Mike Foley is too stupid to be your clerk of courts

The Montgomery County Clerk of Courts office was raided last November by the State Auditors office. Between then and now, they continued to build their case. When they announced the indictments this week on Wed, July 31 2024, they threw the local Republican Party in a tizzy. In order to put a replacement on the ballot, they need Foley to resign by Tuesday. If not, by the time he pleads innocent on the 15th of August, they are stuck with a lame duck on the ballot.

They’ve made it incredibly clear to Foley that they won’t back him in his re-election bid, but not going as far as to say they would actually endorse his opponent, Democrat Lynn Cooper. It doesn’t really matter to Foley, because he’s never really had any support from the party, and didn’t have to spend too much money in winning his seat the first time- his whole strategy was to put signs up that looked like he was former Montgomery County Commissioner and Clerk of Courts Dan Foley and hope people wouldn’t notice. That plus he was running against the Russ Joseph who had been appointed to the job when the elected Greg Brush resigned mid-term.

Foley seems to be depending on his attorney, John Paul Rion who claims he’s innocent. However, this is what Rion does over and over- if the defendant is going to be in the news, he always is willing to represent them up until they plead, then he skedaddles and leaves them hanging. Foley is looking at spending at least 6 figures on a legal defense, and that’s without a job that pays $113K a year or so.

The part that he doesn’t understand is he’s facing 9 counts and only one of them has to be proven true for him to be removed from office by the State. The voters will do it in November no matter what. And the guarantee of his guilt is because his co-conspirator on at least 3 of the charges, former Judge James Piergies has already been removed from the bench and is looking at losing his entire retirement plan if convicted of a felony. Piergies knows that if he rolls on Foley, he may be able to cop a plea deal and possibly save what’s left of his life after disbarment.

Foley will be the poster child for the punishment of naughty politicians who weren’t smart enough to know that by the time they indict you- you’ve lost all your friends in high places. He will do prison time no matter what.

Now, if he does wake up and smell the cesspool he’s created for himself, and gracefully resigns before the Tuesday deadline the Republican party needs to put someone else on the ballot, he may gain a few friends who might be able to pull some strings. The problem is, the Republicans, like the Democrats, have a short bench of folks ready to run for office. This is what happens when you run on the “Friends and Family” plan.

Leading contenders are Kettering Clerk of Courts Rob Scott- who has absolutely nothing to gain from putting his name on the ballot- other than buying the party time and a chance at keeping the seat. He’s in a 6 year term, in a much easier to run office, with no mess to clean up. John McManus who is currently deep into his re-election campaign for treasurer actually knows the job, and while it would be a pay bump, it leaves the R’s scrambling to replace him on the ballot as well. And then there’s Niraj Antani who will be in desperate need of a new job come January- but he’s counting on Trump being elected and a nice fat federal job for him to slack off in (Rob Scott had one of these jobs under Trump working for the SBA- and his girlfriend, Missy Mae Walters who now works for McManus had one for the Dept of Ag). As mentioned- it’s all friends and family in the county building.

The real question is the timing of all of this. Why did the State wait this long? We know why the Feds held out on the indictments of the “Culture of Corruption” – they’d made a deal with Commissioner Joey D. Williams as part of his agreeing to be a Confidential Human Source way back in 2015 that they wouldn’t indict him till his youngest son was going to graduate from Stivers. The fact that the FBI caught him committing felony theft in office and allowed him to stand for re-election is proof that crime by politicians is somehow different than crimes by the common folks. Williams failed to catch any big fish- despite his reasoning that the only excuse for his accepting the $40K patio enclosure on his home was that “everyone else was doing it.” He failed to implicate anyone else- and the FBI is still busy covering up their failures by using the Glomar Exception to the Freedom of Information Act (see this story for the latest update on my fight to get to the bottom of this and get the Nan Whaley tapes that were played to the Grand Jury).

There are people who seem to think that criminal behavior by politicians- either before getting elected or while in office, is no longer a disqualifying quality. Donald Trump has a ton of pending cases and has already been found guilty of 31 felonies in the State of NY- and yet people don’t care. Closer to home, we elected a former felon to the Dayton Board of Education Eric Walker, without thinking twice. Unbelievably, he actually seems like one of the few sane ones on that dais.

Used to be that character mattered for those running for public office. That seems to have gone away since Donald Trump was elected president. Mike Foley is so far from being Donald Trump it’s unreal, but somehow, he seems to think he has a future as Clerk. By the time all the details come out in Court, not only will he be toast, but the public will be enlightened on the insanity of allowing someone as stupid as Foley to be in charge of anything. The office managerial bloat alone will make you ill (he’s even hired a former TV guy to just make videos for him) and the way he’s screwing the tax payers on “convenience fees” on debit cards will piss a whole bunch of folks off- and possibly cause the county to have to refund a bunch of money.

The easy way to end this is for the Republican party to clearly tell Foley that they will include Lynn Cooper on every slate card, mailing and even robocalls- and that his waltz down the yellow brick road is over. And then, for the State Auditor to nail him to the wall for the maximum possible sentence as an example of idiocy by a public official who thought he could play fast and loose with his duties in order to put money into his pocket and that of his “friends and family.” There will be the chance for the case to expand as well, with other folks in the office going down, unless of course, the obvious, they’ve all agreed to pea deals in order to hang him by his toe nails.

We’ll know the outcome of the Republican parties pressure on him by Tuesday. And, we’ll also know his IQ score. Sorry fellow Army veteran, you’ve disgraced yourself and your fellow veterans by your actions. No compassion here.

Here’s the song: Mike Foley’s Folly by David Esrati