The tragicomic tale of Tami and Kevin Sawyer just keeps getting stranger and stranger.
The Sawyers were high flyers during Bend’s real estate bubble era but were shot down in flames last month when a federal grand jury in Eugene indicted them on 21 criminal counts including wire fraud, bank fraud, money laundering, conspiracy to commit wire fraud and false statements to a financial institution. They’re also facing civil suits by about 20 former investors in their various business enterprises.
But now, a publication called US-Observer is painting the Sawyers in a new light – as innocent victims of a vast, sinister conspiracy involving The Bulletin, the FBI, the U.S. Attorney’s Office and, yes, President Barack Obama himself.
“Bend Family’s Real Estate Nightmare,” blares the headline on the story. “Obama Mortgage Investigation ‘Operation Stolen Dreams’ Falsely Targets Entrepreneurs?”
Under the byline of “Joseph Snook & Edward Snook, Investigative Journalists,” the story:
- Accuses The Bulletin of “permanently [ruining] the Sawyers’ reputation with over 32 articles printed to date – all with your typical one-sided smear tactics and completely biased reporting”;
- Claims that an FBI investigator “attempted to manufacture a case” against the Sawyers, and
- Charges that Assistant U.S. Attorney Scott Bradford “attempted to coerce the Sawyers into a plea-bargain carrying a five-year prison sentence” by threatening to get their daughter indicted if they didn’t take the deal.
Oh, and the Obama connection? The story says Bradford “is part of President Obama’s ‘Operation Stolen Dreams.’ This operation is purported to be one that goes after fraud in the real estate market. However, the US-Observer has numerous cases where public officials supposedly going after fraud were in fact protecting fraudulent banks and loan officers as they went after innocent people. This appears to be the case with Tami and Kevin Sawyer.”
Before we go any further I need to explain that Edward Snook, who lives in Grants Pass and is the editor of US-Observer, practices checkbook journalism. That means, in his case, that if you’re accused of a crime and you take out your checkbook and write him a check, he’ll write a story “proving” your “innocence.”
Snook doesn’t make any secret of it. When I asked him if he takes money to write his stories, he replied: “People hire us to vindicate them, and our ads are pretty specific that if people are in any way guilty we will find out and they’d be better off not to hire us.”
Snook said his usual retainer is “five grand in-state, 10 grand out-of-state. We bill against that at $95 an hour.”
Kind of steep – but in case you’re worried about wasting your money, Snook’s website offers “a 100% money-back guarantee on criminal cases should we fail to prove your innocence and achieve your total vindication.”
Did the Sawyers pay Snook to write the story about them?
“I’m not gonna divulge who hired me,” Snook said. “Somebody hired me, though.”
Was it somebody connected with the Sawyers?
“That’d be fair to say.”
The Sawyer story is full of statements prefaced with phrases like “it is reported” and “it is alleged,” and relies heavily – indeed, almost exclusively – on anonymous “sources.” The only person who’s quoted by name, in fact, is Tami Sawyer herself. “The fictitious, one-sided reporting by The Bulletin has greatly affected my life and ability to work towards getting my lenders their money back,” she says.
Although Snook describes himself as having more than 20 years of experience as an “investigative journalist,” it appears that his only “journalistic” experience has been with the US-Observer, which he said he started in 1991. When I asked him if he’d ever worked for any other publications or news outlets before that, he answered: “No, I was a cattle rancher.”
While he might not have any fancy journalism degrees or an impressive resumé, Snook knows how to manipulate public opinion. About a year ago, his story about accused rapist Kevin Driscoll of Redmond turned the case into a cause célèbre on the blogosphere. Driscoll’s first trial ended in a hung jury; in the second, which ended last month, he was acquitted.
Working Obama into the headline of the Sawyer story was a shrewd move by Snook; it will get the attention of right-wing bloggers and radio screamers, who no doubt will whip up phony outrage over the “socialist” administration’s persecution of a couple of virtuous, hard-working “entrepreneurs.”
If the Sawyers or their friends wanted to get themselves a hired journalistic gun, I guess they had a right to do it. But Snook’s sleazy “investigative reporting” outrageously smears a bunch of people, including attorneys, legitimate journalists and public officials. And there’s no way to make that right.
In the old days they used to say freedom of the press belonged to the man who owned one. Now freedom of the press belongs to any unscrupulous operator who puts up a website and is willing to slime people for money. I’m not sure that’s an improvement.
This article appears in Nov 11-17, 2010.
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I doubt anyone will be coming to their side no matter what they do.
In the old days they used to say freedom of the press belonged to the man who owned one. Now freedom of the press belongs to any unscrupulous operator who puts up a website and is willing to slime people for money. I'm not sure that's an improvement.
for some of the stuff you have written in the past, you should be happy that freedom of the press
The Sawyers are f#@ked, and they know it. I was part of a large operation that was circling the drain in the ’90s. Nothing criminal, mind, but we were facing certain personal and business bankruptcy. I know how desperate times call for desperate measures. If hiring a publicist or a fake journalist seemed like it would have helped, we have done so. I know that at the time we felt that we were the victims of a witch hunt, I’m sure the Sawyers feel the same way.
If Snook finds actual evidence of malfeasance, then their money will have been well-spent and the matter will become a larger story. But my money is on sleaze-ballery: innuendo, made up sources, and general slime.
“If hiring a publicist or a fake journalist seemed like it would have helped, we [would] have done so”
Hiring a PR guy is one thing; hiring a guy to write a story that contains foul accusations and insinuations against the people you claim are “persecuting” you is something else. Snook’s story is full of such accusations and insinuations; I didn’t repeat the worst of them because I didn’t want to harm the victims even further. I suggest that you follow the link to Snook’s story and read the whole thing.
Duncan McGeary has a good comment on his blog:
“Someone hires a vanity online newspaper to write a dubious defense of the Sawyers for $5000.00. Didn’t the Sawyers just ask for court appointed lawyers?”
Yes, they did. Of course, Snook wouldn’t say whether it was the Sawyers themselves who paid him. But still …
Does one have to demonstrate hardship before the court appoints a lawyer? If so, then this makes no sense because once the court gets wind of the story they will want to see if assets have been hidden from them.
Coulda been a loan from a family member. Money wasted, anyway. IMHO.
If I had a spare $5k I’d use it for council rather than on some marginal journal.
I was searching for department conduct for off duty officers, I came across an article from policechiefmagazine.org. June 2007.
I thought since Mr.Sawyer was a police officer, wouldn’t there be some sort of department policy for off duty misconduct?
Wouldn’t this behavior he demonstrated be considered
illegal by his department? If that is the case, could they go back to the starting dates of the activities, and revoke his pay? Or find away to have him re-pay the taxpayers? Wouldn’t another thing to do is cut off his retirement or benefits he has coming?
BELOW IS PART OF THE ARTICLE…
Internal litigation and the costs associated with officer off-duty misconduct are not as easily manageable. For decades, police chiefs, arbitrators, and judges have had to wrestle with the disciplinary issues associated with off-duty misconduct. Generally, misconduct is considered to be an employee's noncompliance with the rules and regulations of the agency. Clearly, all off-duty illegal behavior committed by sworn personnel is unethical, but not all off-duty unethical behavior is illegal. An officer's termination for off-duty misconduct subjects an agency to the possibility of negative media coverage; long-term litigation costs; and allegations of corruption, mismanagement, agency cover-up, or administrative incompetence. A failure to educate subordinates regarding the agency's expectations of off-duty conduct could be defined as a neglect of duty on the part of the police administration.
Regulating off-duty officer behavior will always be a legal challenge, as there is a very fine line between balancing the organization's right not to employ an unethical officer versus the officer's right to off-duty privacy. The scales of justice dictate that courts weigh the differing interests of the parties before them and derive a fair and just resolution that benefits the majority's interests. Philosophically speaking, the majority's interest in policing must belong to the community the agency serves, not to the organization, individual officers, or the police union. A police agency that drafts and adheres to its own template of accountability demonstrates to its citizens, its employees, and the courts its commitment to provide professional police services by maintaining a level of integrity both professionally and personally.
Labor law, not unlike criminal law, seeks to define employee behavior that violates the rules and regulations of an organization. Mission statements, codes of ethics, and oaths of office provide all employees and policy makers with guidelines for an agency's expectations for both on- and off-duty behavior. Yet without clear and concise definitions of an agency's expectations, employees may never truly associate their own immoral off-duty behavior as noncompliant with an agency's expectations.
There’s just no escaping the Vast Rightwing Paranoid Fantasy, is there?