Of course all 7 Butler County judges recused themselves from the bologna case in Ohio against the great auditor Roger Reynolds and two other elected officials in the heat of the political season. One thing that I can’t stand is a bully, especially when it comes to media. It’s pretty clear now why so many in the media hate that many people elected Donald Trump for president. They get it. We see it in Joe Biden; a puppet administration ran essentially by media types who project their radical progressive agenda onto a caricature in the White House. They have been doing it for years, but if we had not elected Trump to disrupt that process, we might never have seen it as clear as we do now. That much was evident in Stephanie Grisham’s new book, I’ll Take Your Questions Now, just released. Even though that book was intended to be a hit piece against the Trump family, as a whole, and to show how reckless and dangerous President Trump was, what it revealed was just how much the media wants to be in power and to run politics as unelected radicals who use the power of persuasion from the comfort of a nice, comfy desk to rule the world. I hate it so much that is the primary reason I run this blog, The Gunfighter’s Guide, and have done so for over ten years and to millions of readers. I do it to counter all the activism that occurs in the media world. A fine example of just what I’m talking about happened to several politicians in my home township of Liberty in Butler County, Ohio, which involves a lawsuit against Roger Reynolds, and two trustee candidates, Buck Rumpke and incumbent Tom Ferrell.
Essentially, the lawsuit recently filed by a property owner over a proposed senior type center development project wants more money for their land. They allege that Roger Reynolds was using politics to hold down the property’s price and keep other buyers away from the purchase process. All the members of the lawsuit are alleged to be involved in some way or another. Now on the surface, that sounds pretty nefarious. But as you dig into the story a bit, you find out that most of the participants know each other from childhood. It affects families, elderly people, and cancer diagnosis with lots of emotion attached. By the time the smoke clears, there will be hard feelings, there will be resolutions, and there will be a path forward that adults should be able to resolve on their own. But then comes the media where Jennifer Edwards Baker from Fox 19 in Cincinnati inserted herself into the story as a political activist to take what is a pretty standard property dispute and turned it into a corruption scandal with the headline titled “Corruption-related allegations in lawsuit Against Butler County auditor, Liberty trustee.“
I’ve known Roger Reynolds for a long time, many, many years, and he’s always been a good guy. Does he have some little bit of tyrant in him who would use zoning laws to squeeze a property owner to sell the property to only him and for half the price of its worth? I would never think so based on what I know of Roger. But then again, these people have known each other all their lives. Can you know everything about somebody in every circumstance? Of course not, so anything is possible. The problem with the Channel 19 hit piece is the timing. With the lawsuit filed at the end of September 2021 and Jennifer Edwards Baker putting quite a lot of effort into her article on it plastering the pictures of Roger and Ferrell on the cover rather dramatically, it doesn’t take much deduction to see that the effort is political and not some casual reporting of a legal situation. Roger, Ferrell, and Buck Rumpke are all big names in the Butler County GOP, and I happen to know that Jennifer is not fond of Republicans. I’ve had to get after her and reporters at Channel 5 before using their media outlets to incite riotous conditions during 2020 as they were trying to lure Black Lives Matters rioters into West Chester to antagonize suburbanites into the fear of big city manipulations.
If Jennifer wanted to do a fair story on corruption, I could point her to dozens and dozens of similar stories all over Cincinnati. The allegations over this Butler County land deal are common in properties where millions of dollars are involved, and generations of families are a part of the story. There are many Democrats that are involved in these kinds of scandals. Heck, we’ve seen a lot of scandals on the national stage, such as the DOJ being weaponized by the Biden administration to go after parents questioning their school boards over critical race theory. There are such stories right now going on in Lakota. But we have to ask, “where’s Jennifer on those stories? Paging Jennifer Edwards Baker. Paging the Fox 19 News hyphenated activist looking for bottom feeder stories.” There are plenty of stories about corruption that Jennifer could have picked. But this one targets Republicans right before a big election and pastes the good name that took a lifetime to build by Roger Reynolds all over the cover. Of course, typically, what happens when a lawsuit is named forces the defenders to lay low and limit their speech to not corrupt their case. By the time that all the dust settles and the case is over with everyone shaking hands in the end, the damage will already have been done. When these Republicans should be out campaigning for their official positions, they have to answer corruption questions based on allocations. Allegations can be made about anything. Proving them is much harder to do and often falls short in the end.
People asked me what I thought of the article by Jennifer Edwards Baker, and my reply was that it was typical Channel 19 activism. A lazy reporter was looking to stir up gossip and trouble for Republicans. If she cared about corruption, she’d have plenty of stories around Cincinnati to do them on, but she picked on prominent Republicans in Butler County for other reasons. Allegations are not fact, and trying to play on the emotions of an 87-year-old man who wants to sell his land is not a story. It’s bait to impede the election process of known and solid Republicans. I’m sure everyone involved in the lawsuit will declare that the timing was not a factor. But there are a lot of months in a year. Why now? And Jennifer should have known better. She stuck herself and Channel 19 into the story as political activism and nothing more. It’s a way to attempt to tarnish the reputation of Butler County as a whole by going after one of its best politicians and most respected. It reminds me of the FBI case in going after the Speaker of the House over the FirstEnergy deal in Columbus. Radical progressives went after an entire energy industry to force FirstEnergy to seek protection. The FBI calls it bribery. I’d call it the survival of a company trying not to be shut down from political activism by the Obama administration’s energy policies. The goal of the FBI investigation was to harm the Republican stronghold in the Ohio House. It’s just another form of election tampering by Democrats, and Jennifer Edwards Baker is essentially doing the same thing in Butler County, Ohio. During an election season, whenever a reporter puts “corruption” in their lead, they try to steer opinions negatively. If it’s a conviction, that’s another matter, but when it’s just allegations, its activism, which most mainstream media has become. They want to rule the world, not as officeholders, but as keyboard terrorists and assassins who operate in the shadows.
Rich Hoffman
The Gunfighter's Guide: 