Gerhart: 'Kannady Too Powerful To Be Held Accountable By Speaker'

On Sunday night, The Sooner Tea Party Newsletter published a shocking revelation which, if substantiated; implicates the current leadership in some capacity of at least indifference & slow-walking a claim... and maybe even a coverup?
  Al Gerhart published his  own account to contacting members of leadership along with the individual making a sexual misconduct claim.  Here's how Gerhart explains it..

For seven of the last eight months Sooner Tea Party has held the Kannady/McDugle sexual battery/sexual harassment scandal from publication for several reasons. 

• First, Kannady was too dug in with leadership for them to turn against him. We know that because House leadership was notified of the scandal back in October of last year due to a request from the first victim for a meeting with House leadership in order to discuss how to file a report and have justice done without exposing the victim.
• Second, the discussion with House leadership went nowhere for several weeks until I reached back out and at that point the victim was referred to two staffers at the Capitol. Both we and the victim figured out that there wasn't support to hold Kannady or McDugle responsible so the exposure was put on hold.

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• ​​Then in late April of this year Leadership reached out and requested that we attempt to get the victim to come forward. When asked why, it was said that Kannady had become too powerful, was raising too much money independently, and had become too bold and heavy handed and had becoming a threat to leadership. Mention was made of a pay to play scandal involving the liquor bill on the change in distribution of the top 25 brands. They wanted a pile on effect, sex scandal and pay to play scandal.

  Is Chris Kannady some sort of 'Darth Vader' in the state legislature? Many will say that the comparison has merit. But if that's so; why is the leadership so hesitant to establish order and accountability? Why do they need the assistance (or even the leadership) of Al Gerhart, to reign in Chris Kannady?
  Perhaps the more important question is; "Would a 'Speaker Kannady' be an even greater danger to the institution of our legislature?" Is his lust for power something that would undermine the integrity of our government?
  Let's look at his dictatorship of the House Judiciary Committee. No one wields his authority to kill a bill  like Kannady does. Many committee chairs simply refuse to give other legislator's bills a hearing and a committee vote. But while this behavior mimics a 'junta' more than a democratic institution. When a career military figure brings his militant culture to the mix, it become wholly intolerable for civilian government. Kannady's 'lieutenants' include other military lawmakers like Kevin McDugle and Josh West. They employ intimidation in their tactics and have bullied elderly lawmakers in their quest for further power consolidation.

  If Gerhart has evidence to back up his claims, there may be a scandal here that is far bigger than we have yet seen. I suspect that Gerhart does have plenty of evidence, in the forms of written correspondence and audio recordings.  

Why is Gerhart doing this?

  We might better ask; "Why isn't the commercial media doing their due diligence?".   

• When Gerhart first published this sex scandal (mid April); Gerhart says that the Associated Press acted like they were going to do their own research and article... but nothing ever went to print.
  
• When the Tulsa World first published, they never interviewed Gerhart, but began their details with name-calling; making sure we all knew that they regarded Gerhart as a "gadfly".
• KFOR was the first to publish a legitimate coverage of the substance & Gerhart released some audio clips of the victim making her claims.
• NonDoc was among the first commercial bloggers who were given audio tapes & names of multiple victim's contact info(according to Gerhart) but published nothing until after the special investigator came back empty on just one victim's claims. Then Nondoc published several slanderous quotes about Gerhart without even getting Gerhart's response to the claims made about him.

  And it was perhaps the NonDoc article which prompted this latest tell-all article in the Sooner Tea Party Newsletter. In his 2nd article last night, Gerhart has published volumes of first-hand correspondence which contradict claims by McDugle. Claims which defame Gerhart. That's info which a good journalist perhaps might ought to at least ask for, when preparing a story.  It appears that NonDoc failed to fact-check the claims which McDugle & Kannady offered.
   Does this rebuttal by Gerhart hurt the House Leadership? It ought to, if the people of Oklahoma are interested in the truth and if Gerhart can back up his claims with solid evidence. Leadership could try to blame Gerhart for their problems, but they could do better by looking in the mirror first. And the rest of our commercial media outlets could have actually earned their pay by getting the facts before they start trashing other citizen journalists.

Where is this going?

  It all seems to say that we have weak House leadership, and a power-hungry aggressor who is seeking ascendency.  But we also have a very large Republican Caucus (over 70 members) which is full of Freshmen who need to think independently and perhaps take the House in an entirely different direction.