How Tennessee Corruption May Reach the Top of ActBlue’s Political Machine

This is a follow-up to our previous piece, which discussed the overwhelming corruption, including apparent money laundering, by ActBlue, the organization that facilitates donations to the Democratic National Committee. Law Enforcement Today previously reported on how so-called “magic mortgages” were used as a money-laundering operation, where properties either owned by ActBlue or affiliated officials received mortgages in some cases that were over ten times the value of the property. 

Shawn Taylor is a retired deputy police chief from Tennessee and a senior research analyst for the Election Fairness Institute (EFI), who has been working with Arizona State Sen. Mark Finchem, executive director of the EFI.

They have been examining extremely questionable practices by ActBlue and its executives. 

Taylor’s involvement in examining ActBlue had its roots in Tennessee in 2009, when he began working for a drug task force working directly for a district attorney, covering Maury, Giles, Lawrence, and Wayne Counties in Tennessee. These are described as “four very large counties in southern Tennessee bordering Alabama and Mississippi.” 

“[A]nd I started noticing that the stuff that was happening up in one county, one city, was connected to something two hours away. And so I started putting that together, and I ended up building a good informant base, and I found out that my district attorney was involved in the narcotics trafficking,” Taylor told Law Enforcement Today (LET). Taylor did not divulge the name of the district attorney. 

“I found out that through one of the guys who used to be with the drug task force, they had served a search warrant on a hotel room, and when they went to that hotel room, the DA was there with several other assistant DAs, and there was a large amount of cocaine,” Taylor said. “So they were having themselves a time having a party. Yeah, I ended up leaving the drug task force, and I just had to take a break for a minute.” 

Taylor connected with a friend, and he directed him to Hardin County to follow the trail. Hardin County is located approximately 125 miles east of Memphis. His travels took him to the small town of Crump, which is located next to Adamsville, home of Sheriff Buford Pusser from “Walking Tall” fame.

For those unfamiliar with his story, he took on the so-called Dixie Mafia, a loosely connected crime syndicate based in Biloxi, Mississippi, that was known for burglary, theft, robbery, and fencing stolen goods throughout the southeastern United States. 

At some point, the police chief of Crump and another city, Saltillo, was fired, and Taylor was hired to replace him. After being sworn in, Taylor became acquainted with a retired deputy sheriff, who began providing him with inside information regarding narcotics trafficking in the area. This is where it ties into Tennessee’s organized crime and the Democratic Party began. 

Retired judge Whit LaFon was the uncle of former Vice President Al Gore, to whom he was closely connected. LaFon was corrupt both as a judge and formerly as a state prosecutor, having been accused of bribery and extortion under the Federal Hobbes Act, while also being under investigation by federal and state agencies for public corruption, alleged narcotics trafficking, and desecration of a Native American burial mound, according to World News Daily. 

Then-Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI) Director Larry Wallace was on speed dial for Gore, who would routinely call him to “put the arm” on him to “take care” of criminal matters involving LaFon. World News Daily reported at the time that Wallace refused to comment on the matter.

WND reported that the “once highly respected TBI has been laid low by ever-increasing charges of institutional corruption, causing wholesale defections.” LaFon was also heavily involved in narcotics trafficking, according to Taylor. 

That sets the stage for the corruption that was occurring within the law enforcement apparatus in Tennessee. 

At some point, Taylor was informed about a large quantity of narcotics that came across the border in a truck owned by a man named Danny Elam, owner of Elam Trucking, now known as Elam Transportation, which current listings show is active, operating out of Stantonville, Tennessee.

The truck was reported to be at a truck stop just outside of Memphis, TN, on I-40. HSI in Gulfport, MS., was contacted, who then put him in contact with a case agent from HSI in Memphis. Long story short, 920 pounds of narcotics were seized at the truck stop. 

Before the Memphis takedown, Taylor had looked into the case, which the TBI agreed not to investigate after the TBI received a call from Al Gore, thereby shutting down the investigation. 

The investigation was subsequently handed over to the FBI, led by Special Agent Mark Post. The FBI arranged to have a P3 Orion surveillance aircraft overfly Sparrow Island, owned by LaFon, where he was supposed to be engaged in a high-level meeting with cartel members.

In a case of impeccable timing, Post was transferred to the Washington, D.C. office. The case was shut down until the discovery of 920 pounds of narcotics. 

One of the men allegedly involved, Taylor said, was a man named Clark Jones. Gore arranged for Jones to be appointed by President Clinton to the White House Conference on Small Business Commission in 1993. 

Two other players, Glenn H. Gray and Judge Ron Harmon, owned a trucking company, E&K Trucking, and had been investigated for over 30 years by the FBI for corruption, trafficking, and many other crimes.

It was alleged they were engaged in human trafficking up into the northwestern United States. 

This ties directly into Tennessee politics. In 2010, Michael McWherter was the Democratic nominee for governor of Tennessee. One of his donors was Danny Elam.

Taylor contacted someone he knew involved in Tennessee politics, leading to a telephone call from Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn). Taylor told Corker what he had, and he referred Taylor to his chief of staff, Brent Wiles.

Taylor produced a series of emails between himself and Brent, in which he sent specific information on the narcotics trafficking and the money that was finding its way into McWherter’s campaign. Brent then went into “witness protection” and never contacted Taylor again. 

In a stunning bit of timing, Corker announced his retirement from the Senate 37 days later. Shortly after announcing his retirement, Corker, who had been a key Republican blocking the Obama administration’s Iran nuclear deal, caved. Was he paid off? That much is unknown. 

Taylor advised LET that he could not divulge some information due to national security concerns. 

All of this led Taylor to investigate the money, because, as with anything, one needs to follow the money trail. While investigating the financial trail, two banks kept coming up…Central Bank and Hardin County Bank.

Moreover, one individual’s name kept coming up…Jeff Long, the TBI agent who took the original call from Gore that led to the shutdown of the investigations into his uncle and business partners. Long had since been appointed the commissioner of Tennessee’s Department of Homeland Security/Tennessee Highway Patrol. 

Long is where the “magic mortgage” trail seemed to start. According to Taylor, Long has a secondary home in Spring Hill, Tennessee, with a $480 million mortgage from Goldman Sachs, which he obtained prior to being appointed commissioner when he was serving as sheriff in Williamson County, TN. 

Taylor began tracking various locations and discovered Elam Trucking County in Hidalgo and Brownsville, Texas, located right on the Mexican border. The location for Elam had what appeared to be a single-engine plane landing strip, which he claimed might be able to accommodate a twin-engine aircraft, presumably for the purpose of moving narcotics. 

Upon further investigation, they discovered that Glenn Gray, one of the participants mentioned above, saw his business partner, Charles Ray Smith, get indicted on September 20, 2016, for $9 million worth of bank fraud at Hardin County Bank.

Taylor’s intel connection at Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) told him he had seen between $100 and 150 million laundered through HCB. Another man, Christopher Geralds, was indicted in March 2012; however, his indictment has been sealed. As a point of information, Geralds was the bank president and CEO of Hardin County Bank at the time.

Within months of Gerald’s indictment, he began working for Elam Trucking as their advisor, the same trucking company that HSI and Taylor busted with 920 lbs of narcotics. 

Geralds’ son was a rising star who, in 2019, became the city attorney for the New York City Council. He then bounced around among several Democratic offices in Washington, DC, including the office of then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). He was in his mid-20s at the time.

One typically wouldn’t think of Tennessee as a major passageway for drugs from Mexico and Central America, however, that is not the case. I-40 runs from Arizona to the Carolinas, as well as US 64, which also runs from Arizona to the Carolinas. US31 and I-65 run up from Florida up to Michigan.

According to Taylor, drugs, victims of human trafficking, money, and weapons are being brought up the Mississippi River, into the Tennessee River, and then up the Cumberland River that flows primarily through Kentucky and Tennessee. The Cumberland River is large enough to accommodate barge traffic, which is the means used for most of the smuggling mentioned above. 

Additionally, the Tombigbee Waterway can be used as a marine route for trafficking purposes. 

Taylor told us about a company called Cass Properties, which had a location in Hardin County. Charles Ray Smith and Glenn Gray were both involved with that property. It was described as a single-wide trailer sitting on a cement foundation. There is also a little garage with an apartment above, with a subterranean area to the right. A boat slip is located on the property. 

The trailer is 1,703 square feet, but there is nearly twice that underground. 

“Yeah. This is mind-blowing,” Taylor said. “It looks exactly like what these narco-chop shops are doing to dismantle and re-engage stuff for smuggling. 

“What I did was I took that drawing that they had of the underground area previously, and I superimposed it. Basically, it goes into this garage, this boathouse, goes under the trailer, and right to this building,” he continued. 

Cass Properties, the owner of that building, is owned by Bryant Dunaway, District Attorney General for the 13th Judicial District in Tennessee. Dunaway has been heavily criticized by families in his district, to the point that they’ve taken out what’s called the “I-40 Murder Billboard.”

That billboard is paid for by over 40 families seeking justice for their loved ones who have been murdered, are missing, or have been caught up in trafficking that is allegedly directly tied to Dunway and his cronies. 

A man who was a confidential informant to Dunaway’s task force and the Putnam County Sheriff’s Department, according to statements provided, was named Aaron Key. We say “was” because he allegedly committed suicide by hanging, Taylor told us, and confirmed by Fox17 in Nashville. 

The problem is that Key appeared to have been severely beaten. In fact, there were also witnesses, including his girlfriend, who was “yelling for help” the entire time.

Despite that, Dunaway and the Overton County Sheriff's Office determined that Key had hung himself in a storage shed. Dunaway was on scene and was seen moving between the outbuilding where Key’s body was located and the residence.

According to his mother, Lisa Key, the facts and evidence seem to dispute the suicide theory. 

“I’d seen him on the embalming room table. I didn’t even recognize him, the damage was just incredible, the meat just folded down over his cheek, his nose was broken, you could see dried smeared blood in the photo like fingerprints had been wiped off,” Lisa said. 

Several people at the scene at the time of his death mentioned a big fight. 

“Now they are all out here fighting…there are five people out here,” the 911 call says. 

Investigators allege that “two week old puppies caused blunt force mass trauma to the side of his face,” Lisa said. 

The rope was also tied from a beam near the top of the shed, 16 feet high and 4.5 feet out, according to Lisa. But there was more. 

“Aaron’s right wrist was broken, the police was 16 feet high, reach out 4.5 feet, it’s not possible to tie a slip knot with one hand,” said Lisa. 

Worse yet, Lisa was able to retrieve crime scene items because they were never collected by law enforcement. 

Despite no signs of hemorrhage or injuries to the neck structure, nor soft tissue damage around the hyoid bone with only a slight ligature mark, the medical examiner ruled Key’s death a suicide by hanging. At 6’5”, 240 pounds, Key would have surely had more damage than slight ligature marks on his neck, no injuries to the neck structure, nor soft tissue damage. 

All of this ties in to a judge named Casey Moreland and Brian Lewis, both of whom worked in the Nashville drug court. According to Taylor, Moreland and Lewis were best friends. 

Lewis was taking women from the drug court and getting them to sleep with Moreland and the district attorney, Glenn Funk. According to Taylor, the sessions would be recorded, and the women were blackmailed into trafficking. They would be “sold” to other judges, high-ranking officials, U.S. Congressmen, and Senators. The information was taken to the FBI in 2016, which closed the case. Loretta Lynch was the Attorney General at that time, and James Comey was the FBI Director. 

In 2018, based on part by the information provided by Taylor and his team, Moreland 2as sentenced in U.S. District Court to 44 months in prison, restitution of $18,000, and a forfeiture of $13,500 for obstruction of justice, witness tampering, and stealing money from an organization receiving federal funds, the Justice Department announced in a news release. The indictment stemmed from whether Moreland sought sexual favors in exchange for favorable judicial treatment. 

According to Taylor:

“I’ve met with probably over 30 families. I had all the autopsies, all the reports, everything. I even got photos from the autopsies, okay?” he said. “All of these people are tied to Commissioner of the Department of Security and Public Safety, Jeff Long.” 

This brings us to the corruption of the so-called “magic mortgages,” which were primarily given to left-leaning politicians. 

On November 11, 2011, Long purchased a home at 8400 Tiger Court in Spring Hill, Tennessee, the property mentioned above, for $153,000, and added his daughter with a quitclaim deed. On December 5, 2016, the house was “sold” for $220,000 cash. It was then quit claimed to Progress Residential for $10. On October 8, 2020, Progress filed for a loan in the amount of $445,310,000 and received the mortgage on December 21, 2020. 

Despite Progress filing for the above loan, the home is still listed in Long’s name, as well as that of someone named Michael Higginbotham. The information was received from LexisNexis, although there is no deed information available. After the initial $220,000 loan, a number of financial companies, such as Goldman Sachs, facilitate numerous mortgages on the property well in excess of the $220,000.

The $445 million figure was confirmed when they pulled the tax documents, however, the ALTA commitment for title insurance showed something different than what the tax documents showed.

It was at that point that Taylor and his team began digging further into other matters surrounding “funky” loans. 

That led them to the Tennessee Healthcare Campaign, a nonprofit run by Augusta Garr and his wife, Madeline Garr.

Madeline was also employed by Vanderbilt University, where a state representative named Justin Jones also was a student. Jones is affiliated with the Tennessee Health Campaign along with a woman named Yolanda Raines, and is also tied to Justin Pearson, also a state rep. Jones and Pearson were part of the “Tennessee Three” who were expelled from the Tennessee House after taking place in what amounted to an “insurrection” in the House chambers, interrupting a legislative session along with protesters demanding gun control. 

Raines obtained a loan through Yamasa Co. Ltd., a real estate conglomerate with offices in Scottsdale, Arizona, which is a subsidiary of Progress Residential (a shell company). 

Yamasa is heavily invested in residential properties. Yamasa, along with a company called Frio, operates out of the same address in Scottsdale, located in questionable Maricopa County, home of funky elections. 

On June 30, 2023, 422 identical contributions from 422 different people in different amounts into Justin Jones’ campaign website, using ActBlue as a funnel for those donations.

On the exact same date, the same people gave the identical amount to Florida Rep. Maxwell Frost (D), the youngest congressional representative in Florida. That was when Taylor and his team began the deep dive into ActBlue, which we covered in our previous piece. 

Our next piece will examine how corruption in a small town led to the possible takedown of the Democratic Party’s fundraising arm, the unscrupulous ActBlue.