Esrati files Quo Warranto for Montgomery County Clerk of Courts Mike Foley’s immediate removal from office

Dayton: At 8:43 AM, citizen journalist David Esrati filed a Quo Warranto with the 2nd District Court of Appeals, to remove convicted felon, Mike Foley from the Clerk of Courts office. The filing is below. A quo warranto is a legal proceeding, used to challenge a person’s right to hold a public office. It essentially asks, “by what authority?” do you hold this position, and is used to determine if someone is illegally holding office or exercising powers they are not entitled to.

Esrati made the case for the removal in his post on Sunday: Mike Foley is why American’s no longer trust the government, where he cites Ohio Revised Code which clearly states that a person found guilty of the charges Foley entered a no-contest plea to, create automatic grounds for removal. Foley later tried to reverse his plea deal, after sentencing, which requires meeting a legal standard he can’t meet of “manifest injustice” and insane stupidity, because he will now face all the counts of corruption he was originally charged with. In the mean time, he shouldn’t be in office.

After publishing the exact legal justification for Foley’s removal, Esrati contacted 2 members of the County Commission, suggesting they cut all funding allocation to the clerks office until the criminal in charge was removed. Nothing. The prosecutor, Mat Heck’s office, claimed they might be conflicted since they also represent the clerk (ignoring their duty to the taxpayers to enforce the law). Then the Ohio Auditors “Special Investigation Unit” also declined to take responsibility. I outlined those actions and made clear what my next move would be in this post from yesterday: Everyone is on notice in the Foley case: Do your job

They all refused to do their job, so I pretended to be a lawyer and wrote the writ, based on one I had done for me years ago to remove Dr. Adil Baguirov from the School Board (I actually had no standing because I had no way to prove in court that he had been ineligible until he had changed his voter registration) and the stunt actually forced his resignation before my deadline.

There are members of both parties who told me they supported the removal of Foley, yet, it was up to me to do the work. I was bolstered by the fact that someone I didn’t know had donated $100 to the site that day, because they appreciated my work. They said they don’t always agree with me politically, but appreciated the work I do to expose the culture of corruption in Dayton. How long the 2nd District will take to hold the hearing is any ones guess. How I will do in court- the same. But that donation was exactly the amount of the filing fee. Easy come, easy go.

Not only should Foley be forced to leave office, he should owe back pay back to the day of indictment. One of the reasons the Dems wouldn’t touch this was that Foley has hired too many dems to work in his office- starting when he first beat Russ Joseph (who had been appointed by the dems) by hiring then Dem, John McManus. Foley’s hiring of former BOE director Steve Harsman and former BOE co-worker Cathie Merkle, should have been the first clues he was collecting ammunition to protect himself from investigation, but when he illegally hired Debbie Lieberman after her loss to Mary McDonald for her County Commission Seat, that should have been the final straw.

Lieberman should also be removed and charged. If not just for what I wrote about then, but for her role in covering for her former aide, John Theobald, who was illegally steering contracts to both Public Health and the Board of Elections to a firm that he was a (then) silent owner; The Wilderness Agency. See the three posts Lieberman’s husband threatened to sue me over in this post: Do the right thing: Get threatened with a lawsuit

If I don’t get shot before heading to court to argue for Mr. Foley’s removal, I plan on explaining to the judges that this “Culture of Corruption” in Montgomery County is pervasive and deep. That there is very little an average citizen can do to ask for justice, and the price can be high. Read how Mat Heck found “No true bill” when a woman stole from me and the disabled veteran I took care of, right after my father died.

Bill Bernbach was one of advertising’s greats. He famously said: “A principle is not a principle until it costs you money” – and I can vouch for that. If you see this in any other media, realize, they had over a week to figure out that Foley was in office illegally, and no one was doing anything. Only this citizen journalist stood up for the law.