Tag: ohio

Husted took donations from Epstein ‘co-conspirator’ Les Wexner, then voted to block file release

Ohio Republican Senator Jon Husted has accepted $116,892 from Les Wexner between 2001 and 2025, according to Federal Election Commission and Ohio Secretary of State campaign finance records reviewed by TiffinOhio.net.

Wexner, the billionaire founder of Victoria’s Secret parent company L Brands, was publicly identified this week as a “co-conspirator” of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein in FBI documents.

Husted took $3,500 from Wexner as recently as July 3, 2025 — just two months before voting on September 10, 2025 to block a bipartisan Senate amendment that would have directed the Attorney General to publicly release documents related to Epstein.

The financial relationship spans Husted’s entire political career, from his time in the Ohio legislature through his current role as U.S. Senator. Campaign finance records show Husted is the only senator up for re-election in 2026 who accepted contributions from Wexner during the 2025-2026 election cycle.

FBI labeled Wexner as Epstein co-conspirator

On February 10, 2026, the Department of Justice released previously redacted names from internal FBI documents following pressure from Representatives Ro Khanna (D-California) and Thomas Massie (R-Kentucky). An August 15, 2019 FBI internal document from the bureau’s Criminal Investigative Division included a reference to Wexner as a co-conspirator of Epstein.

“The Justice Department has released the names of three people the FBI once called co-conspirators of Jeffrey Epstein after lawmakers complained that the names had been improperly withheld,” NBC News reported February 10, 2026. “The Justice Department unredacted parts of an Aug. 15, 2019, FBI internal document from the bureau’s Criminal Investigative Division — which included a reference to billionaire Les Wexner as a co-conspirator.”

The document lists eight people as co-conspirators, including Wexner, Ghislaine Maxwell (who was convicted of sex trafficking charges), modeling agent Jean-Luc Brunel, and Epstein’s longtime secretary Lesley Groff. Four other names remain redacted.

According to the released documents, a separate FBI email from August 2019 stated there was “limited evidence” regarding Wexner’s involvement, though he was served a subpoena during the investigation.

A legal representative for Wexner stated that “the Assistant U.S. Attorney told Mr. Wexner’s legal counsel in 2019 that Mr. Wexner was neither a co-conspirator nor target in any respect. Mr. Wexner cooperated fully by providing background information on Epstein and was never contacted again.”

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Video reignites interest in 20-year-old Columbus missing persons case

For nearly 20 years, one question has haunted many people in Columbus: How does someone walk into a building and never walk out? 

The disappearance of 27-year-old Ohio State medical student Brian Shaffer is back in the spotlight as surveillance video from the night he vanished circulates across social media. 

“It’s really important to continue to remind the public that this case exists, and we need the public’s assistance,” retired FBI Agent Harry Trombitas said.

Shaffer was caught on camera walking into the Ugly Tuna Saloon in the early morning of April 1, 2006, but was never recorded leaving. Columbus police said the video circulating is not new, and there’s no new evidence in the case file, but according to experts, this renewed attention could be the key in solving the case. 

“I appreciate whoever on the internet put that video back out on Brian because it gets people talking about it, gets it out in front of people and just the right person may see it and contact law enforcement,” Trombitas said. 

Over the past few days, videos have resurfaced claiming to show the final full hour of surveillance from the bar the night Shaffer went missing. His case, which has captured national attention, has once again exploded across social media. 

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Gov. DeWine: Ending Haitians’ Protections Would Hit Ohio Jobs

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine said ending temporary protected status for Haitians who live and work in his state would be a “blow to the economy,” days after a federal judge blocked the Trump administration from terminating the protections while a lawsuit proceeds.

The Republican governor told CNN on Thursday that employers would lose workers if Haitians with TPS could no longer work legally.

“If they lose temporary protected status and they no longer can work and the companies can’t employ them, that’s a blow to the economy,” he said.

“That’s a blow to the state.”

A U.S. District Court judge in Washington issued a temporary stay Monday that blocked Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s order terminating TPS for Haitians, which was scheduled to take effect Tuesday, pending the outcome of a suit brought by five Haitian TPS holders.

In the 83-page memorandum opinion, Judge Ana Reyes, an appointee of former President Joe Biden, said that Noem did not consult with other agencies as required by law before ending the designation and wrote that it seemed “substantially likely” the secretary “preordained her termination decision and did so because of hostility to nonwhite immigrants.”

Reyes also pointed to the State Department’s current warning on Haiti.

The advisory, reissued July 15, 2025, says: “Do not travel to Haiti for any reason” and cites “kidnapping, crime, terrorist activity, civil unrest, and limited health care.”

Reyes wrote, “‘Do not travel to Haiti for any reason’ does not exactly scream, as Secretary Noem concluded, suitable for return.”

Noem announced in November that TPS for Haitians would expire in February, after an earlier move last summer was delayed by litigation.

As of March 31, 2025, federal data compiled by the Congressional Research Service listed 330,735 Haitians with approved TPS applications.

DeWine said Thursday that Springfield, Ohio, “is coming back” in part because of Haitians living and working there.

“They’re not only working, but of course they’re spending money in the community,” he said.

“There’s been businesses started. Restaurants have started.”

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OSU Just Hired an Assistant Professor of What?

There’s been a problem in higher education for quite some time. Colleges and universities are less interested in educating people than they are indoctrinating them into woke, Leftist ideologies. At the same time, bloated administrative staff and government-backed student loans have made tuition costs (and student loan debt) skyrocket. It’s a recipe for disaster, but academica doesn’t seem keen on changing any time soon.

At Ohio State University (OSU), for example, they recently hired an Assistant Professor of Black Sexualities. 

Zalika U. Ibraorimi, who has “she/they” pronouns, has some interesting areas of expertise, including “Black Sexual Logics,” “Dark Black Study,” “Anti-Blackness,” and “Black Digital Intimacy.”

OSU describes Ibraorimi as “an antidisciplinary artist” (someone who deliberately rejects traditional artistic categories) and wrote that “she engages Black material and digital publics as landscapes to trace the Human sexual geographies between the relation of the Black femme and spectator.”

Um, what?

As Salier pointed out, Ibraorimi was hired because the Mellon Foundation gave OSU almost $3 million to “transform” the Department of African American and African studies.

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Threats on VP Vance Expose a Sick Secret As Feds Close In

Unfortunately, Vice President JD Vance is no stranger to threats. Vance and his family have endured multiple threats since he became the 50th Vice President of the United States. 

One of the most recent instances has resulted in federal charges against an Ohio man, and there’s an added dark twist involved here. 

On Friday, the Department of Justice announced that a federal grand jury had returned an indictment against a 33-year-old Ohio man who threatened to kill Vance during his January visit to Ohio.

TOLEDO, Ohio – A federal grand jury returned an indictment earlier this week charging a 33-year-old man with threatening to kill the Vice President of the United States during his visit to the Northwest Ohio region in January.

Shannon Mathre, of Toledo, is accused of making a threat to take the life of, and to inflict bodily harm upon, a successor to the presidency, in violation of Title 18 U.S. Code Section 871(a). In the indictment, he allegedly stated, “I am going to find out where he (the vice president) is going to be and use my M14 automatic gun and kill him.” Mathre was arrested by U.S. Secret Service agents Feb. 6.

But it isn’t just threats against Vance for which Mathre is facing charges. 

The grand jury further charges that from about Dec. 31, 2025, to Jan. 21, 2026, Mathre was also engaged in the receipt and distribution of images that visually depict minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct, in violation of Title 18 U.S. Code Section 2252(a)(2). While investigating the threats allegedly made against the vice president, federal agents discovered multiple digital files of child sexual abuse materials (CSAM) in Mathre’s possession.

U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi had this to say about the matter: 

“Our attorneys are vigorously prosecuting this disgusting threat against Vice President Vance. You can hide behind a screen, but you cannot hide from this Department of Justice.”

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MAGA Erupts as Mike Pence’s Think Tank Delays Justice for East Palestine

Mike Pence is siding with wealthy donors over victims of the East Palestine, Ohio, rail disaster, earning a cacophony of outrage from conservatives and prominent MAGA voices.

Pence, who like Democrats reflexively opposes Trump on issue after issue as he woos establishment corporate donors to enrich himself through his non-profit and stake a claim in the narrowing establishment lane for the 2028 Republican nomination, is fighting a bill first championed by then-Ohio Sen. JD Vance — and Pence’s likely 2028 primary opponent — to implement safety regulations for trains carrying hazardous materials.

Those regulations could have prevented the toxic spill that upended the lives of thousands in the East Palestine area after the 2023 train derailment.

The Daily Wire reports:

One of the groups opposing the bill is Mike Pence’s Advancing American Freedom — a fact seen as a net positive by those in Trump world who want the bill to finally advance. If the former vice president opposes something, it only makes it more of a priority for Trump’s White House, one senior official told The Daily Wire.

“Anyone that wants the Trump administration to support a piece of legislation should pay Mike Pence’s think tank and its lobbying arm to oppose it,” the senior White House official told The Daily Wire.

Advancing American Freedom, along with the Competitive Enterprise Institute, organized a group of think tank leaders who wrote to Congress on January 29 opposing the inclusion of the Railway Safety Act “in any surface transportation reauthorization legislation.”

In the aftermath of the disaster, Sen. Vance and candidate Donald Trump emerged as the greatest champions for East Palestine.

Vance quickly introduced legislation addressing the issue, quickly earning bipartisan support despite pushback from industry groups and their lobbyists. The bill still has not become law, with this week marking three years since the derailment.

And while a feeble President Biden, whose team limited his exposure through public events, failed to visit East Palestine, candidate Donald Trump beat Biden in visiting the small Ohio town, promising action and accountability for those responsible.

By ignoring the people of East Palestine, Pence, who has said Trump should “never be president of the United States again,” is proving to have more in common with Biden than a hatred of Trump. And conservatives were quick to berate the career politician for his callousness, lack of principles, and prioritization of personal political positioning over the people of East Palestine.

“No one is surprised that Mike Pence is opposing the Trump/Vance administration,” popular MAGA personality ALX posted. “So telling.”

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Democrat Sherrod Brown: Extending Protections for Haitian Migrants Is ‘Putting Ohio Communities First’

With Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Haitian migrants set to expire on February 3, 2026, former Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) — who is running for the U.S. Senate in 2026 — is calling on the administration to extend the designation, citing economic disruption in Ohio communities and the lack of a safe place for Haitians to return.

Former U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown posted on X Friday morning:

As I travel the state, I hear the same thing that Governor DeWine has heard from Ohioans: they are concerned about their Haitian neighbors and about the economic impact the expiration of TPS for Haitian Americans will have on their communities.

That’s why I’m calling on the Administration to extend TPS for Ohio’s Haitian community now. Haitian Americans don’t have a safe place to return to in Haiti and our communities across Ohio depend on them to help our local economy thrive.

I’m calling on Governor Mike DeWine and Senators Jon Husted and Bernie Moreno to put Ohio communities first and join my call to extend TPS for the Haitian community.

Brown took questions from reporters at an affordability roundtable event on Friday afternoon. According to Andrew Tobias, a politics reporter for Signal Ohio who covered the event, Brown declared ICE “needs to be ‘radically redone’” and called for the firing of Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. Tobias also reported Brown stated, “Bringing ICE in means that these communities are less safe.”

Responding to Sherrod Brown’s call, Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-OH) — who unseated him despite a $194 million Democratic campaign — remarked:

You still don’t get it, do you @SherrodBrown? Voters are sick of liberal Democrats like you selling out American workers for cheap migrant labor every time. That’s why you got fired!

This isn’t hard: Temporary Protected Status was always TEMPORARY. Now it’s time to go home.

He doubled down on this stance in a recent interview with Statehouse News Bureau: “Everybody always knew the date, so we shouldn’t have to surge a force in there, to forcibly deport people who knew for a long time that they have to do that on their own.”

Moreno has criticized the $110,000-per-year burden per illegal migrant on taxpayers during a Breitbart News Daily interview, asserting that such spending eclipses what the average American earns annually. In that interview, he called the Biden administration’s immigration approach “abject insanity” and emphasized that migrants should only be admitted if they contribute economically without relying on government assistance.

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Ohio AG Candidate Elliot Forhan: ‘I Am Going to Kill Donald Trump’

Ohio Democrat Attorney General candidate Elliot Forhan has a video in which he says, “…I am going to kill Donald Trump.”

A video is making rounds on X in which Forhan says, “I am going to obtain conviction, rendered by a jury of his peers, at a standard of proof beyond reasonable doubt, based on evidence, presented at trial, conducted in accordance with due process, resulting in a sentence, duly executed, of capital punishment.”

Forhan continued, “That is what I mean when I say I am going to kill Donald Trump.”

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Shocking Undercover Video Shows Judges in Ohio Immigration Courts Can be Bribed to Keep Illegals in the US

Shocking undercover video obtained by Townhall shows judges in Ohio immigration courts can be bribed to keep illegal aliens in the United States.

The footage was posted to X on Tuesday morning.

The video sheds light on the underground business of smuggling illegals into the US, helping them get jobs and bribing immigration judges to rule in their favor.

A woman identified as Patricia “Pat” Golder claimed in the video that she takes some of the money given to West African migrants in exchange for her bribing judges to rule in their favor.

An undercover reporter was introduced to Golder by a woman named Cindy Reis.

“She gets them their papers. She does,” Reis told the reporter as she introduced him to Patricia Golder. “He knows about Mulberry Street.”

“I try to work with them the best I can,” Golder said.

Golder told the reporter that some of the migrants “have papers” and some don’t. She said she helps the illegals get jobs but would not name the companies because of “the threat of ICE.”

Later on in the video, Golder discloses that she visits judges at bars and restaurants.

“If I can get to the judge. You know, that’s the only person you want to talk to is the judge,” Golder says with a smile on her face.

“Wait, say that again?” the reporter said.

“If I can get to the judge it’s okay. I make conversation with them,” Golder said.

“If the judge says, “Yeah, Okay, $50,000 I send everybody to you,” she said.

“I go to the bar like everybody drink. Spot the judge. I say, ‘You work on this date?’ He’s like, ‘let me see my calendar’…give me my $50G’s,” she said.

“The judge says that?” the reporter asked in disbelief.

“He ain’t scared of nothing,” Golder said. “How they live, they pay bills just like me and you. C’mon, man.”

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Ohio Physician Gets 5 Years in Prison for Role in $14.5M Medicare Fraud

An Ohio doctor has been sentenced to prison for his role in a healthcare billing conspiracy scheme that was intended to fraudulently bill Medicare for more than $14.5 million.

Timothy Sutton, 44, of North Ridgeville, Ohio, was sentenced 5 years and 4 months in prison by U.S. District Judge David A. Ruiz, after he pleaded guilty in April 2025 to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and mail fraud, false statements related to health care matters, and aggravated identity theft. He was also ordered to serve 3 years of supervised release and pay nearly $6 million in restitution to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. 

Judge Ruiz imposed the sentence on Jan. 12.

According to court documents, Sutton used his position as a licensed medical doctor in the state of Ohio to cause submission of claims on behalf of patients who did not need the medical treatment. He was employed by two telemedicine companies based in Florida which provided him with pre-completed orders for durable medical equipment (DME), such as braces, and/or cancer genetic testing (CGX) for him to approve and digitally sign. 

“Mr. Sutton deliberately lied about performing patient examinations and then used his role as a trusted medical professional to line his pockets at the expense of taxpayers. We will not tolerate those who utilize their positions of authority to defraud Medicare, or any government agency,” said United States Attorney David M. Toepfer for the Northern District of Ohio. “Thanks to the Department of Health and Human Services and the Cleveland FBI’s thorough investigations, we have put a stop to this rampant fraud and abuse of power.”

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