Josh Mandel is headed back to divorce court

And it ain't looking good for him!

Josh Mandel, who a former political mentor once described as “inadequate as a human being,” attempted to troll his way into a United States Senate seat in 2022.

And you know what? Mandel might have pulled it off hadn’t President Business Deals blessed J.D. Vance, the hillbilly cosplayer from California, with his complete and total endorsement.

Mandel, who believed he would win despite losing Trump’s endorsement, finished second overall in a race featuring some of the most evil people in Ohio politics. As a non-practicing Jewish man, Mandel “ran his campaign through the [White Evangelical] churches of Ohio” while spewing his typical racist and sexist nonsense with some newfound Bitcoin zealotry mixed in.

But politics is a lot like Rick Bobby’s drug-addicted father said: If you’re not first, you’re last. Mandel, once one of the brightest rising stars in the Ohio Republican Party, was suddenly without a political future.

While Mandel locked his social media accounts and slithered back into private life to plot his next move, his personal problems splashed back into the news six weeks later when the Ohio Supreme Court ruled that Mandel’s divorce records were improperly sealed in 2020.

Josh Mandel and his ex-wife, Ilana Shafran, and their children in happier times.

Here is what I wrote on Oct. 11th, 2022, after Mandel curiously went to Ashland, a city where he and his ex-wife have no connection, to seal the divorce:

Curiously, Mandel and his now ex-wife Ilana Shafran traveled to Ashland County, where neither of them has any connections, to have their divorce records sealed.

[The sealing of the divorce records] became a point of contest with numerous press outlets as Mandel waged his inevitably doomed campaign for Senate. Shafran is from a wealthy Cleveland-area family with deep ties to GOP politics.

Mandel proved further divisive within Shafran’s family as he moved further right to accommodate his unrelenting ambition. Her family famously took out a full-page ad in the Cleveland Jewish News to shit talk his anti-gay platform when he ran for Senate against Sherrod Brown in 2012.

When Mandel ran against Brown again in 2018, he dropped out midway through the race, ostensibly to focus on his then-wife’s health.

However, Republican sources who spoke to The Rooster on condition of anonymity to speak freely revealed that Mandel dropped out because his then-wife didn’t think he could win and was tired of raising three children by herself.

Mandel had also been dogged by rumors of his alleged infidelity and bisexuality, as referenced in an infamous Daily Beast article from 2022 entitled, “Trump fixated on ‘fucking weird’ Senate candidate and his sex life.”

Emphasis mine:

There are a few key reasons why the twice-impeached former president hasn’t yet endorsed Mandel or anybody else in that race. One reason for the hold-up is that Trump—who has long been addicted to dishing tabloid-style gossip and dirt—has for months told people close to him that he thinks Mandel is a charisma-free weirdo and dork, according to three sources who’ve spoken to Trump about Mandel and the Ohio contest since last year.

In recent months, these sources said, the onetime leader of the free world has even spent an inordinate amount of time gossiping with a large array of advisers and close associates about unconfirmed details of Mandel’s sex life.

However, the bombshell of Mandel’s divorce records never went off. And that was because, unknown at the time, his ex-wife was in the process of dragging him back to divorce court, as revealed by The Rooster earlier this week:

Be sure to follow The Rooster on Twitter.

The issue that brought Mandel back to court, according to court documents, is the $2,637 that Mandel pays every month in child support, which was reduced from the $3,365 he was legally obligated to pay before “factors” reduced the number.

That number made sense at the time considering court records show that Mandel made 55.37% of the couple’s joint income.

However, according to multiple sources, the issue currently at stake is Mandel having deflated his income during divorce proceedings to $350,000 a year only to reveal he was a multimillionaire when he ran for Senate a year later.

From Andrew J. Tobias of cleveland.com in August 2021:

Mandel, meanwhile, disclosed at least $2.2 million in assets, although that number was boosted by at least $775,000 in three 529 college savings accounts for his children. Mandel, who left the public sector at the end of 2018 after eight years as state treasurer, disclosed more than $1 million in income, which includes a $205,000 cash-out of state pension, with the rest coming from corporate board positions.

Mandel’s ex-wife, sources tell The Rooster, is convinced that Mandel hid his income to avoid paying his fair share of the expenses to raise the three children that he would use as political props in his next Senate campaign but his first as a divorced dad.

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Mandel, now out of the public limelight, has moved to Pepper Pike, an affluent suburb of Cleveland that elected Joe Biden for president in 2020 by a 37-point margin, according to The New York Times.

Again, this is a house that Mandel could likely afford in his own right. But the house shows how he hides his actual wealth, as it’s owned by 1204 Heath Road, LLC.

12804 Heath Road, LLC, according to the Secretary of State’s website, is owned by Falls Road Management, Inc.

Falls Road Management Inc., in turn, is owned and operated by F. Howard Mandel, the co-president of Pepper Tree Capital and uncle to Josh:

The Rooster had heard rumblings that Mandel was eyeing a run for Congress after going 0-3 in Senate runs, which is a distinction so dubious you have to respect it.

But Mandel would need a new base of operations as his current Pepper Pike abode is in the district of Democratic Congresswoman Shontel Brown in a seat that is unwinnable for any Republican as currently drawn.

That leaves only his impending divorce court date after the judge in the case, Magistrate Paul T. Lange, ordered both sides to submit new financial disclosures.

It’s like that old saying, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.” Though I don’t know Ilana Shafran personally, she doesn’t come from a family of paupers. She doesn’t strike me as someone who enjoys sharing an unfair financial burden on children she’s largely raising by herself.

Nevertheless, it appears that Mandel has finally backed himself into a corner that will never allow him to return to public life at any level to which he clearly felt entitled a little over a year ago.

You hate to see it! But more importantly, you love to see it.

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[You can view the Mandel divorce documents cited here and here.]

THOSE WMDs. Tubi hits 74 million monthly users… John Fetterman rips J.D. Vance for lack of action on Railroad Safety Act… The pizza shop that took on Barstool Sports… The decomposition of Rotten Tomatoes… The Truck Stop Killer.