(La Porte County, IN) - La Porte County Auditor Tim Stabosz said he was falsely accused of encouraging the public to mock his political enemies.

 

A majority of the La Porte County Commissioners passed a resolution condemning Stabosz for "attack-dog style" postings on his Facebook page the night before Thanksgiving.

 

Stabosz was accused of using Facebook to encourage his readers and followers to "mock" Commissioners Rich Mrozinski, Sheila Matias, and LaPorte County government attorney Shaw Friedman and to continue stating "how immoral, indecent, corrupt and pathetic they are."

 

In response, Stabosz defended his postings and said the resolution was an effort to embarrass him.

 

Stabosz said he was speaking to one individual, and that is the anonymous person who is publishing a flyer portraying Mrozinski, Matias, and Friedman as puppets and puppeteers.

 

Stabosz advised that person in his post to mock them all he wants in future publications but within the confines of election law. 

 

He said his advice aimed to keep the publisher out of legal trouble for the political satire flyer, distributed mainly to a select number of elected officials and former officials.

 

Many people have found each of the four editions of the flyer casting other elected officials as clowns just as entertaining as insulting.

 

"They twist the context in their resolution to make it sound like I'm going on Facebook telling people and the public to mock Rich, Shaw, and Sheila like I'm egging people on. That is not the case," he said.

Stabosz has two lawsuits against him currently. First, Friedman accuses Stabosz of defamation of character for accusing him of running county government. The second lawsuit is from the commissioners for not obeying their orders to pay Friedman.

 

Stabosz is withholding more than $25,000 from Friedman's law firm. He maintains that the funds will be released once Friedman provides the information he requests to verify some of his work for the county concerned legal work.