Kudos to the State Attorney's Office for making an object lesson of GOP "consultant" James Dunn
The extended investigation, prosecution, and public plea by criminal grifter political consultant James Dunn will make Polk elections a bit cleaner. It shows the good a dedicated prosecutor can do.
“Dr.” James Dunn, a gross, convicted felon GOP political “consultant,” inflicted on our community by people who call themselves MAGA GOPers, at a time when much of the GOP has lost its mind and/or any sense of courage or common sense, got a public comeuppance Thursday.
NewsChannel 8’s Staci DaSilva’s news report from Dunn’s plea, which you can see here, does an excellent job of summarizing the Dunn case concisely. If you’ve read me at all in the past two years, you know more about James Dunn than any human being should ever want to know about James Dunn. I’m not going to restate it all.
But here’s a pretty good background piece about how connected to Texas GOP power Dunn has been.
And here’s another piece about the powerful Florida people who put themselves in bed with James Dunn, including the “friends” of Hillsborough Sheriff Chad Chronister, because a political hack named Anthony Pedicini told them to.
An appropriately outsized use of resources
Don’t be fazed by the fact that Dunn only got probation plus some costs. His actual legal crime was mislabeling of campaign material through anonymous texts that slandered School Board Member Lisa Miller and her husband by inventing lies about them. The SAO couldn’t prosecute the slander, only the labeling.
Considering that, the Polk State Attorney’s Office, led by veteran prosecutor Brad Copley, poured enormous time and resources into a case that was never going to produce a severe punishment.
But it signaled to future gross people like the CCDF (which has had to change its name to CDF because it’s so toxic here now) that the SAO is willing to spend those resources in the service of supporting our elections and process of choosing who governs it. That creates a deterrent.
If you’ve read me, you know that I’ve been very critical of the SAO here recently because it hasn’t shown the willingness to do this in all cases. I’ve made that point here at PE 1, in this article, pretty forcefully.
But today, I’m focusing on the good done here by Copley and his investigators — which received the backing of elected State Attorney Brian Haas, who also deserves credit. It’s his office.
And the Dunn case shows what an effective power prosecution can be when it orients itself around morality and justice and idealism.