Blackmail, Kompromat, and Abuse

Friends and Constituents,

This week was intense. Trump bombed Iran and brought us to the brink of nuclear war. ICE stepped up their raids in Indianapolis, including District 13. The Supreme Court essentially ruled that the Constitution only applies if the President thinks it applies. Mike Braun appointed several donors of his to the Indiana Economic Development Commission. Zohran Mamdani won a smashing victory for democratic socialists in New York City.

But local politics still took the focus in Indianapolis. And Indianapolis local politics has everything to do with blackmail.

Blackmail. (verb) To demand money or another benefit from someone in return for not revealing compromising or damaging information about them.

The news this week was extremely hard to understand for anyone outside of the political inner circle. Within 9 days, my colleagues in the Democratic Caucus issued a number of seemingly-contradictory statements. These statements actually make perfect sense, however, within the context of weaponized rumors and coercion.

Last Tuesday, Chairwoman of the Investigative Committee Crista Carlino not only called for Mayor Hogsett’s resignation, but also issued a call from the committee floor for Council President Vop Osili and Council Vice President Ali Brown to step down from their leadership roles over the bungled investigation into the Hogsett Administration and over the abusive tactics deployed against Lauren Roberts, Elise Shrock, and their allies.

Immediately after the Chairwoman made her courageous (and in my opinion totally justified and defensible) calls, I heard from multiple insider sources that Council Leadership was furious, and that they were drumming up support to expel Carlino from the Democratic Caucus.

This Tuesday, June 24th, the caucus met for a special meeting to discuss Carlino’s statements and actions. The meeting sounds like it was run much like many caucus meetings that I participated in before I was expelled in February of this year.

The Democratic Caucus in Indianapolis operates much like any abusive family, cult, or other dysfunctional group: leadership is to be respected no matter what, the rules are all unwritten and interpreted solely by the powerful, and threats and shame are deployed as cudgels to attack scapegoats. The caucus does not democratically decide its meeting agendas; Maggie Lewis, the Majority Leader of the Council and thus chairperson presiding over caucus meetings, unilaterally decides what topics make it onto the agenda. The caucus does not take any minutes of its meetings, not even to memorialize general areas of discussion. The caucus does not operate formally under a written parliamentary procedure such as Robert’s Rules of Order; instead, the chair runs meetings and recognizes others to speak, but without any of the protections for minority viewpoints that a fair and neutral parliamentary procedure demands.

According to Councilor Carlino in an interview she gave to IndyPolitics.org, after virtually the entire room of Councilors each took turns lecturing her and attacking her, they asked her to leave the room so they could talk about her behind her back and decide what punishment they wanted to inflict in retaliation for her public calls for accountability.

As a reminder, in Indiana it is illegal for a majority of legislators to meet behind closed doors without public access and public notice. There is a narrow exception to this legal transparency requirement to allow caucuses to ‘plan political strategy and prepare for official action by fellow political party members’, not to ‘take official action on public business’, which the Indiana Public Access Councilor states would ‘short circuit the legislature’s intention that public agencies conduct business openly.’ I reiterate my belief that the so-called Democratic Caucus routinely violates the Open Door Law.

In the interview, Carlino continues to describe the meeting: she was asked to step out of the room again more than once, and never even got to know what exactly her peers were voting on or discussing. She did get clarity that she was to be expelled from the Democratic Caucus if she did not issue a public apology within 24 hours.

Carlino issued an apology, as requested. Her three-page apology letter includes a number of noteworthy statements.

Carlino’s letter explains her deep concerns over the final report produced by Fisher Phillips for the investigative committee. Carlino’s letter states “...I don’t believe the scope was expanded far enough.”

I have spoken with multiple other Councilors who served on the Investigative Committee who confirmed to me that on January 21st, Carlino indeed pushed for a broader scope and expressed frustration directly with representatives from the law firm Fisher Phillips about the firm’s narrow scope of investigation that they had been using up to that point. President Vop Osili - who was not a member of the Investigative Committee - participated in this and other calls with Fisher Phillips as part of a secret “subcommittee” that was not ever mentioned in minutes from the Investigative Committee. Even as a full member of the Democratic Caucus, I was never made aware of the existence of this subcommittee, but it apparently existed for months, operating to allow a minority of the Investigative Committee members to meet without any public notice or public oversight to plan out how the public committee meetings would go.

Carlino’s letter is also noteworthy because it includes a long portion accepting accountability for a perceived conflict of interest, which had not been public information prior to her letter:

“On Wednesday September 4th, 2024, according to media outlets, a city employee who I considered a colleague and friend was fired by the Hogsett administration for ‘inappropriate sexual misconduct’. Tuesday September 10th, 2024, the Committee on Committees meeting was held where Council leaders met to name the Investigative committee makeup and chairperson. That Chairperson was me. I did not step down as Chair of the committee in spite of my friendship with a fired employee because I did not then and still do not believe there was a conflict of interest, nor was the nature of our relationship overly personal or inappropriate. The news of firings was public, and I fully assumed those cases published in the media would be part of the investigation–as was outlined in law. With no personal knowledge of the HR findings on this individual, and with the serious action of their firing, I immediately distanced myself from this person in order to protect the integrity of the investigation that I knew was coming. Over the course of the investigation timeline, I expressed both publicly in committee and privately with legal experts my concerns for the scope, including search terms and individuals that I felt were being left out– whether intentionally or unintentionally.”

This sudden and shocking admission did not arrive in a vacuum.

Based on multiple phone conversations I had with my colleagues, most Councilors seemed to have very recently become aware that Carlino had had a personal relationship with a person who had been fired by the Hogsett administration for sexual improprieties. Several people insinuated that the relationship was more than a mere friendship. Supposedly, there was a photo proving this relationship that Council leaders were in possession of. Despite all of these rumors, which were circulating among the entire caucus as confirmed to me by multiple Councilors, I have not spoken to anyone who claims to have actually seen any photo or who claims to have known about this supposed relationship before Carlino’s calls for resignation.

Instead, the people I talked to all confirmed that Council leaders only began discussing this rumor after Carlino had issued her calls for accountability.

The people who benefited most from the rumor spreading were President Vop Osili and Vice President Ali Brown - the two people who Carlino had asked to step down from leadership. But if someone had concerns about a potential conflict of interest, why not bring those concerns forward earlier? Are we really expected to believe that the timing is coincidence and Carlino’s political adversaries happened to learn about this perceived conflict at the exact time the information could most help them?

Carlino’s letter states “...I accepted the President’s request to serve as Chair of the Council’s Investigative Committee…”

In other words, President Osili was the one who asked her to be the chair - a week after Carlino’s personal friend within the Hogsett administration had already been fired.

Carlino should have disclosed the relationship publicly to avoid the appearance of impropriety. And it's possible that President Osili was not aware of the personal relationship at the time he selected Carlino to be the Chair.

But if Osili was aware of this potential political liability, and appointed Carlino anyway, this would be following a time-honored political strategy of a special type of blackmail: keeping “kompromat” as a means of controlling the behavior of other politicians. It’s a simple strategy, which has been used by intelligence agencies around the world, from the KGB of the Soviet Union to the Mossad of Israel. One simply needs to keep damaging information about other elected officials on hand. Then one can offer power and prestige to those officials, resting easy in the knowledge that if the compromised politicians step out of line, one can simply insinuate that the damaging information will come out and destroy the compromised politician’s political career and personal life. If the compromised politician backs down, the kompromat is kept secret and kept on file, ready to be deployed the next time the blackmail victim thinks about breaking ranks.

Apropos of nothing, here’s what gossip columnist Abdul-Hakim Shabazz was saying during the 24 hour period when Carlino was being forced to write her statement (sic):

”The city hall sexual Harrasment scandal ia about to get a lot worse. Stay tuned.”

And here’s what Shabazz said in this morning’s Cheat Sheet, in the middle of a story about Carlino:

“We were expecting some major sexual harassment news to break this weekend, but that didn’t happen, as the story literally kept changing day by day.”

Certainly some interesting food for thought.

I've had my own run-ins with these underhanded political tactics.

Last year, when I first took my seat on the Indianapolis City-County Council, I ran into some conflicts with my peers very quickly. When I rallied the community to fight back against State Senator Aaron Freeman, many of my Democratic peers leapt into action to protect the Republican Senator. I began to receive profanity-laced phone calls from my peers threatening my expulsion from the Democratic Caucus. I heard from friends that my peers were preparing kompromat against me in the form of an “oppo”, or opposition research, file of damaging information to release in the news when necessary to defeat me with a primary challenge or embarrass me into resigning. Both in the direct threats and the indirect ones sent to me through intermediaries, it was made explicitly clear that if I pushed for a political strategy other than the one Council leadership desired, my political career would be over.

By the way, the Councilor who seemed the most angry about my challenges to Senator Freeman was President Vop Osili. In a rare display of emotion, President Osili banged his fist on the conference table and asked me “What the hell were you thinking, going after Freeman?!” Osili made it clear that the Council - represented by him - had arrangements with Freeman and other Republicans that I was throwing into jeopardy. I never did hear details about what those arrangements were, exactly.

Unfortunately for my peers, some of their threats were based on lies that didn’t land. A member of Council leadership told one of my constituents at a meeting that I was a drug addict. My father died of a drug addiction, so this was incredibly hurtful and personal - but it was also very clearly untrue to anyone in the district who met me, so it wasn’t anything I needed to respond to. Other threats were based on social media posts I had made that establishment politicians thought I would be embarrassed or ashamed of, clearly showing how little they understood me or my constituents.

When I made it clear that I was not afraid of lies, I didn't delete tweets, and wouldn’t back down, the threats went away - though I am sure the oppo will be deployed as part of the inevitable insider-funded primary challenge I’ll face in 2027.

When I was expelled from the caucus this February, it was at an abusive meeting much like the one Carlino described. Leader Lewis had prepared an agenda that did not mention me or expulsion, so as to ensure that I would be taken by surprise. As soon as that meeting started, Chairman Frank Mascari, responding to a nod from Council leaders, immediately introduced a motion to expel me from the caucus, without alleging any rules violation or explaining the motion at all. It was very clear that Council leadership had planned this out and coordinated it ahead of time. As I had already shrugged off the blackmail attempt that was made against me the first time I rocked the boat, Council leadership decided to get rid of me without so much as a caucus discussion.

This style of “leadership” and this type of behavior within the Indianapolis Democratic Party is not new.

In 2018, Democratic Councilor Stephen Clay challenged then-Council President Maggie Lewis for the President role. He lost an internal Democratic caucus vote, but made it clear that he would be continuing his campaign to be elected on the full Council floor by welcoming Republican votes as well.

Nearly immediately after Clay’s announcement that he would continue campaigning, a personal scandal from fifteen years prior resurfaced and received media attention. The allegations involved were horrifying, to be sure, and there’s evidence that Clay’s accuser was consistent in his claims for many years. But the timing of the media story certainly had a powerful political impact. And other Councilors in the same term were the subjects of their own set of sexual abuse allegations, yet received nothing but support from the Party and their peers - and in fact, one was re-elected into Council leadership.

By the way, apropos of nothing, the media furor around Clay was what led to Councilor Vop Osili first becoming Council President, a role he has held ever since.

Then, as now, when political insiders came upon what they saw as damaging information, they didn’t immediately share it with the public to allow constituents to decide what to do with it. Protecting the public was not the priority.

They didn’t share potentially damaging information with their colleagues to help everyone collectively respond and learn from it. Protecting the party was not the priority.

Instead, they held onto the information to use when it was most advantageous to them and their careers.
Protecting themselves and their own power is always the priority.

We need a new type of politics in Indianapolis.

One that welcomes feedback rather than stifling it with armed guards.

One that encourages open debate rather than cloak-and-dagger blackmail schemes.

One that puts the people in the driver’s seat of government.

A better world is possible, but we won’t get there with President Vop Osili or Mayor Joe Hogsett in leadership positions in this city.

In love and solidarity,
Jesse