SALINE CO.—The frivolous lawsuits have hit an all-time low in Saline County with the filing by Todd Fort of a civil suit against prosecutor Mike Henshaw.
Todd Fort’s latest mug from the sex offender website
And if what we’ve heard about Todd is true, there might be an explanation for this insanity other than idiocy…but the problem is that the sources we’re hearing it from are every bit as nutty as Todd is.
Much was made over Fort’s filing yesterday, June 20, especially given that Fort dragged an entire TV crew into the courthouse with him when he went to file. In the suit, Fort is claiming that Saline County State’s Attorney Mike Henshaw just up and gave hours upon hours of “private” phone calls made from the Jackson County Jail (Murphysboro) to us, Disclosure, with malice aforethought and in an effort to cause grief and consternation to him.
You all know the multitudinous reasons why this is frivolous: First of all, jail calls are PUBLIC DOMAIN. Anyone who knows the procedure wherein it can be done can obtain any jail calls at any time as long as they’re not part of an ongoing investigation. When we legally obtained these calls, it was more than a month past Todd Fort’s plea in the sexual assault case. We knew it was over, we knew how to get the calls, we did it for OUR reasons, and that’s the end of that. I guess if we’re a “newspaper that deals in gossip, rumor, and scandal” why the hell would we be so interested in a DIRECT TRANSCRIPT of Fort’s calls? Wouldn’t we just make it up…and make it less boring….and make it “scandalous”?
And that’s just the FIRST of many reasons why this is frivolous. The rest will be in the print version and here at the e-Edition. But in the meantime, let me give you a little backstory on Mr. Todd Fort.
Back in January of this year, we published an article about an Order of Protection that was issued against one Kyle Schwartz in an attempt to keep him away from his elderly father. Regular readers will recall this; for those who don’t, just click the link and if you’re an online subscriber, you can read it. Long story short: Kyle called us, wanting to give “his side of the story,” to which we of course said “sure.” Not many days later, we sat down with Kyle and talked to him about it at length, and received documents to back up what he was saying, which is always helpful. During the course of this conversation, Kyle indicated that Todd Fort would like to talk to us. We agreed; we will talk with any person we’ve ever written about, no matter what the criminal background. Also during the course of the conversation, Kyle offered to let us stay in one of his houses, furnished, rent free, and gave us the key to it right then and there. We went and checked it out, and it was perfect. We began staying there the last weekend of January, which proved very helpful for late tapings of our new vidcast sessions. We also began going to sit-down meetings at Todd’s place in Harrisburg, with the proximity of Kyle’s house being a bonus as it was only about 15 minutes away, as opposed to two hours.
It proved to be very enlightening. Todd was, it appeared to us, on a very quiet but rampaging campaign to uncover the real corruption in Saline…and looking at the FOIAd material he’d provided, it seemed like he was really getting somewhere with it, especially where it concerned the E911 agency and their credit card use, which was rampant and uncontrolled. He told us many behind-the-scenes things. We took copious notes. He asked us questions. We gave him answers. But one thing he did not ask us anything about it great detail were the tapes. He did ask us how we obtained them, and, kinda surprised, we told him exactly how (not a secret, as it appears in the lead of every article we produced on the subject.) Beyond that, he let it drop.
But what he did tell us (before Kyle flaked out and we couldn’t stay at his house anymore, back in March) is that he was intent on filing civil suits against many public officials in Saline, naming specifically a separate suit other than the 2011 filing against Sheriff Keith Brown, and county board member Karla Carrigan (the mother of the victim in his sex assault conviction.) He did NOT mention Mike Henshaw. We said “whatever, Todd.” The man doesn’t have a pot to piss in. How he would do such a thing, unless it was pro se, was beyond us, unless he had a stash of money sitting somewhere that escaped Bryan Drew or the fines and fees leveled against him in the case.
We got to the point where we sort of liked Todd. He’s intelligent, straightforward, and easy to get along with. Spending many hours at his place talking to him, we got to feeling almost sorry for him. But that’s where it stopped: at the ALMOST. Because we know that people are nice to us and offer us things (like a furnished house to stay in rent-free) because they WANT something, and we never get in too deep with any of them. We know what it’s like to be used and abused, on more levels than you can comprehend.
And so here we are, being ragged on in yet another frivolous lawsuit (remember the one about Danny Gibbs and Todd’s trash? Yeah, that one has really gone places), and while we appreciate all the clicks that came from the TV coverage of it yesterday, we’re not understanding why Todd is doing this, especially after we’d been in contact with him for so long.
In the TV interviews, Todd’s saying he wants to preach. He’s turned his life around. He’s become a Christian. We would suggest, however, that if he’s such a Christian, he might want to start proving it by not shitting on people who were genuinely trying to help him, like we were, and not lying about them, like he’s done to us. And we’d like to add: He won’t win this one, Christian or not. There are too many factors, too much proof, to disprove his allegations. So that brings us back to the question of why.
We learned a couple of days ago—through Kyle, who, with his flake-out tendencies, we’ve learned simply can’t be trusted, with information or anything else—that Todd has “lesions on his brain.” We don’t know what that means. It could be a variety of conditions: Cancer, Parkinson’s, Alzeimer’s, Jacob-Creutzfelt, MS. Any and all of it, however, can make a person crazy. And if that person is being manipulated by a higher power….someone with money, and someone who has a case of the ass against not only Henshaw but others among the group who brought about the downfall of the great Todd Fort, THAT might start making this make sense.
We have some background information on who and how someone could be manipulating Todd. We’re not ready to give up on him. Like I said, we really came to like the man, and ALMOST came to consider him among our very few friends, there for awhile. He didn’t strike us as the kind of person who’d flip his lid this quickly (since about February or March, when we were still hanging out with him.) So we believe something else is going on.
We’re going to examine that in the next print version; be sure you pick one up, or read it right here at the e-Edition with an online membership. You won’t be disappointed.