Town records confirm Charlestown swearing-in was faked

Councilors were secretly given the oath before sham meeting

Faked: Virginia Lee takes phony oath from Rep.-elect Fake Filippi 
who lacks legal authority to administer oaths. According to town 
records, Lee actually took the real oath four days earlier

By Will Collette

On November 17, the Charlestown Citizens Alliance reveled in their Election Day sweep of all Charlestown elected offices by holding the first Town Council meeting of the new term to have the newly elected (or re-elected Council members) take the oath of office.

There was a major problem with the ceremony. 

First, the CCA Party misrepresented Blake Filippi (I-Lincoln-BI-Providence) and Elaine Morgan as “Representative” and “Senator” respectively when they have not, in fact, taken their own oaths of office. Then, the CCA Party had Fake Filippi and Morgan administer the oaths of office to the new Charlestown Councilors. 

Under state law, neither Filippi nor Morgan has the legal authority to administer oaths.

I asked our Town Administrator Mark Stankiewicz if the Council members had been sworn in earlier – there was no mention of this at the official meeting, but I had heard rumors. If this was the case, I asked Stankiewicz to describe how the oaths were administered.

Stankiewicz’s response was to treat my questions as if they were an official Access to Public Records Act (APRA) request and to send me copies of the sworn statements the five Council members signed. 

He did not provide the requested description of what actually happened.

The sworn statements show that four members took the oath before Town Clerk Amy Weinreich on November 13, four days before the public meeting. These are Council Boss Tom Gentz, Virginia Lee, George Tremblay and Denise Rhodes. Amy Weinreich is authorized under the law to administer oaths.

The last of the five Council members to be sworn in is Bonnita Van Slyke. Amy swore her in sometime on November 17, according to town records.

These official oaths were administered with no public notice. The November 13 oath-taking may be a violation of the state Open Meetings Act (OMA) under – and this is ironic – the decision of the Attorney General in the complaint brought by CCA Party leader Cliff Vanover who challenged a 2006 unadvertised private meeting held by Jim Mageau and two of his colleagues even before they were sworn in as an OMA violation.

However, the records do set to rest whether our five CCA Party Town Council members have been duly sworn in. They were. It’s just they weren’t actually sworn in at the public meeting on November 17 that was advertised for that purpose. 

Instead, on November 17, they gave mock oaths before two mock legislators.

This escapade is so classic CCA. It also begs a number of questions:

• Why did the CCA Party have its Council members to take the real oath in secret?
• Why not swear them in publicly? Then, the CCA Party could do its solidarity show with Flip and Morgan?
• Why was there no mention at all during the public Nov. 17 meeting that the Councilors had already been sworn in?
• Why put Flip and Morgan in a position where they not only were misrepresented as state Representative and Senator – when they were not – and also acted as if they had oath-taking authority they do not hold?
• Was this event staged just so the CCA Party could show off their new legislative BFFs?
• Is this the end of the CCA Party’s claims and façade that they are “non-partisan?”

Sure looks that way.

Filippi, Morgan and the CCA Party – Soul Mates

This exercise in phoniness is also befitting these two legislators-elect. Elaine Morgan allegedly impersonated a police officer using her honorific Hopkinton Town Sergeant uniform. And Fake Bilippi has been a phony about just about every aspect of his life, including where he lives.

Flip put out a news release on December 2 putting his own spin on information I had already published on November 9. I reported that the state Ethics Commission had tossed my complaint that he had failed to disclose his role as Executive Director of the Rhode Island Liberty Coalition. 

The Commission accepted Filippi’s explanation that the Coalition wasn’t really a coalition, but was actually a phony group consisting only of himself.

As a fictitious organization, he didn’t need to list it on his Ethics financial disclosure form. 

In this fashion, Flip resembles CCA Party Chariho School Board member Ron Areglado. Areglado also failed to list his “presidency” of the Center for Ethical and Moral Leadership on his own ethics disclosure form - even though it is a lead item on his CCA Party resume - because the Center does not actually exist.

Fake Filippi called my complaint against him “baseless” when in fact I spoke at length with Ethics Commission investigator Gary Petrarca and described the Coalition and Filippi’s relationship to it. He, in turn, talked to Ethics Commission lawyers and called me back to say the lawyers felt the complaint had merit. Only then did I file the complaint.

I didn’t appeal the Ethics Commission decision simply because Filippi, in his own words, admitted he concocted the RI Liberty Coalition to push his radical agenda - it never really existed as a “coalition” or even as a “group.”

For example, he told the South County Independent that the Rhode Island Liberty Coalition was, in his words, "It was just me, publishing legislation that states could use to protect individual liberties." Filippi said.

He told the Chariho Times almost the same thing: “It was not a separate entity; it was just me. It wasn’t a corporation, an LLC, a trust, an organization - it was just me.”

The Westerly Sun reported that “Filippi said the coalition is not a legal entity, or even a formal organization.”

So there never was a coalition. As he said, it was just him and nobody else. Like the rest of Filippi’s narrative, it was all fake. Proving that point was good enough for me.

And now you can see why the CCA Party loves this guy.