Over the past week or so, I’ve been watching with mild bemusement the mystifyingly mind-numbingly, lavishly overblown feud between Oklahoma County Judge Amy Palumbo and Sheriff Tommie Johnson III.
In case you’ve missed it, here’s the TL;DR:
• Judge Palumbo was rude—possibly even (gasp!) mean—to Sheriff Johnson’s overly sensitive deputies and yelled at them for being too loud in the hallway. She then summoned Sheriff Johnson to her courtroom to yell at him, too.
• Worried he might be tossed in jail on contempt charges, Johnson ignored the request, snitched on Palumbo, and filed a formal complaint. The Oklahoma Supreme Court looked into it and issued a private reprimand against the judge, which is now very much public.
• Oklahoma County DA Vicki Behenna and AG Gentner Drummond somehow got involved, but – sadly – Paco Balderrama isn’t mentioned.
Overall, the story's a little hard to follow and has been covered by News 9, The Oklahoman, Yawn Doc, and others.
It even received some national attention, with the Daily Mail giving it the full Daily Mail treatment and referring to Judge Amy Palumbo – who an Ogle Mole once told me was a lingerie model in her 20s – as “glamorous”:
A glamorous female judge is under pressure to resign following a dramatic courtroom meltdown, with an Oklahoma sheriff demanding her departure after she tried to have him arrested for the hallway being too 'noisy.'
Yep, Amy Palumbo is apparently glamorous. I guess I can see it. Here's a picture where she's in deep thought, wondering how hard it would be to get rhinestones on her gavel.
At the very least, Amy is more glamorous than your average robed government bureaucrat.
For example, she looks way more glam-boyant than Traci Soderstrom – that judge from Luther who resigned from office after she was caught joking about a prosecutor’s small penis during a murder trial.
Remember her?
Then again, Judge Soderstrom forced male attorneys who appeared before her court to pose for silly Glamour Shot photos in a pink chair, so maybe she is the glamorous one.
Seriously, instead of complaining about the judge being mean, Sheriff Johnson should be thankful she’s not making his deputies wear feather boas into the courtroom!
Who knows? Maybe that 1:30 p.m. summons Palumbo issued to Johnson wasn’t to throw him in jail, as he alleges—but to have him pose shirtless in front of a fireplace with a sheriff’s hat and a silk sash?
Anyway, what were we talking about again?
Oh yeah—Sheriff Tommie Johnson, a big tough law enforcement official, whining like a little baby, snitching on a glamorous judge to the AG and Supreme Court, and calling on her to resign because she was mean to his staff and threatened to throw him in jail if he couldn’t get them to quiet down in the hallway.
In today’s world of partisan drama and performative outrage, I think it’s safe to say both sides come out of this looking like total losers.
Palumbo seems petty and power-drunk. Johnson comes across as woke, fragile, and desperate for backup. And his deputies—who I’m guessing have no problem dishing it out on the streets—can’t even handle a courtroom ass-chewing from a judge in lipstick and heels.
That said, I’ll admit I got a nice little hit of schadenfreude watching Palumbo’s reputation take another beating.
Longtime readers may remember she holds the honor of being the first person to ever sue TLO after we made fun of her Jersey Shore husband Marco’s “California Switchblade” criminal defense commercials way back in 2010, and named his law firm one of the sleaziest places in Oklahoma.
Well, at least she kind of sued TLO.
Technically, her Mr. Magoo attorney – who would later represent Aaron Tuttle in his doomed lawsuit against us – went after a poorly-spelled alias of mine… and the very correctly spelled alias of Clark Matthews.
Palumbo’s case was weak and dumb and frivolous, reeked of legal bullying, and was ultimately dismissed. But we still had to take it seriously, because she and her husband could have possibly argued to a court that—despite Marco’s awful commercial—they weren’t public figures, which is a key point in any libel, slander, or defamation case.
But now that she’s a full-blown public figure and elected official who’s been reprimanded by the Supreme Court, got in a spat with a sheriff, and has national Daily Mail coverage under her glamorous belt, I think we can finally say it:
Judge Amy Palumbo’s courtroom—or, according to a Mole, her old hot tub in Ski Island—officially earns a spot on our list of the 10 Sleaziest and Meanest Places in Oklahoma.
This time, we encourage her to sue us… and/or call us into her court!
Stay with The Lost Ogle. We’ll keep you advised.
