Dear Border Czar Homan,
I have learned that you were on Fox News last week talking about ICE coming back to Nashville to “flood the zone in the neighborhoods to find the bad guy. We’ll flood the zone at worksites to find the bad guy, but we’re going to do it, and [Mayor Freddie O’Connell is] not going to stop us.”
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I have great news! I know right where the bad guy is. On Memorial Day, he hid in the state Capitol behind your guys — acting ICE New Orleans field office director Brian Acuna and assistant field office director Larry Adams. U.S. Rep. Andy Ogles. Y’all could have nabbed him right then!
Maybe you don’t know about Andy? Thanks to NewsChannel 5’s Phil Williams, we learned way back in 2023 that Ogles isn’t an economist, nor a tax expert, nor a police officer, nor a fighter against sex trafficking. He did not graduate from Vanderbilt or Dartmouth, despite his claims about doing all these things. Hell, as I said at the time, I’m not even sure we can trust that he really likes mules. We also learned that he took nearly $25,000 in GoFundMe money to build a cemetery for babies, but never built said cemetery. As far as I know, he’s never clarified what he did with the money.
Now, I know being a fabulist isn’t a federal crime, but Ogles is allegedly out here lying to the feds as well. At the end of 2023, Eli Motycka — Scene reporter and Nashville First Amendment champion — revealed that Ogles had “paid a $5,750 civil penalty for multiple campaign finance violations incurred during the 2021-2022 election cycle.” Ogles then dragged his feet about turning over his personal income disclosures to the House of Representatives' Clerk’s Office. The FBI searched his office and seized his cellphone. When he finally did turn over his disclosures, he claimed an “investment property” that the Campaign Legal Center said “does not appear to match public records.” Stephen Elliott over at the Nashville Banner did a great job outlining how Ogles played the Hokey-Pokey with various bank accounts and how that played into the disclosure of this investment property.
And then earlier this year, Phil Williams found that Ogles was sending money to companies that don’t seem to have actually existed, and that he appears to be up to some shady shit with a company in Virginia.
Border Czar Homan, let me repeat that. Virginia. Why is Ogles taking jobs away from perfectly fine shady characters here in Tennessee and sending them to Virginia? I, just now, spent 10 minutes practicing telling Phil Williams that I won’t tell him my name — "No," I said, repeatedly. “I don’t need to tell you any of that, any stuff, any further.” I’m working on my dramatic door-slamming too. But do you see Andy Ogles sending me $14,000? You do not. I say that if he wants to funnel campaign money to Virginians, he should move to Virginia.
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Now, I know what you’re thinking. Why would U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn take Andy Ogles’ side against our popular Mayor Freddie O’Connell if Andy Ogles is so bad? Sir, I’m sorry to tell you this, but Marsha Blackburn is dumb. She went out in public with some wild hairdos (including this one) because she couldn’t look at herself in a mirror and figure out that her hairdresser hated her. If she can’t look at her own head and draw obvious conclusions, she certainly can’t look at Andy Ogles’ record and realize he couldn’t even tell the truth on accident.
I realize you might be dumb as well, so I’m going to try to explain a fundamental fact to you. Tennessee is a whole state full of people with some level of disdain for authority. Some of our most famous and beloved art expresses this. We put Sonny Curtis in both the Musicians Hall of Fame and the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame. One of our official state songs prominently features moonshiners killing G-men, and disdain for government men features prominently in “White Lightning” and “Copperhead Road.” I, for instance, just called you dumb, because I disdain the authority you have.
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Hell, Freddie O’Connell, who you’re in the middle of trying to portray as some kind of illegal-immigrant-loving liberal elitist, has gotten a ton of grief from the left for not doing more to protect undocumented immigrants. Everybody here loves hating The Man, even The Men who are caught in a no-win situation.
So Ogles is baiting you into a game of chicken I’m not sure you understand you’re playing. Do a lot of Tennesseans hate immigrants? Sure. Do rural Tennesseans see Nashville as some kind of den of communist sin that deserves pain and suffering? Sure. Andy Ogles feels so unsafe here he has to hide in a stone Civil War-era fort. But how long do you think you can keep swooping into Tennessee and disrupting things with your little power plays and grandma-snatching before all Tennesseans get real tired of seeing you here throwing your weight around?
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And it’s not the hippie liberals you need to worry about. Y’all impacted Steve Smith’s bars. When someone donates a lot of money to Trump, that’s not a thing he expects to happen to him. You’re fucking with his money. The construction industry here? Not a bunch of Democrats. And now you’re threatening to come raid them?
Let me ask you a question. When all these rich Republicans who’ve given money to Trump call him to complain that ICE has carted off their workforce and Trump needs to fix it, do you think Trump’s calling Andy on the carpet, or calling you?
Andy Ogles needs two things: 1. To make the news in his district for anything other than all the shady shit he’s done; and 2. (potentially) for Trump to pardon him for all the shady shit he’s done. Targeting Nashville and Mayor O’Connell served to meet his needs by making him seem gung-ho and willing to fight for Trump’s policies, which maybe will make all his legal issues go away.
He doesn’t care if you paralyze downtown businesses. They aren’t in his district. But those Republicans who own those businesses likely care a lot. Andy is setting you up to take the blame for the harm his political actions cause.
You and the rest of Homeland Security don’t look like tough guys protecting good Nashvillians from bad guys. You look like marks being conned by a bad guy, because that’s what you are. We all see it. Do you?
Wise up, or don’t. But you can’t say you weren’t warned.
-Betsy
