Rooster in Review: Tiberi Endgame
It's not looking good for Les Wexner's personal lawyer, John Zeiger.
As The Rooster reported Friday morning, the Ohio State survivors are turning up the heat on Board of Trustees Chairman John Zeiger, as his personal client, Central Ohio billionaire Leslie Wexner, evades service of subpoena in the lawsuit against the university.
Coincidentally, extending the lawsuit by letting Wexner off the hook would also benefit another longtime Zeiger ally: His former business partner, Michael Carpenter.
In 2004, Sonya Huber of Columbus Monthly detailed the amicable split between Zeiger and Carpenter, who at the time led one of the most powerful law firms in Columbus.
You can read that entire article here, thanks to the Columbus Metro Library’s archival service.
Coincidentally enough, Carpenter represents Ohio State’s interests in paying the survivors of Dr. Strauss’ abuse, which the university has already acknowledged that its institutional negligence played a role, the smallest monetary sum they’ll accept.
Carpenter’s firm, meanwhile, has billed Ohio State more than $20 million, with the number probably being closer to $30 million, in legal defense fees, according to one well-connected source.
On Friday morning at roughly 8:45 a.m., I weasled my way into the Federal Courthouse in downtown Columbus to ask Carpenter a simple question before he waltzed into the mediation with lawyers representing the Ohio State survivors.
Was today the day we were going to get justice for them?
You can see how that encounter went below:
It’s always humorous to me when influential people like Carpenter go crying to the cops whenever a random hog off the street asks them a question in a respectful, albeit direct manner.
That he instantly equated this behavior to “accosting” him is hilarious.
But Zeiger’s conflicts of interest bubbling to the public surface in this case might be the least of his worries because there’s a fox in the trustees’ board that serves as his henhouse.
In August, Governor Mike DeWine appointed former Republican Congressman Pat Tiberi as the newest Ohio State trustee.
The scuttlebutt at the time was that DeWine tasked Tiberi, the former Ohio Chamber of Commerce leader, to get the Strauss lawsuit settled before DeWine’s term expired.
Coincidentally, Tiberi was the only trustee to speak to the assembled media after Thursday’s meeting. They didn’t need to accost him, either. He waltzed right up to the gaggle and answered questions, but couldn’t divulge specifics due to the ongoing legal matter facing the university.
In my opinion, Tiberi did that to legitimize the survivors, whom the rest of the trustees refused to look at, let alone address. But it would also help show the public that—unlike the rest of these flunkies—he’s not running scared, nor is he taking orders from Zeiger.
In my opinion, Tiberi’s endgame is easy to grok. If Zeiger does indeed step down, since the pressure is only going to mount from here, then I’m betting it will be Tiberi that serves as the next chairman of the Ohio State University’s Board of Trustees.
The Rooster will have more as this story develops.
This week in Ohio Man…
Orville, Ohio, is rallying around a welder from Laos who came to America as a refugee 40 years ago, pleading with President Business Deals not to deport him.
From Daniella Silva of nbcnews.com:
Boudylam “Lam” Simmavanh is a welder and father of four who came to the U.S. as a child refugee from Laos 40 years ago. He knew that after President Donald Trump took office and vowed the “largest deportation operation” in U.S. history, his future could be in peril.
So he and his family began gathering letters in February from family and community members attesting to his character and his positive impact on their small town of Orrville, Ohio. They hoped the letters would show officials why someone like Simmavanh, 48, should remain in their community.
“Allow productive people, like Lam, the avenue to stay with his family. This can’t be fixed by tearing families apart that have lived here most of their lives,” wrote David Handwerk, the former mayor of Orrville who taught Simmavanh and his siblings when they were students at the local school.
It’s almost like immigrants build our country into something better. It’s something that Wayne County should have known before they voted in droves for the con artist running on a platform of mass deportation:
I don’t write this to condemn everyone in Wayne County. Living in Ohio, I know how that feels when coastoids do the same to us for voting for Trump three times.
But the lesson is that “mass deportation” was never going to target violent criminals, because most immigrants aren’t violent criminals! And to juice their numbers to throw red meat to their hogs, good people like Mr. Simmavanh get swept into the dragnet.
It’s disgusting and infuriating. And you can only wonder if God himself could absolve this stain on our country’s fabric, because this is nothing short of national suicide in exchange for fan service to the worst people that live amongst us.
This week in The Rooster…
It was another brisk week of business for Rooster Worldwide LLC. If you found any dispatch informative or even entertaining, then we’d be honored if you helped sustain the operation by purchasing a monthly or annual subscription:
Here’s what you may have missed this week:
Somebody get The Hague on the line. Congressman Mike Turner agrees that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth might have committed a war crime. Plus, Anduril continues to eat shit in Ukraine.
The Rooster’s December mailbag. People keep asking for “classic growing up in Marion stories,” and I keep tanking any future plans for public office.
Where is Leslie Wexner? As The Rooster reported in September, Central Ohio billionaire Leslie Wexner is evading service of a subpoena in the Dr. Strauss abuse lawsuit against Ohio State. Why won’t his personal attorney, John Zeiger, who also serves as Wexner’s personal attorney, accept that service?
When survivors strike back. The Ohio State Survivors turned up the heat at Thursday’s trustee meeting, with Chairman Zeiger having to enter the gulag to return to his personal vehicle in the parking lot.
We’ll do it again next week at the same time and place.
Until then… stay frosty, my friends!
THOSE WMDs. The curious notoriety of performative reading… MAGA has repulsed young women… The strange disappearance of an anti-AI activist… How Russian Cossacks drive young people to war… Texas banned abortion, and sepsis rates soared.
Gold as always D.J.
We are lucky to have you doing this work. Keep it up!