Speculator DAVID BARTON CORNEAL cursed, threatened and stomach-bumped me directly outside the City of St. Augustine City Commission chambers May 21, 2015 at approximately 1:50 PM before the Historic Architectural Review Boarding meeting. He thought I was "listening" to him. I was.
When millionaires talk, people listen. We have a right to do so.
In public places, I have a constitutional right to listen to developers and their consultants, including fired former Planning Director MARK ALAN KNIGHT, illegally-lobbying ex-Vice Mayor DONALD CRICHLOW, Historic Architectural Review Board member JEREMY MARQUIS, HArB Vice Chair PAUL M. WEAVER, III (who testified for CORNEAL before PZB's vote and who before the hearing openly and notoriously and publicly bragged to CORNEAL outside that room at a recent PZB meeting about winning support from nuns, to which CORNEAL replied that WEAVER could "sell ice cubes to eskimos"). During the May 21, 2015, CORNEAL and several of his entourage sat in cushy chairs at tables in the back of the room reserved for City staff; CORNEAL sat in front of a name plate for the Chief of Police. (No non-developer ever sits in those chairs, or would be permitted to do so; I later kidded former Commission candidate John Valdes for sitting there.)
I reported DAVID CORNEAL's assault to SAPD, requesting security for the meeting. I did not ask to press charge.
I reported DAVID CORNEAL'S conversation with WEAVER on this blog, and to HARB yesterday,
SAPD explained to CORNEAL that there is "no reasonable expectation of privacy in a public place."
But CORNEAL, a provincial lawyer from State College, Pennsylvania -- where Bar exams historically did not require passing essay exams -- was poorly rated by his students as a Penn State adjunct Business Law professor. CORNEAL has a history of filing bogus lawsuits, including one against a local government and one against former employees.
Why did DAVID CORNEAL curse, threaten and stomach-bump me? I am no psychiatrist. But I reckon that aterwauling CORNEAL is a bully. The bully was mad as a hatter because my appeal of his illegal demolition has stayed all action on his nefarious plan to privatize the Dow Museum of Historic Homes and turn it, mutatis mutandis, into a $500/night fancy-bears hotel for the idle rich. Oh well. I wear his scorn as a badge of honor.
The last time I was stomach-bumped was by another bully, the late Anderson County Sheriff DENNIS O. TROTTER, circa July 1983. TROTTER went to federal prison in 1984 for four years. When he emerged from federal prison, TROTTER came to Memphis and wrote a check for a five-figure settlement in federal court civil litigation for having his co-felons sue me for libel. (The bogus lawsuit was served on the morning of my first law school exam, retaliation for truthfully reporting on Sheriff TROTTER's criminal activities with bail bondsmen. The bondsmen waived indictment and pled guilty to racketeering and bribery, admitting they paid him $10,633.50 for a near-monopoly on bail bonding business for Interstate Bonding Company, owned by a U.S. Department of Energy Oak Ridge Technical Information Center manager, managed by his daughter, with solicitation by her husband, a convicted felon working as a dispatcher. A Tennessee Highway Patrolman (THP) driving in a drunk driver from I-75 even told me the convicted felon dispatcher told him on the radio, "Tell the SOB I will make his bond.")
One fine day I asked Sheriff Trotter where the 40 surplus THP cars he bought at state auctions were, and why they were not on the county's insurance rolls. (They were being processed by unpaid jail prisoners in a chop shop located underneath a Baptist Church on U.S. Highway 25-W North of Clinton, Tennessee). In response, Sheriff DENNIS O. TROTTER, stomach-bumping me, with two armed Sheriff's deputies on either side of him (one his stepson), with their hands on their guns. Sheriff TROTTER than and there said, "You're the most dangerous reporter I ever met in my whole life." I think he really meant that as a compliment, but he was hotter than a two-dollar pistol that day, I reckon.
DAVID BARTON CORNEAL reminds me a lot of truculent Sheriff TROTTER, whom our Appalachian Observer newspaper reported on relentlessly. (I like that word, relentless -- ACLU's Washington lobbyist once called my Government Accountability Projectboss Tom Devine and I "relentless," and did not intend it as a compromise because we would not "sell out" the way ACLU frequently did on national security clearance whistleblower rights).
Entitled, embittered, steatopygous developer stereotype DAVID BARTON CORNEAL looks a little like Luca Brasi, reminds me a little of Bella Lugosi, with a touch of the corrupt Florida Sheriff from the Porky's movies. CORNEAL is from State College, Pennsylvania, the misstate region, a rural place that has led James Carvile to say that Pennsylvania has Pittsburgh on one end, Philadelphia on the other, with "Alabama in the middle."
CORNEAL and his entourage have contempt for the rule of law, with his new lawyer reportedly kvetching (below) that "one person" can stand in the way of a "good project."
Not "one person" -- it takes a village to save a village! As LBJ said after Selma, "We SHALL overcome!"
Footnote: the only other time I recall being stomach-bumped was as a fifth grader, touring the White House with my mother: a gross fat man behind us on the tour kept bumping into my back with his stomach! Each of these three stomach-bumping events is memorable. The one with TROTTER and the one with CORNEAL reveal deep-seated anger on the part of authoritarians.
As they say in East Tennessee, DAVID BARTON CORNEAL "bears watchin'." If you engage in First Amendment protected activity criticizing CORNEAL, expect him to curse, threaten and stomach-bump you. That's okay. I've been stomach-bumped before, and I know what it betokens: the loss of a "charm offensive," the failure of public relations, and the beginning of the end of a corrupt regime in St. Augustine City Hall, whose louche City Manager actually said he was "delighted" by CORNEAL's purchase of the Dow Museum of Historic Homes (one already destroyed illegally, without even waiting for the demolition permit appeal time to expire).
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