’s rigged proceedings the medical board concluded that over a 34-year period Lundeen violated standard care for 26 patients based off the testimony of just DeWine’s “found” two. Lundeen admits his mistake was relying on an attorney who told him not to attend the hearing.
Lundeen had a single witness whose story DeWine’s employees encouraged the medical board to disregard. Carolyn Shelton.
With DeWine terrorizing Ohio physicians out of the state, Lundeen patients like Shelton could not find one in her area willing to treat her. She finally found a physician in Columbus whose treatment resulted in her being addicted to morphine. Shelton’s testimony was that Lundeen had her pain in remission and that he was carefully monitoring her to “avoid” addiction. The truth wasn’t good enough for DeWine.
Lundeen and other physicians treated patients like Shelton with oxycodone But after DeWine’s attack on the state’s pain management physicians heroin and fentanyl use started dramatically increasing.
There is a growing cascade of state and federal laws DeWine’s stretching the office of Ohio governor to violate based only on his word that he’s working to prevent a pandemic; and reports from reporters we don’t know that he’s doing a good job.
No matter what he says about the job he’s doing, DeWine’s track record doesn’t show he’s a politician whose words should be blindly trusted by this state’s citizens.
