The Oklahoma State Capital

It’s happening all over again. And by now, unfortunately, it’s to be expected: Oklahoma has two justice systems—one for the politically connected, and another for the normies.

Last week’s extraordinary action, in which the State of Oklahoma both filed charges against a sitting state representative and accepted his plea deal—all apparently in the same day—was a shock to anyone who still values the concept of equal justice for all.

The deal was followed almost immediately by the perfunctory apology of the perpetrator, Rep. Ty Burns, and then by a weak, weak statement from the Speaker of the House. That statement, in my view, was clearly crafted to protect one of the Speaker’s own lieutenants and allow the public to quickly move on to the Labor day weekend, soon to forget the episode ever occurred. Burns, after all, serves as a presiding officer in the chamber and was noted for, just a few weeks ago, allowing the ultimate insider, Rep. Chris Kannady—the Speaker’s special counsel and, as we now know, Burns’ personal attorney—to wage an aggressive questioning volley against a conscientious new freshman lawmaker.

That freshman had the courage to file an amendment for basic transparency in education funding, which was trying to answer a simple but critical question: Are illegal aliens in the state’s urban centers skewing the school funding formula, siphoning money away from rural districts, and dragging down statewide test scores?

Now, the machine had the votes to easily table the amendment, make it go away quickly, and move on. The naive freshman was about to expose a big secret: woke politics and weak leaders are destroying public education in Oklahoma, while always, always pandering to those in the education industry for votes, because, as you might not have heard before, "the children are our future."

But that’s not how the Hilbert/Kannady crew works. Kannady, a legal mind, with years of experience, took to the floor to, in my view, verbally beat down that courageous female freshman and to show her—and the rest of the House—that new representatives should keep quiet and not try to bring out such dicey issues for public debate.

Traditionally, the presiding officer will allow a questioner to ask a question, a follow-up or two, and then get back in the queue to take their turn. However, as onlookers watched, Burns gave Kannady tremendous latitude in what was clearly an attempt to embarrass and undercut the freshman, question after question, after question.

It didn’t work. She held her own, at one point even generating laughter as she pulled from logic provided by Hilbert himself to fight off one of Kannady's verbal death traps, and the machine’s machinations backfired—bringing more attention to the issue and ensuring that for at least some of the machine’s lemming enablers, this bad vote will be at the top of the list of their liberal vote breakdowns during the 2026 campaign season: refusing to provide transparency into the illegal alien invasions that are so heavily weighing down the public education system in Oklahoma.

While observers at the time noted the freshman's courage in the face of that clearly orchestrated attack—and the puzzling decision by Burns to give Kannady such wide latitude in the failed beatdown attempt of the female legislator—what they could not have known was that Kannady was also likely already working behind the scenes to secure Burns a sweetheart deal in accusations that he had engaged in domestic abuse to potentially include the gouging of the eyes of his female wife: a zero-day window between the public announcement of his alleged crime and the state’s agreement to close the matter.

The shock to voters’ sensibilities was so strong that, whatever Burns/Kannady/Hilbet survival plan might have been, notwithstanding the impending Labor Day weekend, by Saturday Burns had cried uncle and submitted his resignation letter.

The apparent failure of the Hilbert/Kannady leadership to provide adequate protection to one of their own is a testament to the fact that the grassroots are engaged at a level never before seen. It is a warning to those in the exclusive, special political class: “the system can’t completely protect you.”

And, for a second time, what appeared to be extraordinary actions by Attorney General Gentner Drummond—who took over the case instead of assigning it to an outside district attorney, as he should have done—have proven inadequate.

But one can’t help but acquire the sense that the political class is still right to assume that if they are close to House leadership, they will, one way or another, receive benefits that would never be achievable by the average person.

That’s because this is the third in a string of high-profile incidents in which the state appeared to go to great lengths to let politicians off the hook.

The most notable was the close ally of imperial House Speaker Charles McCall. McCall, the self-described “Speaker Maximus” of the House of Representatives due to his record-setting eight-year reign, only maintained that reign after Rep. Terry O’Donnell headed up a rule-change committee that asked the House Republican caucus to eliminate the House caucus term limits rule limiting speakers to four years. O’Donnell also presented McCall’s 2019 rules package to the House—a proposal that forever solidified McCall’s grip by denying members the right to make a motion unless first approved by McCall’s floor leader, Jon Echols.

In consolidating this power, O’Donnell, McCall, and Echols forever changed the culture of the House—from a member-driven institution where any lawmaker could lodge a proposal, to a dictatorial institution in which all substantive power is for all intents and purposes concentrated in the corner office.

It’s no wonder that since then, the House culture has become one of self-dealing (comparable to Congress’s notorious stock-picking problem). That fact was vividly underscored in an April 2023 letter from Drummond, who described legislators’ tendency to vote on bills that benefitted them personally, in violation of the Oklahoma Constitution, as having become “loosely a common practice.”

Unfortunately, Drummond’s apt citation of this grave problem was wielded for an ill purpose: to let O’Donnell off the hook. Even though O’Donnell had been indicted by an Oklahoma County grand jury after carrying legislation that benefitted his family, Drummond’s reasoning was essentially this: because it’s a common practice, selective enforcement against O’Donnell was out of bounds. Thus, O’Donnell walked, with no future prosecution.

Drummond then reportedly told a reporter that “Terry is guilty.” A not-so-comforting fact, given that Drummond had single-handedly both pronounced guilt on O’Donnell—without a trial—and managed to get rid of the trial process entirely. Both moves were shocking departures from the norms where the state’s chief law enforcement officer would avoid any perception of bias and instead allow the process to play out.

But it wouldn’t be the last of Drummond’s unfortunate judgment lapses in the O’Donnell matter. O’Donnell went to work rehabilitating his reputation and did such a good job that by August 2024 he was functioning as McCall's "Majority Whip" and seated alongside McCall, Echols, and McCall’s education lieutenant Mark McBride at a garishly lavish, out-of-touch $23,000 dinner for the state's elite—known as the Four Horsemen event in honor of McCall, Echols, McBride and, you guessed it O'Donnell. Any sense of modesty that might have alerted these four that this lavish event, even as regular Oklahomans struggled with out-of-control inflation, might be more benefitting of late stage Roman empire fare, than the modesty of the average Oklahoman, had clearly long been abandoned by the arrogant legislators. The garish event was funded by all the usual suspects (lobbyists, regulated utility interests who are blowing a hole in Oklahomans' budgets, and a prominent D.C. PAC.) It was emceed by four figures, one of whom was—yes—Drummond himself.

A Program Cover From the 2024 "Four Horseman" Event

That Drummond, after thwarting the justice system on O’Donnell’s behalf and declaring him guilty outside of court, would then attend the epically self-indulgent, so very out-of-touch event—much less help headline it—should shock every justice-minded Oklahoman to the core.

But for the imperial speakership, this wasn’t the only time Drummond’s office came to the rescue. The second extraordinary episode came after another presiding officer, and McCall’s redistricting chairman, Ryan Martinez, was arrested by Edmond police in the winter of 2022 after being found in a drunken state near downtown Edmond.

The body camera footage of Martinez’s arrest has become textbook for analyzing the mindset of the entitled political class. I mean that literally: it's my intent to use this video as a training course for future and new legislators as both a cautionary tale and an insight into the entitled mindset of the state's political elite. Martinez volleyed various obstacles and sympathy attempts at the skeptical officer—arguing like a petulant grade-schooler with a teacher—even suggesting the police were constitutionally barred from arresting him. Problem was, Edmond PD had just lost one of their own officers to a driver who was suspected of being under the influence, and the disgust on the officer's face as he looked on at the legislator, was palpable. To their credit, unlike the state’s political insiders, they weren’t about to give this politician a pass. That police officer—he’s the one who should be the state’s chief law enforcement officer right now.

Martinez was charged by the D.A., but that didn’t stop McCall from keeping him in the limelight as a spokesman for the House of Representatives. In fact, during the 2023 session, in what may have been his most notorious action, after Kevin Wallace and the House quickly shut down public debate on one of McCall’s team’s mega green-energy corporate welfare giveaways, it was Martinez who dismissed Rep. Tom Gann’s concerns about the secrecy and lack of debate by explaining that the matter had already been discussed in the closed-door Republican caucus meeting.

That a legislator would publicly justify a secretive, multimillion-dollar corporate welfare scheme—conducted with almost no public debate—on the grounds that it had been talked about behind closed doors, shows just how out of touch the Legislature has become in the McCall era. Grassroots conservatives would do well to remember this as the members of Team McCall, including McCall and Jon Echols, now pander for their support and votes. These are not allies—they are abusers: people who violate grassroots values at an epic level, and then return as if nothing has happened to solicit the very support they betrayed.

Martinez would later accept a plea deal, receiving a deferred sentence on a charge that was technically a felony.

For Team McCall, this was a potential problem, because it meant Martinez would have to likely yield his seat. One can not commit a felony offense and then be allowed to serve in the House—or at least, that’s what the Constitution appears to say.

Here’s where Drummond once again came to McCall’s rescue, and this one took some real creativity. McCall asked for Drummond’s opinion. By law, a representative can request an official opinion from the AG—an opinion that can carry the effect of law under certain circumstances. What I had never heard of before was something called an unofficial opinion—an opinion not worth the paper it was written on.

That didn't stop Drummond. His deputy produced a five-page “unofficial opinion” that tortured the Constitution and statutes into nonsense, hedged in the footnote of all places, with a wise disclaimer: “Despite my interpretation, I could see a court reaching a different conclusion.”

At this point, I, as a taxpayer, must insist that Drummond and McCall refund the money wasted on crafting this pointless legal monstrosity on my dime. I could be wrong, but I am not aware of any legal provision that allows the attorney general to act as the legal council for the House Speaker by producing an “unofficial opinion” in a clear effort to allow a potentially felonious legislator to stay in office.

Unfortunately for Drummond and McCall, they probably didn’t count on the tenacity of former Rep. Mike Reynolds. Clearly shocked by the disregard for the Constitution, Reynolds filed a pro se petition with the state Supreme Court demanding enforcement of the law. As Reynolds put it:

“This is indisputably a matter of publici juris. If an elected official can continue to serve after conviction of a felony, then the simple wording of the Oklahoma Constitution has no meaning, and the Legislature is free to pass any law without regard to any Constitutional restrictions.”

In a true David v. Goliath battle—Reynolds as David, versus the machine’s Goliath of Drummond and McCall—Reynolds won the day when Martinez called it quits.

Today, Martinez has found new life as the face of McCall’s dark-money PAC, a $2.2 million operation funded entirely by just two D.C.-area entities, all in service of McCall’s run for governor.

And one would be wise to expect that if Martinez succeeds, McCall as governor would bring O’Donnell and probably McBride too, back into the fold, in some prominent role in state government. Echols, meanwhile, is the clear frontrunner for attorney general. Together, by 2027, the "Four Horseman" of Team McCall could reconstitute, and soon control substantial pieces of state government, likely doing to the executive branch the same horrors and destruction that they implemented in the House of Representatives.

But the Burns affair, in a twist that reinvigorates belief in inevitable justice, showed that the grassroots can still break through. Late in the week, McCall, clearly sensing his opportunity, issued a call for Burns to resign. It was a savvy political move: McCall no doubt recognized that his chief competitor in the governor’s race, Drummond, might be left holding the bag for the Burns atrocity—yet another cognitive-dissonance crutch for the “Anybody but Drummond” faithful, whose misplaced loyalty props up McCall’s hollow claim to grassroots support.

It’s a reminder of the wisdom of the system’s designers—who recognized the value of competition and ensured that in the game of politics, no matter how entrenched, the thickest of thieves will eventually turn on one another.

And, of course, the ultimate white pill: despite all the system’s efforts, both Martinez and soon Burns will have posted “ex-legislator” on their resumes—when it was clear to any unbiased observer that, had the powerful gotten their way, both would still hold prominent office today.

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