Ryan Walters grift being investigated by Grand Jury!

Move over, FBI, Oklahoma House, and the U.S. Department of Education! There’s a new group investigating Ryan Walters!

Earlier today, Nolan Clay with The Oklahoman – the state’s leading reporter on the Grand Jury leak beat – reported that “the state's multicounty grand jury” is taking a closer look at Ryan’s involvement with the Bridge the Gap/ClassWallet grift from a few years ago.

Here are the basic details:

The state's multicounty grand jury is investigating the misspending of pandemic relief funds and state schools Superintendent Ryan Walters, according to multiple sources.

Grand jurors heard testimony last week about Walters and issues with GEER Fund programs in Oklahoma, sources said. No indictments have been issued yet. Their next session is scheduled for Oct. 8-10.

There have been so many Ryan Walters scandals over the past few years that it’s hard to keep them straight, so here’s a quick refresher on the GEER fund controversy...

When Ryan was the podunk director of a non-profit school privatization group called “Every Kid Counts OK,” Governor Stitt put him in charge of running “Bridge the Gap” – a state program that used federal pandemic GEER funds to provide “5,000 low-income Oklahoma families with $1,500 grants to purchase materials for students.”

Because the state couldn’t give the money directly to parents, Ryan chose a Florida company he was cozy with, called ClassWallet, to act as a middleman and help implement the program. Their responsibility was to distribute the money to qualified parents, take their cut, and provide an online mall where parents could shop for “educational materials” through approved online retailers.

Or something like that.

Instead of placing restrictions or limitations on what “educational materials” parents could buy, Ryan gave “blanket approval” for them to order whatever they wanted. This negligence resulted in shady parents spending $1.7 million on questionable educational items, like TVs, pellet grills, and even a Pac-Man video game cabinet.

You know, so their kids could learn how to evade ghosts.

As with most things involving Ryan Walters, it’s hard to determine whether his mismanagement of the program was contrived and intentional, the result of his willful ignorance and ineptitude, or a combination of both.

I guess that’s what the grand jury is investigating:

The investigation of the GEER Fund programs by the grand jury had long been expected, as Attorney General Gentner Drummond has blamed "state actors" for the misspending. Drummond's assistants advise the grand jury.

After completing their investigation of GEER Fund programs, grand jurors could return indictments charging individuals with crimes. They could also decide no charges are warranted and just make recommendations in a report.

That’s interesting.

Now that the grand jury’s investigation is public, I wonder how long it will take Ryan to call an emergency press conference and dare the grand jury to indict him. Will he wait until this Friday at 2:30, or do it sooner? We need answers, please!

Whether or not he dares the grand jury to indict, I do hope they go through with it. Even if the charges are weak, you have to admit it would be fun to watch Ryan squirm like he's being chased by a KFOR reporter!

Then again, that's assuming the charges are weak. They could also stick like the caramel swirl in a Harbor Mountain Coffee Shop macchiato!

I haven’t brushed up on my dumb Oklahoma laws list in a while, but if it’s still illegal to take a bite out of another man’s hamburger or wear cowboy boots to bed – a law I assume Governor Stitt violates nightly – it should probably be against the law for a guy to look the other way and complicity allow people to defraud the state and misuse education funds.

If not, can our law-and-order, anti-government-waste conservatives maybe write a bill that makes it so?

Anyway, I guess we’ll see what the grand jury decides, and after it leaks to Nolan, hopefully be the second or third to tell you about it.

Stay with The Lost Ogle. We’ll keep you advised!