Punishment For Thee, Not For Me!

If you’ve been following along with the Sign Saga instigated by Michelle Ball, you may already know a lot of this stuff. But I thought it would be a good idea to put everything, from start to finish, in one place for easy reference. 

This blog will highlight Michelle’s behavior but I want to draw some focus to a judicial system that has been at her beck and call for two years while pushing other justice needs aside. 

Let’s start with the Kirtons. About a year or so ago, Dennis Chabot walked into a restaurant in Waxhaw. The workers are all friends of his. He saw the Kirtons eating and Dennis started to run his mouth about his hatred for the LGBTQ community. It got to a point where Kelley Kirton and Dennis Chabot agreed to “step outside”. Immediately after starting a physical altercation, Dennis got his ass whooped. Barb threw her drink at Dennis as she was not in favor of the physical altercation and tried to get it to stop, but that didn’t work so she called 911 after Dennis turned and punched Barb in the face. Dennis eventually ran away, but went straight to the magistrate. The Kirtons were later arrested and spent a full 24 hours in jail, in what some might call subpar conditions, while the favoritism in our area started to play out. 

Upon release, the Kirtons decided to seek justice themselves. Dennis instigated the event and initiated the physical violence so they were feeling confident in their chances to have their side heard. Nope. Upon talking to the magistrate, Barb took a picture of a note important enough to be hanging up at the magistrate’s desk on a bulletin board. 

The note proves that seeking justice was not their role. To project Dennis and his group is their mission (stay tuned for more on that). The magistrate should be taking these complaints seriously. Specifically noted “followed Dennis out to his car”. From multiple accounts, that’s not what happened. It appears that the police interviews focused on Dennis’ friends and not all available witnesses.  The police never even got back to the Kirtons regarding the situation.  

Then the podcaster gets shot. During a heated exchange on Michelle Ball’s campaign Facebook page (to be clear “The Ball’s in Your Court” is labeled as a political campaign page and has been since it was created last spring. That will also come to be important later.) Kara Murphy was sharing thoughts and memes about the murder and posted a particular meme from a tv show. The meme was actually self-referencing Kara and the joke was that Charlie Kirk’s supporters were getting angry that Charlie Kirk was getting quoted accurately. So Kara posted, pretending that Michelle and her followers were saying it back to Kara, “If you don’t stop quoting Charlie Kirk I will fucking kill you!”. Kara realized quickly that the meme may not be understood correctly by a bunch of folks who aren’t really known for their comprehension abilities, and took it down. She put up a comment apologizing for the meme claiming that it may have been misunderstood. She went deeper on her own page to clarify that a mistake was made. 

Michelle, being a reasonable person, accepted the apology like an adult and moved on. 

Nope! Just fucking with you. Having a police department at your service pays off and in less than 6 hours Kara was being served a summons to appear in court. A Kooky-Kaos-Kaucus friendly ADA takes this case all the way. Michelle fundraises off this to the tune of $9k. I was there on the day of the hearing. It was hard not to laugh at the fact that this was a real thing that they were wasting everyone’s time on. I’ll skip to the highlights:

1) Michelle kept misgendering Kara while she was under oath and on the stand. Kara’s attorney objected the first dozen times or so with Michelle saying “sorry” every time. This was part of her performance but demonstrated her implicit bias. It was definitely noted by the judge that this wasn’t a woman who feared for her life, it was a woman on a vindictive power trip. (She would later go on to whine about being forced to “lie under oath” about Kara’s gender. Another part of her performance.)

2) Under oath, Michelle claimed that she hadn’t made a decision about running for office. Go back up and read the part where the entire case is predicated on conversations that happened ON HER CAMPAIGN PAGE! That was the real lie. 

3) The judge, in his decision, had to agree that any “reasonable person” with a “sense of humor” would have understood that this was not a threat. Especially when, while “fearing for her life” Michelle went to a UC PRIDE event that was guaranteed to have Kara present. 

4) Kara was found not guilty because the judge, unlike the ADA, saw this as a performance and nothing else. 

It’s important to note that even when “they” lose, they win. After a judge found Kara not guilty, Michelle turned to social media to complain about a “liberal” judge ruling against her. Again, always an excuse and never accountability. A common theme as we continue forward. 

This week our favorite candidate and leader of the Kooky-Kaos-Kaucus decided that she didn’t like political signs that were placed around town. In the true “I’m above the law” mentality that Michelle possesses (not necessarily in her own mind) she decided that she would pick up one of the signs and take a picture with it. It’s illegal to “tamper with, vandalize, or remove” political signs. But, when you fear no accountability, there’s nothing to stop you from breaking the law. And if you think I’m being harsh on our local justice system, she actually photographed herself committing this crime and posted it to social media. It was only two posts away from the (since deleted) post from the UC BoE about how sign tampering is illegal. 

Obviously, this jumped out at us. The owner of the sign, and the person who placed that particular sign, Julian Garrett, tried to get assistance from the magistrate. No luck there. Fear of going against Michelle? Following orders to never take a statement from anyone speaking against the mayor’s friends? Who knows. But I do wonder if there was a note next to the desk telling the magistrate to not take a statement from Julian like they did to the Kirtons. 

Julian continued his journey, and nothing but props and love to someone who knows the deck is stacked but perseveres. Eventually after several attempts to dismiss him, Julian got the Chief and made a strong case that if this had happened to one of Michelle’s signs it would be an APB with cops called in for overtime to find the perpetrator. Do the officers see the writing on the wall? Do they know that the mayor’s on his way out and that his use of the police force as a personal security service is about to end? Who knows. There was a rumor floating around that Michelle, as part of her performance, was pretending that her and her daughters’ lives were in danger and requested bulletproof vests from the MPD. Can you imagine?!?! 

Michelle was issued a citation that SHOULD be about a $200 fine. If that doesn’t get quietly dismissed, stay tuned for her fundraiser on that! Immediately Michelle went to Facebook to claim oppression once again. It’s incontrovertible that she broke the law. She took the picture herself! But look at her post. No accountability whatsoever. No “I made a mistake” or “I should not have removed the sign”. Nothing. Just like everyone else in her circle, it’s blame, deflect, and whine. Kara took more accountability than Michelle ever will. 

Again, this was not a demonstration of how shitty a person Michelle is. EVERYBODY, including Michelle, knows that she’s a horrible person. This was a reminder that they don’t fight in the comments sections on Facebook or in the streets of Monroe. They fight in the courts and police department because that’s their safe space. We got a small victory this week. These minor wins are few and far between, but damnit if we’re not going to keep trying! Vote Pat Kahle

Vote James Kerr Vote Julie Thompson Vote Gary Anderson