OUTLANDISH CONSPIRACY THEORIES: Timeline of the phantom case at Kennesaw State University

’’(a) Any superior court may … enjoin violations of (the RICO statute) by issuing appropriate orders and judgments including, but not limited to:...(3) Ordering the … reorganization of any (governmental entity);
(4) Ordering the suspension or revocation of any … prior approval granted to any (governmental entity) by any agency of the state OCGA § 16-14-6’’

How did former Georgia Attorney General Sam Olens, with no experience in academia, end up spending a year as president of Kennesaw State University (KSU), despite widespread opposition at KSU?

How was a lawsuit to block Olens’ appointment swept under the rug and why was no one ever held accountable for the financial crimes that were covered up — and then uncovered — in the University System of Georgia (USG)?

How did the USG create a vacancy at KSU to give Attorney General Olens a $500,000 a year position in the first place? After all the trouble to place him at KSU, why was Olens gone in a year?

The timeline tells the story by itself. Every statement in it is documented by state records and admitted by the USG in court proceedings:

April 28, 2016: While Kennesaw State University (KSU) president Dan Papp, a Russia scholar by academic training, is out of town on vacation, Russian ambassador to the US, Sergei Kislyak, visits KSU and is given a tour of the Center for Elections Systems, located on the KSU campus and run by the USG at the time. Dr. Papp knew nothing about the Russian ambassador’s visit and had no involvement in the planning.

Kislyak was Russia’s top intelligence operative in the United States, who later became famous when everyone from Jeff Sessions to Jared Kushner forgot they had met with the Russian ambassador.

May 5, 2016: One week after the Kislyak tour of the Center for Elections Systems at KSU, USG head of audit John Fuchko goes to visit KSU President Dan Papp, and gives Dr. Papp bad news, out of the blue, that Papp has to resign or else he will be smeared with false accusations of financial impropriety. Dr. Papp agrees under duress to resign, effective June 2016.

June 2, 2016: The USG smears Dr. Papp with claims of financial impropriety, anyway, releasing a report accusing Papp of improperly taking hundreds of thousands of dollars in deferred compensation (usually misrepresented in the media as “retirement pay”). Though this turned out to mostly consist of bonuses for longevity and achieving fundraising goals, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution repeats the USG’s financial impropriety smear at face value, with no examination of the underlying facts.

If anyone had actually bothered to read it, the USG report actually reveals financial impropriety by the USG, including small-time bank fraud and money laundering.

The important thing to note, at this point in the timeline, is that all this USG fraud and financial impropriety, and the removal of Dr. Papp from KSU by means of extortion, was all reported to then-Attorney General Sam Olens — who was soon to become Dr. Papp’s successor.

August 2016: Three months after the Kislyak visit, Russian military intelligence agents begin hacking Georgia’s Center for Elections Systems at KSU (though this was not publicly known till two years later — see July 13, 2018 indictment).

October 4, 2016: USG Chancellor Hank Huckaby announces that Sam Olens is the sole candidate to be considered, in violation of the Board of Regents policy on USG presidential appointments, to replace Dr. Papp at KSU.

To put the USG appointment of Attorney General Sam Olens as the sole candidate considered in context, it is necessary to briefly take the timeline backwards to a USG financial scandal that erupted in April 2012. On July 3, 2012, a letter from Attorney General Sam Olens’ office documents the attorney general blocking a hearing by the Board of Regents into USG financial impropriety and obstructing a criminal investigation of USG financial fraud.

As documented in the July 3 letter, in light of $10 million “gone with no explanation,” Olens directed the USG to conduct an investigation of itself, which began on May 10, 2012.

On September 17, 2012, the USG released the results of an investigation of itself, in which the USG found no financial impropriety by the USG, even though it still cannot account to this day for $10 million gone AWOL from Georgia Perimeter College (GPC). This USG self-review of its finances was substituted for the independent audit required for re-accreditation. SACS, the regional accreditation agency, complied with this substitution in violation of its own rules requiring an independent audit.

Which catches us up on the historical context and brings us back to the USG appointing Olens to a high-paid USG position in 2016.

Oct 31, 2016: A coalition of Kennesaw State University faculty, alumni, and students file for injunctive relief to bar the political appointment of Olens as the sole candidate considered in violation of BOR policies, and as a quid pro quo for Olens obstructing criminal investigation of the USG. The KSU plaintiffs sue under the Georgia RICO statute, which expressly authorizes injunctive relief against state agencies.

The KSU coalition filed that legal action under the authority of the Georgia RICO statute, which expressly authorizes a court to enjoin the actions of a state agency where criminal impropriety is alleged. Chris Carr, the newly-appointed attorney general to replace Sam Olens, never filed any responsive pleading to the KSU complaint for injunctive relief. Carr never responded to KSU’s subsequent motions placing additional evidence of USG fraud and attorney general obstruction into the court record — over the course of more than three years.

November 1, 2016: Olens started work at KSU with no court action by Judge Tom Campbell on the KSU motion for a temporary restraining order.

November 7, 2016: A hearing on the motion begins at 9 a.m. Subpoenaed USG witnesses do not appear. Assistant Attorney General Russell Willard argues with no evidence that the subpoenas were hidden inside the complaint when it was served on the USG. Willard produces an order entered by the Georgia Supreme Court that very same morning of the hearing, in which the high court let stand, without explanation, a March 30, 2016 Court of Appeals order conferring sovereign immunity on state officials for the financial crimes documented at Georgia Perimeter College (GPC).

November 14, 2016: Judge Campbell enters a final order prepared by the attorney general’s office that misrepresents the failure of the USG witnesses to appear and asserts state sovereign immunity protection against injunctions — contrary to the explicit language of the Georgia RICO statute.

November 18, 2016: KSU coalition files a motion to set aside the judgment based on knowing misrepresentations of the law, in violation of constitutional due process, and to strike the attorney general’s false assertions regarding service of the subpoenas.

The attorney general never responded, and Judge Tom Campbell never so much as acknowledged this November 18, 2016 pleading — for over a year, until January 2018.

June 2, 2017: KSU filed a Supplement to the November 2016 Motion to Set Aside. This supplement documented the Board of Regents (BOR) making after-the-fact changes to BOR policies to hide violations committed by the USG in removing Dr. Papp and covering up the USG’s own financial fraud (a story unto itself).

The June 2 filing also documents USG fraud in evading a hearing required by BOR policy, to which Dr. Papp was entitled — to challenge the USG for tarring him with false claims of financial impropriety. The USG clearly would not have wanted a hearing into the misleading financial allegations against Dr. Papp, where USG officials like Chancellor Hank Huckaby and Vice Chancellor Steve Wrigley were the ones committing felony financial fraud.

The attorney general never responded and Judge Tom Campbell never acknowledged this June 2 pleading.

July 2017: A public interest group files a lawsuit concerning demonstrated vulnerabilities and irregularities in voting tabulations at the Center for Elections Systems on KSU campus. Three days after the lawsuit is served on KSU President Sam Olens and then-Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp, the servers at the KSU election center are wiped clean.

October 17, 2017: KSU filed a Second Supplement to the Rule 60 motion to set aside the judgment, specifying the constitutional due process violations in evading the requirements of the RICO statute — which mandated voiding the order allowing the Olens appointment. The KSU coalition repeated its demand for Judge Tom Campbell to take action since the USG and attorney general still had not filed a single response to the KSU legal action started a year before, in October 2016.

Though the real point of the motion was to spur the court to action, or to elicit a response from the attorney general, the attorney general never responded and Judge Tom Campbell never acknowledged this October 17, 2017 pleading.

November 3, 2017: KSU renewed the motion to set aside, repeating the constitutional grounds to set aside the order that allowed Olens’ appointment in furtherance of a conspiracy to obstruct criminal investigation of the USG. The renewed motion cited 1960s civil rights cases, such as Shuttlesworth v. City of Birmingham and Wright v. Georgia, in which the US Supreme Court said states could not evade their own laws on the books — like the Georgia RICO statute.

Though, by this time, Sam Olens has been serving for more than a year with an unanswered lawsuit charging bribery and extortion hanging over him, the new attorney general Chris Carr never responded, and Judge Tom Campbell never acknowledged this November 3, 2017 pleading.

December 14, 2017: Sam Olens announces his departure from KSU, effective in February 2018. Hint: It was not really about the cheerleaders.

January 12, 2018: Trial court judge Tom Campbell enters an order denying the KSU motion to set aside the judgment, though the KSU action was never contested by the USG or attorney general. Judge Campbell’s order is one sentence long, and merely says motion denied — with no explanation, no citation to any fact or legal authority.

July 13, 2018: Special Counsel Robert Mueller releases indictment of Russian military intelligence agents (see April 2016 Kislyak tour, August 2016 Russian hacking, on timeline). The Russian spies were indicted, in part, for hacking the Center for Elections Systems at Kennesaw State University (see servers wiped clean to destroy evidence, July 2017).

September 12, 2018: KSU files a notice of appeal, under statute OCGA § 5-6-34 authorizing direct appeal for denial of the motion to void Campbell’s orders on constitutional grounds.

April 1, 2019: While the KSU appeal is pending, a bombshell court pleading is filed in a related case documenting that the USG financial fraud, including the $10 million “gone with no explanation” at GPC — for which Olens obstructed the investigation before the USG appointed him KSU president at $500,000 a year — consisted of systematic USG-wide fraud on the federal government affecting billions of dollars in federal assistance to the University System.

As in the KSU case, the attorney general has never responded to these documented allegations of billion-dollar fraud by the USG on the federal government, admitting them as true. The allegations in the KSU case, to which the attorney general also never responded — for more than three years — include financial fraud, bribery, and extortion. By the State’s failure to respond — the bribery, fraud, and extortion at KSU is also admitted as true.

June 12, 2019: The KSU Appellants’ Brief filed in the Georgia Court of Appeals outlined the admitted state government corruption, as well as obstruction of justice and constitutional violations committed to cover it up.

On the same day the brief is filed, a three-judge panel of the Georgia Court of Appeals (Judges Ken Hodges, Elizabeth Gobeil, and Stephen Dillard) enter an order dismissing the KSU appeal on procedural grounds never raised by any party (the USG and attorney general could not have raised them, since they never responded to the KSU action). It is hard to explain without going to law school, but the panel said the appeal was res judicata, already decided conclusively on all issues, based on prior one-sentence orders with no explanation, on top of the attorney general’s non-responses.

March 26, 2020: The Georgia Supreme Court declines to review the KSU case, in another one-sentence order without explanation.

This refusal to review means the KSU case has gone through the entire Georgia judicial system, without the documented allegations of bribery, extortion, and fraud ever being contested by USG or attorney general (and thus admitted as true).

Even more egregiously, the Georgia Supreme Court’s dismissal of the KSU case, without comment, means that the entire case involving all this bribery and extortion in Georgia state government has gone through the entire Georgia judicial system without a single judge ever saying a single word about it.

The courts have provided no remedy to any of the victims of the admitted crimes, and no explanation, either. Thus it remains the phantom case at Kennesaw State University. —CL—

Almost every date entry in this KSU timeline, however, has a story unto itself. Look forward to them in future Outlandish Conspiracy Theories columns, online weekly, more or less.