Secret recording: O’Donnell, Capps, Clendenin plot how to get away with Whipple smear

A secret recording released Friday shows that three Republican officials sought to frame the county’s Republican chairman for a falsified ad they put together smearing then-mayoral candidate Brandon Whipple. One compared their mission to that of the man who shot Wichita abortion provider Dr. George Tiller.

“Us Republicans, we all agree,” Sedgwick County Commissioner Michael O’Donnell said. “The murder of George Tiller was bad. But am I sad that he’s dead? No. I’m just glad I’m not the one who pulled the trigger.”

Tiller was assassinated in 2009 by anti-abortion extremist Scott Roeder during a Sunday morning service while Tiller was serving as an usher at Reformation Lutheran Church in Wichita.

State Rep. Michael Capps said the anti-Whipple video was justifiable to derail Whipple’s candidacy, because he’s a “liberal Democrat.”

“It’s what we do,” Capps said. “It’s the way the system works. Nobody wants to know how the sausage is made, they only want the sausage when it’s done. And that’s the principle: This is the sausage making — nobody likes to see that.”

The statements were on a secret recording made by Matthew Colborn, hired to produce a video smearing Whipple in his campaign to unseat former Mayor Jeff Longwell. Colborn’s attorney, Michael Schultz, released the audio to media Friday.

O’Donnell, Capps and Wichita City Council member James Clendenin were behind the plot. And when their involvement was coming to light, they decided to lie and frame members of their own party, the recording reveals.

Initially, they thought to implicate both county GOP Chairman Dalton Glasscock and County Clerk Kelly Arnold, a former chairman of the state Republican Party. They ultimately decided not to try to implicate Arnold because he was more capable of fighting back and they felt it was a war they couldn’t win.

Glasscock said Friday evening that he was “disappointed, disheartened and disgusted” by what he heard on the recording.

“Anyone that is associated with this is not fit for public office,” he said.

O’Donnell is the only one of the three politicians on the ballot in the Nov. 3 election, where early voting is already ongoing.

While the county Republican Party hasn’t spent any money in O’Donnell’s race against Democrat Sarah Lopez, the state GOP has been sending out frequent mailers in the 2nd Commission District attacking Lopez and supporting O’Donnell.

Glasscock said he’ll be contacting state GOP Chairman Mike Kuckelman and asking him to turn off the flow of campaign spending to boost O’Donnell.

“I will do everything in my power and my advice to Chair Kuckelman to make sure we don’t spend a dime in that race, that the state Republican Party does not spend a dime in that race,” he said.

“Voters have begun voting in this election and we’re 11 days out from the general election, and I hope that voters will look at all these allegations,” he said. “And I trust the voters of Sedgwick County to make a decision on Election Day that shows that character matters and character counts.”

In the secret recording — about 50 minutes long — O’Donnell, Clendenin and Capps craft a calculated narrative meant to mislead the public and cover their tracks while saving their political careers.

Colborn, a 21-year-old video entrepreneur who produced the video, was at that time involved in the plotting, but recorded the unfolding drama in case he needed to protect himself.

The politicians launched the campaign from behind an anonymous New Mexico shell company they created, but their cover began to unravel shortly after their video premiered.

Eagle research found ties between Capps and Clendenin, to Colborn and the false video. O’Donnell’s involvement surfaced later in a defamation lawsuit filed by Whipple.

O’Donnell and Clendenin have said they raised money used to bankroll the false video, but have also said they thought it would be used for billboards to boost Longwell’s campaign, not the video that appeared.

A “scapegoat”

Whipple filed a defamation and civil conspiracy lawsuit against the video organizers in October.

O’Donnell said in the recording that he didn’t think the lawsuit would go anywhere after the mayoral election, but it has dragged out for almost a year so far.

“I don’t think that we’re all culpable, like for a lawsuit or anything,” O’Donnell said. “But I just don’t want it to ever get into discovery mode where then they say: ‘Oh you lied’ or this or that, or questioning my personal integrity.”

On Friday, neither O’Donnell nor Clendenin returned phone calls seeking comment. Capps’ phone went unanswered and didn’t have voicemail activated.

The fake ad, launched on Facebook and YouTube about two weeks before the November mayoral election, used paid actresses posing as legislative interns to falsely accuse Whipple of sexual harassment when he was a state representative.

One of those actresses told The Eagle she was paid $50 to read the script and told it would be used in a public-service message denouncing violence against women.

The script lifted accusations from a Kansas City Star/Wichita Eagle story about alleged Statehouse harassment by Republican senators and those accusations didn’t involve Whipple.

Schultz, Colborn’s attorney, provided a written statement to The Eagle in an attempt to clear his client’s name.

“Matthew regrets his participation in this whole ordeal,” the statement said. “While he chose to participate in these underhanded attacks, he has also been used and scapegoated in the public eye. Needless to say, it has been a year of painful lessons about politics, relationships, and business. But he is now ready to move past this chapter in his life.

“Unfortunately, others still desire to attack and scapegoat Matthew. As a result, we believe it is necessary to provide some of the information publicly that we provided in discovery, so that Matthew can clear his name and truly put this behind him,” the statement continued.

“Matthew was at the meeting where Michael O’Donnell, James Clendenin, and Michael Capps planned to push the blame for this ad onto Dalton Glasscock and others. To protect himself, he recorded that conversation. We are releasing that recording now to demonstrate the accuracy of what Matthew has now said and to try and stop those who continue to attack him.”

“Our neck or his”

The audio indicates that O’Donnell, Capps and Clendenin were involved in the smear campaign and an attempted cover-up.

All three officials were named in the Whipple lawsuit this month and Colborn’s name was dropped from the lawsuit after he handed over information.

The bogus narrative by O’Donnell, Capps and Clendenin centered on Capps’ appearance on former Republican legislator John Whitmer’s radio show.

O’Donnell told Capps to lie, but to do so in a way that couldn’t be proven false while shifting blame to Glasscock.

“I’m just trying to keep us out a refutable lie,” he said.

O’Donnell, who has fought off several scandals in his political career as a City Council member, state senator and county commissioner, offered a nugget of advice to the others.

“Like I’ve always learned in politics, it’s always avoid the truth at all expense, right? And just go on the attack.” O’Donnell said.

Capps agreed and lamented that he wasn’t as good at that as O’Donnell.

“That’s one of the political skills that I’m lacking,” Capps said. “It’s not that I can’t develop it, but it’s the engineer in me, because engineers see things in very finite . . . terms.”

“Black and white,” interjected Clendenin.

All three officials agreed framing Glasscock was the best route to take.

“If it’s the narrative as just discussed, I’m fully bought into (it),” Clendenin said.

“This is not an ideal narrative, and I’m going to accept the fact that it’s not,” Capps said. “I also am looking at this purely from a business/political perspective that it’s either our necks or his,” Capps said of Glasscock.

The four participants in the meeting brainstormed talking points for the Whitmer show and discussed how they could manufacture their narrative around a meeting with Glasscock that never happened.

At one juncture, Capps pointed out that Glasscock had been traveling out of town and asked O’Donnell to sift through his text messages and find a day when Glasscock was actually in Wichita, to add plausibility to Capps’ claim that he’d met with him.

They also settled on what their story would be if Capps were asked where the purported meeting occurred.

They considered saying it was at Capps’ and Cledenin’s shared office, but rejected that because it could cause problems with their landlord.

“You don’t have to say it was at our office because if you get real specific and this does go to court, then there’s all sorts of (expletive) that’s going to hit the fan,” Clendenin said.

Then they considered saying it was at the Candle Club, an east-side private club popular with Wichita’s business and political leaders. They rejected that because they didn’t want to hurt the business.

They finally settled on just saying the nonexistent meeting was at an unnamed private club.

Glasscock said “unequivocally no,” when asked if the purported meeting ever occurred. He said he learned of the accusations in the video about the time it was released publicly.

They decided the details could remain vague because Whitmer was unlikely to ask any hard questions.

Capps assured the others that Whitmer wouldn’t press because he “wants Dalton’s head.”

“He just doesn’t want to hunt. He just wants to collect,” Capps said.

Whitmer denied targeting Glasscock and said he feels like he had been used by Capps.

Whitmer said Friday that he hadn’t had time to listen to all the recordings, but that he “absolutely” felt he had been used.

He defended his interview with Capps and said he asked hard questions.

Whitmer also objected to Whipple pursuing the case through the court because of the near-impossibility of a prominent public official actually winning a defamation suit.

“It’s unfortunate this whole thing is being politicized and that the courts are being weaponized to influence the outcome of an election,” he said.

In the recording, the three officials and video producer also initially discussed trying to frame Arnold along with Glasscock.

At one point, Capps, practicing for his Whitmer interview, proposed how he would do that, saying: ”... I do believe that Dalton Glasscock with the assistance of Kelly Arnold conspired to cover this up.”

When no one immediately objected, Capps said: “Wow, that was an easier sell than I thought. I genuinely thought you were going to have a conniption fit over that.”

“No, no,” O’Donnell said.

Capps explained: “All I’m trying to do is direct light at Kelly Arnold. I’m not trying to make an accusation.”

They ultimately decided Arnold was too popular in Republican circles to take on. They were also worried if they did draw Arnold into it, he could team up with Whipple’s lawyer, Randy Rathbun, and help expose the plot.

Shortly after Capps was linked to the faked video, Glasscock and the entire leadership team of the county GOP called for Capps to resign. The secret recording was made two days later.

“It was so dumb,” O’Donnell said of Glassock’s decision to call for Capps’ resignation. “But that’s where we want to bring up Kelly, but we’re not going to.”

“No,” Colborn agreed. “We can’t win that war.”

This story was originally published October 23, 2020 at 6:09 PM.