Which Ohio Mayor Banged a Chinese Spy in a Car?

I have a good guess about who the FBI watched have sex with a foreign national.

I don’t remember the last time I had sex in a car. Probably back in college? To me, that shit peaks in high school when you’re broke and your parents’ room is thirty feet down the hallway and you’re horny enough to risk an arrest for public indecency in a Burger King parking lot. It’s apparently an art of seduction for mediocre politicians from Ohio.

I’d like to think Warren G. Harding — the nation’s kinkiest president — invented the hustle when he came to power as that criminally insane anti-Semite Henry Ford began flooding the streets with gas-powered automobiles that will eventually choke our planet to death.

Most politicians, especially the older guard, were raised as pampered nerds who played polo at some elite boarding school or whatever. They are socially stunted and were probably ignored by most women they thought owed them sex after a couple of boring dates with their “nice guy” routine.

The KGB were experts in turning American politicians’ libido against them:

A commonly known type of sexpionage is a honey trap operation, which is designed to compromise an opponent sexually[2]:230 to elicit information from that person. In the KGB, a man who is the seducer in a honey trap operation is known as a raven (Вороны). A female seductress is known as a swallow (ласточка).[2]:231 The raven effectively functions as an undercover pimp while the swallow functions as an undercover prostitute. A "swallow's nest" was the name given for the double-apartments in which the target would be seduced in one room while next door KGB technicians filmed or taped the entire affair.[3]

As the saying goes, men have two heads and only enough blood for one of them at a time. It doesn’t surprise me that, decades later, our doofy politicians are too dumb or too arrogant to realize the hot young woman hitting on them at a reception might have more ulterior motives than wanting to see some nerd’s shriveled vein cain.

Perhaps the most prolific story of a politician fucking in a car came in 2014, when the anointed star of the Ohio Democratic Party, gubernatorial candidate Ed FitzGerald, a man who didn’t even have a driver’s license of his own, was caught mid-coitus with an Irish national who was not his wife.

From Aaron Blake of washingtonpost.com in August 2016 article entitled, “The Remarkable Implosion of Ed FitzGerald.”

It's a stunning turn of events in what we supposed to be a major swing-state gubernatorial election this year. Just two years ago, Gov. John Kasich was an unpopular Republican governor who had been rebuked by voters when they overturned his move to restrict collective bargaining rights for public-sector unions.

But Kasich regained his good political name as the once-touted candidacy of FitzGerald imploded in ways not even the most optimistic Republicans could imagine.

First was the poor fundraising, then a report that he was found by police in a car at 4:30 a.m. with a woman who was not his wife, then that he didn't have a driver's license for a decade, after which, finally, nearly all of his top campaign staff deserted him. FitzGerald's collapse is all the more remarkable — and worrisome — for Democrats for a few reasons.

Fun fact: Chris Redfern, the then-Ohio Democratic Chairman who groomed FitzGerald and thrust FitzGerald’s skanky ass onto us, resigned in disgrace after this debacle. He’s now trying to make a comeback as chairman of the party because God abandoned this state long ago.

It would appear the Chinese Communist Party has learned to master the ancient art of seduction for their own benefit as well. They only needed one woman made quick work of every politician she encountered.

From Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian of axios.com and Zach Dorfman of the Aspen Institute (bold theirs; italics mine):

The woman at the center of the operation, a Chinese national named Fang Fang or Christine Fang, targeted up-and-coming local politicians in the Bay Area and across the country who had the potential to make it big on the national stage.

…

• At a 2014 conference in Washington, an older Midwestern mayor "from an obscure city" referred to Fang as his "girlfriend" and insisted the relationship was genuine despite the clear age difference between Fang and himself, according to former Cupertino Mayor Gilbert Wong, who was directly present for the conversation.

• Fang also had a sexual encounter with an Ohio mayor in a car that was under electronic FBI surveillance, said one current U.S. official. When the mayor asked why Fang was interested in him, Fang told him she wanted to improve her English, the same official said.

When I read this article, my spider sense tingled. This had to have happened in Columbus; the only growing metro in the state that is controlled by the real estate lobby would be a ripe target for anyone looking to rub shoulders with up-and-coming politicians.

My first suspect was naturally Mayor Andy Ginther on account of him being a massive nerd who would definitely cheat on his wife if given the chance as he routinely violates ethical boundaries in public office.

But the timeline of 2011-2015, when these porno tapes were filmed, thankfully excludes our doofy ass mayor from being involved in the sex tape from Hell. He was probably too busy to have sex anyway because he was taking bribes from red light camera companies.

I considered Cleveland’s Frank Jackson or Cincinnati’s John Cranley. Jackson was in office during the entire spy timeline. Cranley not until 2013. Jackson has zero interest in state or national politics. Cranley has the interest but about as much chance as me as being elected governor. Jackson is definitely a guy that fucks. I’m not convinced Cranley has even fucked his own hand. Neither of them fit the profile of what Fang Fang was hunting.

It wasn’t until the Communist Group Chat on Signal proposed another name that fit the bill: former Columbus Mayor Michael Coleman.

Mayor Coleman would not remember me in a million years. As his former speech writer, David Niven, told Michelle Sullivan of columbusmonthly.com in February 2015, “The mindset of the voter is like a child with a short attention span.” That pool includes Coleman in 2020.

I used to serve Coleman, his then-wife and campaign manager Frankie, and a different young woman every week at Hubbard Grille in the Short North. The man tipped well in what I assumed was his attempt to bribe me into silence about his ménage à trois. Not that I cared. I was too young and dumb to give a shit about local politics. Why would I care what the Mayor did in his private life?

….

In 2011, when the FBI alleges Fang Fang brought her WAP to the banks of the Olentangy River, Coleman would have been coming off a divorce with his wife in which she spent ten days in jail for forging time sheets at a county agency and got arrested for D.U.I. amidst her public struggles with alcoholism.

Perhaps as a new divorcée at the ripe age of 57, Coleman wondered if he would ever find romance again. Ohio Democrats wanted him to run for governor or Senate, so he would have been a sitting duck to a professional like Fang. Her success with forging political connections in California would undoubtedly play well for her in Columbus.

Coleman never had the courage to leave his office as a big fish in a small pond. In January 2015, he shocked his supporters by announcing he would not seek re-election in November, an election he would have won decisively just like any other mayoral election in which he declared for as long as he lived.

Six months later, the King’s decision to abdicate the throne made much more sense.

Real estate is one of the easiest vehicles in the world for laundering money, but especially so in America. (Look at how easily Ukranian oligarchs secretly became the largest real estate owners in downtown Cleveland.)

Mayor Coleman didn’t quit because he got tired of being mayor. He quit because he flew too close to the sun and caught the ire of the FBI.

From Lucas Sullivan of dispatch.com on June 25, 2015:

The sale of Columbus Mayor Michael B. Coleman’s home is the subject of a federal investigation, and agents have interviewed a city employee who says Coleman directed city staff members to help the buyer set up a business here. Federal investigators issued subpoenas and asked city staff members for records related to the $520,000 purchase of Coleman’s former house at 1362 E. Haddon Rd. in late 2010, according to several sources, including a city staff member.

…

Federal investigators issued subpoenas and asked city staff members for records related to the $520,000 purchase of Coleman’s former house at 1362 E. Haddon Rd. in late 2010, according to several sources, including a city staff member. Franklin County auditor records show that the house was purchased for well above the county’s 2010 appraised value of $404,000.

I’m still not sure how Coleman evaded prison for this, but hey, the FBI needed two shots at disgraced Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder before nailing his cracker ass on RICO charges.

What’s even weirder, the Chinese businesswoman, Jianhua Li, claimed she didn’t even know she was over-bidding on the mayor’s house.

From Lucas Sullivan of dispatch.com on July 1st, 2015:

The Chinese businesswoman who bought Mayor Michael B. Coleman’s former home says she didn’t know it was his house when she bought it. The transaction is now the subject of a federal investigation. But Jianhua Li said by telephone from Beijing that she purchased the home as a place to house workers for her company, not to curry favor with the mayor.

Americans think corrupt business practices like this only happen in foreign countries, when in reality there are 23 countries less corrupt than us.

Corporations go into business in Russia knowing to come with a few extra dollars in their pockets to grease the tracks of the appropriate government officials. It’s no different here; Coleman was simply smart enough to take his bribe in the form of an extra $125,000 on a house with recent fire damage and not a check like that idiot Cincinnati mayoral candidate P.G. Sittenfeld.

Ms. Li proved her keen sense of business two years later when she sold the house for $150,000 less than what it was appraised at when Coleman owned the house.

From Dave Ghose of columbusmonthly.com on February 8th, 2017:

A Chinese businesswoman has sold the former home of ex-Columbus Mayor Mike Coleman for less than half of what she paid Coleman for it in 2010. Documents filed with Franklin County in December revealed Jianhua Li had unloaded the nearly 4,576-square-foot Berwick home for $250,000. In 2010, she paid $520,000 for the property—a price high for the east side neighborhood, according to comparable sales listed on the Franklin County auditor’s website and real estate agents who work in the Berwick area.

Li was considering doing business in the city of Columbus at the time of the 2010 sale, leading to an FBI investigation that resulted in no findings of wrongdoing.

When Li put the house on the market most recently, Columbus real estate agent Michael Jones listed the property for $550,000. He declined to elaborate on why the eventual sale price dropped so significantly.

Ohio politics, baby! You gotta love ‘em. Coleman, having evaded being pinched by the FBI (for now), has returned to City Hall as a lobbyist in 2017, exactly a year after his friend and former City Hall lobbyist John Raphael was sentenced to 15 months in federal prison after claiming he, and he alone, extorted money from city officials in the nationwide RedFlex camera scandal.

The only way we will know for sure if former Columbus Mayor Michael B. Coleman banged a foreign national in a car will be if the FBI declassifies that information or it comes out in court.

But he would have been single and ready to mingle when Fang Fang came to town to the point he would have been horny enough to think that this woman really needed some wrinkly old man to teach her English while they banged.

Coleman also fit the profile of potential rising political stars that Chinese intelligence wanted to ensnare — today the mayor, tomorrow a Senator or Governor?

If the FBI watched him fuck a spy in a car parked wherever it is in Columbus that former mayors park to have sex, then it would make sense that the feds decided they should look into this Midwest mayor who was throwing his cock around like this. Hence the investigation into the shady property deal.

Do I have any proof other than my own suspicion? No. But until I’m proven wrong, nobody can convince me this taped tryst wasn’t the beginning of the end for Coleman in public life and he got out before the other shoe could drop.

THOSE WMDs. Feds to investigate the murder of Casey Goodson… McKinsey issues rare apology for role in OxyContin sales (lol)… Framing climate change as a “national security priority” will bloat the budgets of ICE and the Pentagon… A student-debt researcher fucks me up with America’s broken promises… We had a vaccine the whole time… Ivanka Trump went on a strange late-night tour of Washington’s monuments… State, federal authorities expected to file 40 antitrust suits against Facebook today.