The Oklahoma State Capital

As Oklahoma State Capital News reported, a recent operation promoted by Attorney General Gentner Drummond’s office as a human-trafficking bust nicely illustrates the harm wrought by the politicization of the attorney general’s office and the extraordinary expansion of its size, scope and reach.

“Republican” legislators have funded Drummond’s operation to levels that are difficult to come to terms with, increasing appropriations from $11 million for fiscal 2021, to $47 million for fiscal 2027. They have essentially turned that office into yet another law enforcement agency, keeping in mind that state government that’s already stricken with siloed law enforcement functions, split among so many agencies that counting them requires the fingers on two hands, and administrative overhead that costs state taxpayers millions each year.

The new, vast law enforcement operation in the Attorney General’s Office, overseen by someone who is political and thus unchecked as he takes on both hats: both enforcer and prosecutor.

This eviscerates the vital principle that the designers of our justice system have traditionally maintained: a wall of separation between on-the-ground law enforcement and the elected prosecutors who serve as a check and balance on that law enforcement by making the decision to prosecute, or not prosecute.

This conflict of interest was vividly and unabashedly illustrated by Drummond’s 2026 campaign for governor commercials, where his Hollywood-level video production team produced footage of Drummond personally participating, bulletproof vest and all, in raids.

Those commercials sent a chill up the spine of the observant and thoughtful student of the American legal system and the importance of that check and balance. Justice is not served when the politicized prosecutor himself, film production crew in tow, knocks on the door to serve the warrant, especially when he subsequently uses that footage in his campaign ads.

And, as a notable aside, the reliance on the legislators to give him this massive bureaucracy, this great power, provides the most likely explanation for why Drummond always seemed to be in the right position, at the right time, to give a good deal to the legislators who had gotten themselves into trouble: from the powerful house speaker’s close ally, Terry O’Donnell, to the “unofficial” letter for Ryan Martinez, the House Budget Vice-Chairman, to the Ty Burns affair, somehow Drummond was involved in matters concerning those who, in the view of this writer, had greatly betrayed the public trust.

Describing this conflict of interest has been on the Oklahoma State Capital whiteboard for a very long time, along with so many other educational pieces attempting to educate the wider public on the many areas of policy where, due to the ever-expanding size of an increasingly opaque, inefficient state government, abuses are spiraling out of control.

But there are so many of these stories, and more concepts are being added to the whiteboard faster than I can get those educational pieces published, that it has stayed there: on the whiteboard.

That’s where this piece was set to stay for a while, because there are so many pressing articles to write. But, that changed last week, when the story first leaked of Drummond’s office overseeing a sex-trafficking bust in the state’s first and best capital city, home base to the Oklahoma State Capital, a community I know well, having represented it for four years as a city councilman and twelve more as a state representative, and today, as the editor of the Oklahoma State Capital, with a specific focus on increasingly providing coverage of local events that simply aren’t being reported on in the local media.

The Facebook post from a local news blog featured a red siren, accompanied by the text, “Five arrested, three victims recovered in Guthrie human trafficking operation,” followed by the mugshots of the five arrestees.

To those who didn’t click through, that’s all they saw.

Now, let’s do a thought experiment. Stop here.

What are you thinking?

You are no doubt envisioning a police raid on a facility guarded by those five hoodlums, with helpless victims trapped inside, to be liberated by Gentner Drummond’s courageous agents.

To those who didn’t click through, that’s all they saw: the mugshots, the one-sentence description that would lead the observer to believe that these five people had conducted a human-trafficking ring in our town.

Those who did click through to that blog encountered a more indicting headline: “Five arrested in human trafficking operation; three victims recovered.”

Drummond’s subsequent release, released through his three-person communications team funded by the taxpayers, upped the ante, seeming to describe 15 victims of the human-trafficking ring: “Attorney General Gentner Drummand’s Human Trafficking Response Unit, in conjunction with several law enforcement partners and Skull Games Solutions, arrested five individuals and recovered 15 potential victims during a trafficking bust last week at a Guthrie hotel.”

That release triggered the Oklahoma City television news stations, which were quick to run with their impression of the story’s specifics. For instance, from News 9: “Five people were arrested and 15 potential victims were recovered during a human trafficking operation last week at a Guthrie hotel, according to the Oklahoma Attorney General’s Office.”

Now, this was really catching my attention.

Was there really a human-trafficking ring operating from our town?

How had the local police department missed this large of an operation, conducted inside the city limits no less?

Were the local hotel proprietors in on it?

They surely would have known had 15 victims been kept on the premises, and thus would most assuredly be culpable.

But, as Scott Adams said, when it’s too on point, watch out; it’s probably not true.

And something just wasn’t right.

It was time to ask some questions.

And those questions would still be being asked were it not for the last vestige of remaining check and balance still in the system: the local district attorney.

When the probable-cause affidavits landed on his desk, newly elected District 9 Attorney Jeremiah Gregory had a decision to make.

It was clear that the Oklahoma City media had run with a misleading narrative.

Would he tell the public?

Or would he play the political game, do his part, set up the five arrestees for a quick and easy case and not expose the wider details?

Gregory, in a Facebook post released Tuesday evening, did the former. In an incredible action of courage you won’t often see in government, he explained what was in those affidavits, took to Facebook and brought transparency to the case, and in so doing exposed the truth to the wider public.

Gregory explained that a private contractor, while holding a law enforcement training class with local law enforcement, had purchased fake online ads for prostitution services, inviting inquiring prostitution solicitors to come to a hotel room to pay for sex.

The five arrested individuals had purportedly responded to those ads.

There was no trafficking, as Gregory would explain:

“The Oklahoma Attorney General’s Office issued a press release yesterday afternoon stating that this operation ‘recovered 15 potential victims during a trafficking bust last week at a Guthrie hotel.’ This is wholly misleading. As I have confirmed with the Guthrie Police Department, the ‘15 potential victims’ the press release states were ‘recovered’ were actually profiles on the internet. These names were given to the class to teach enrollees how to use open-source information to identify and locate persons who were possible victims of human trafficking. To state that ‘15 potential victims’ were ‘recovered’ is a gross misrepresentation of the facts. Law enforcement never made in-person contact with any of these fifteen individuals. The public has been led to believe these ‘15 potential victims’ were found at this hotel. This is patently false. The public deserves the whole truth and nothing but the truth from their elected officials, and I cannot sit idly by and permit this aggrandizing misinformation to continue circulating in our community.”

Now that the truth is known, given how this was handled and reported, one has to ask: “How much of the news reported in the mainstream media is completely false?”

For Drummond, this was just another hit-and-run press release. He’s a politician, and he’s behaving as politicians behave. He will move on and may not ever bother to issue a clarification.

But for the community, there’s a lasting effect.

One simply has to scroll the comments of the local blog post to see the speculation, anger, gossip, doxxing and fear gripping the local community. As of the time of this printing, the first visible comment, made by someone clearly under the impression that a local child-abducting sex ring is operating in the city, reads: “People watch your kids!!!!!”

That local blog, which made that report, still hasn’t updated it. Nor has it followed up with Gregory’s explanation.

Of the Oklahoma City media, it appears that only Fox 25 has run with the updated story, adding the correction to the print version of its previous reporting.

So, as of now, most of the people of the town are still in the dark as to what really happened.

They may never learn the truth.

But you, the reader of this publication, know the truth.

And you now know the great danger of allowing politicians to break down the long-held and well-proven checks and balances of our legal system.

And you know the great harm done by those “Republican” politicians, nearly all of whom campaign on a platform of smaller state government, only to subsequently grow a government of unimaginable size and scope that is destroying the tried and proven norms that have made our nation great.

More to follow.

Stay tuned.