Chairman Bradshaw Makes False Statements to Public

Chairman Bradshaw Makes False Statements to Public

by Shari Dovale

Today’s weekly business meeting took another twist with Chairman Bradshaw.

After waiting months for Bradshaw to begin District 1 reports, as the other 2 commissioners are giving each week, Bradshaw finally gives a report to the public, but it turns out to be false and misleading.

Bradshaw began with this statement (emphasis added):

There was a recent press release as to the investigation into the fairgrounds. Uh, the one that released is full of inaccurate information, and can tend to be misleading, so this is the one that Louis Marshall had wrote”

This tells the public that everything to follow had been written/approved by Louis Marshall, prosecutor for Bonner County.

Bradshaw then took an incomplete copy of a draft that had been edited by multiple people within the county and said it was all written by Louis Marshall.

He removed parts that he did not like, such as:

For the past several months the Office of the Prosecuting Attorney has been providing legal advice to the Fair Board and assisting to determine the proper roles and separation from Bonner County.

He did not include all of the elected officials that were involved in the draft, using instead:

The Board of County Commissioners, and County Clerk, and Office of Prosecuting Attorney remain committed to implementing appropriate internal controls to prevent this from happening in the future.

This tells us who he believes he is working with on this presentation, though nearly all of the 9 elected officials were to be involved in the joint statement.

When first hearing the account, it is never said when Marshall’s statement had ended and Bradshaw’s commentary had begun. It is left to the listening public to determine this, if at all. It appears that Marshall wrote all of it.

However, I can report on this due to receiving a copy of the draft, with Bradshaw’s changes in place:

The changes that Bradshaw made at the end of the presentation, are statements from him alone. These include:

There was an outside investigator that was brought in to do the audit on the finances. Uh, there’s a detail to that – that, at some point in time, would become public, so I’m going to get ahead of it now – that a private investigator is a retired detective.

He’s, uh, I believe to be a solid honest man. I believe that if the investigation took it directly to his son, that’s where the ax would fall. That’s the type of man I believe him to be.

That being said, this man worked for Daryl Wheeler in the jail, and was an employee previously to Daryl Wheeler. And his son is currently an employee of Daryl Wheeler.

So to protect not only the Sheriff, the Sheriff’s Department, the private investigator that did the audit, Bonner County employees, Board of Commissioners, the Fair Board, and everybody concerned, Louis Marshall and I have contacted the Attorney General’s Office to put a second set of eyes on this investigation, to look for discrepancies, anything that could or might be wrong, or to say, “Yes, this is a clean and solid investigation,” to protect everybody involved.

And so that’s the status of this at that time, and that concludes my report for today. Thank you.

There were multiple issues with this statement, as noted by a plethora of people throughout the county.

Commissioner Williams submitted the following statement to Redoubt News (emphasis added):

Statement by Commissioner Williams Concerning Today’s Meeting

Commissioner Bradshaw reported that he was reading a statement from Louis Marshall in today’s meeting.  I did not receive a copy of said statement and confirmed with Louis Marshall that no statement was issued to Bradshaw to release at today’s meeting.

Last week the board made an announcement that the investigator had completed their work into the fair audit, a draft joint statement was to follow. A draft statement was sent to multiple elected officials.  The draft was not cleared for release and efforts to complete the document ceased when the Sheriffs office released an independent statement. 

Bradshaw not only falsely reported that he was reading a statement from Louis, but he took considerable creative license from the draft documents that the elected officials were working on. 

The events of the past have been felt deeply in Bonner County on all sides.  The community should be demanding integrity, honesty and transparency in all things related to this unfortunate event that took place.  

Williams made inquiries of Prosecutor Marshall and received permission to release the following statement to Redoubt News, issued via email:

Statement from Prosecutor Marshall:

After Daryl released the statement I ceased working on any drafts.

I am going to send the matter to the AG’s Office as soon as I get done with a murder trial this week.  I do want to be clear however, I am very confident in the integrity of the investigation. 

I specifically instructed Chris Swan to be very conservative in examining expenditures- ie, if there was even a possibility it was a lawful expenditure to not include it.  The reality is that the improper expenditures were even higher than in the report.

I understand there are people who want to delegitimize the investigation but ultimately I believe that will backfire. 

This is a hot button issue throughout the county. There is no need to distort the truth. Exaggeration and falsehoods lead to more distrust.

It was widely discussed last week that Chairman Bradshaw publicly stated to the sheriff that They Were Now At War. Bradshaw took it upon himself to escalate his petty differences with the Sheriff, and that can only be disastrous for the county. Look what it has done to the fair board and the fair grounds. Also note that this little War of Bradshaw’s has cost the county money that is being covered by the taxpayers.

This statement today seems to be just another attack on the sheriff and the credibility of the Sheriff’s department by Bradshaw. He seems to be using Marshall’s name and position to legitimize his acrimony towards the sheriff.

We have sent further inquiries in to the county, via requests for comment and official records requests. This story will be updated when additional information has been received.

Related:  Read Report: Fairgrounds Fraud

Related:  Auditors Respond to Fairgrounds Fraud Release