A judge has removed the immunity protections from two Democrat county commissioners and a sheriff in a Trumbull County, Ohio, war that now includes a First Amendment lawsuit against them.
The fight is over a single Republican member elected to the county commission, and how the Democrats railroaded her into a jail visit, and how they now are being sued for First and Fourth Amendment violations.
“Here in America, we do not arrest our political opponents,” charged Judge J. Philip Calabrese in the North District of Ohio.
A report at RedState.com told the back story of the crushing legal victory.
“A Republican county commissioner arrested during a meeting for criticizing the sheriff has scored a major win in federal court. Niki Frenchko, the only Republican on the Trumbull County, Ohio, board of commissioners, was arrested during a meeting in July 2022 for criticizing the performance of Sheriff Paul Monroe,” the report said.
Frenchko had unseated incumbent and county Democrat party chairman Dan Polivka by 52-48.
Democrats first tried to have her election victory overturned, then they organized resistance to the point county workers demanded a “protective order.”
The other commissioners, Democrats Mauro Cantalamessa and Frank Fuda, the ruling said, “viewed her as ignorant of the basic workings of county government and a nuisance, to put it mildly.”
The controversy broke into open war when Frenchko read into the record a letter from a mother of a man who allegedly was mistreated while in the county jail. The sheriff responded with a demand for an apology and Fuda ordered the clerk to read that letter.
Frenchko interrupted the clerk and objected, Fuda ordered her to stop interrupting, using his gavel and raising his voice, and shortly later Frenchko was jailed on a claim of “disturbing a lawful meeting.”
The judge now has removed the immunity held by various officials to a lawsuit Frenchko filed.
“This case tests that longstanding norm as well as our Constitution’s robust protections for free speech that allow us to criticize our representatives and public officials. Plaintiff Niki Frenchko won election to the three-member Board of County Commissioners of Trumbull County, Ohio. She was an outsider, and the only member of County government from her political party. As a public official, she used her position to needle the incumbents and, in her view, hold them accountable for their decisions. For their part, they viewed her as ignorant of the basic workings of county government and a nuisance, to put it mildly,” the judge said.
His ruling found the defendants violated Frenchko’s First and Fourth Amendment rights.
IMPORTANT NOTE TO WND READERS: For America’s ruling elites, nothing is more precious, wonderful and life-giving to their great cause than the Jan. 6, 2021 “insurrection” at the U.S. Capitol. It’s irrelevant that the events didn’t come remotely close to constituting an actual “insurrection,” or that both police and over 200 undercover FBI assets provoked the riot – which Tucker Carlson calls a “set-up.” Yet Vice President Kamala Harris still insists the minor riot was just as horrific as the 9/11 terror attacks and Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor.
WHY are the elites doing this?
It’s not just because convicting, imprisoning, torturing and destroying the lives of hundreds of Trump supporters is meant to terrify and intimidate millions of Americans into submission. And it’s not just because activist judges and bureaucrats in over 30 states are absurdly trying to keep Trump off their state’s election ballots by citing the 14th Amendment’s prohibition against anyone who “engaged in insurrection” from holding elective office.
It’s because the elites’ destruction of America is so rapid, horrendous and obvious that they feel compelled to turn their opponents into monsters – or lose power at the next election. But that doesn’t mean just calling conservatives and Christians “racists,” “white supremacists,” “radical extremists” and “domestic terrorists” as they do continually. They know much more is needed.
Question: What if, far from being horrified by a half-baked riot they absurdly claim is worse than any domestic disturbance since the Civil War, the left actually LOVES the idea of violence on the right – the worse the better – since it perfectly serves their agenda? Increasingly, all the evidence strongly suggests today’s power-mad leftist elites not only intend to intimidate and discredit their political opponents by calling them terrorists, they mean to provoke actual violence.
The secret strategies and shocking tactics of today’s ascendant far-left elites are exposed as perhaps never before in the January issue of WND’s critically acclaimed monthly Whistleblower magazine, headlined “INCITING VIOLENCE: DEMS’ SECRET STRATEGY FOR STAYING IN POWER.”
WHISTLEBLOWER is available in both the popular print edition and a state-of-the-art digital version, either single issues or discounted annual subscriptions.
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