(originally published June 3, 2015)
This is my fourth post about John Scott Gleason, who was employed by the Colorado Supreme Court’s Office of Disciplinary Counsel from 1987 to 2013, becoming its head in 1998 to oversee the office’s transformation to the ungrammatically named “Office of Attorney Regulation Counsel”–when all power was consolidated in himself–and implement significant changes in the attorney disciplinary process in Colorado. These changes have had the effect of furthering official corruption in the state and denying its targets due process.
Even before I became the undeserving target of Mr. Gleason for five years–without, let’s be clear, any complaint from a client, ever, in my 20-year history as a lawyer–I had serious questions about the operation he ran, since the office refused to investigate legitimate complaints I had both filed myself, and knew had been filed by others. Let it be said, however, that Gleason was not the first to look the other way when presented with attorney misconduct, since one of his predecessors, Michael Henry, was also dirty. Henry moved on to protect official corruption in various capacities within the City and County of Denver. But I digress.
First, to review my earlier findings: I have firmly established that Gleason has no baccalaureate degree from an undergraduate college, and that he made false and misleading statements in online bios implying that he did. Since then he has lied outright about having a degree from Bowling Green State University. In the online bios and other settings he also stated that he had significant experience as both a criminal prosecutor and civil litigator before coming to OARC, when he had no such experience, at all. Nada. We could get additional confirmation of these facts from his application for employment with OARC, except the Supreme Court won’t give it to me. Never mind that that application, along with the rest of his personnel file, is a public record: the OARC has withheld it in violation of law, and since then the Supreme Court itself decided that such withholding–despite the baldfaced violation of law that action represents–is hunky dory. This is a strong admission that merit did not figure into the decision to hire John Gleason. Something else was much more important. I suspect there is no application on file, at all.*
I’ve pointed out that Gleason closed on his new house in Highlands Ranch in September 1987 before the ad for the position he was hired to at OARC was even published in The Colorado Lawyer. This is more strong evidence that he was preselected for the office. Gleason has, by the way, stated in a sworn affidavit filed in response to my records request in Oregon (where he went in 2013) that he started work at OARC in October 1988, apparently to make it appear his house purchase was unrelated to the OARC job. Unfortunately for him, his start date, even if it really was in October 1988, is not dispositive of the issue. The ad ran only once, in the September 1987 issue (with an August 25, 1987, deadline); also, my notes from the 1988-89 Colorado Legal and Financial Directory, which places him at OARC, say the book was stamped “Received August 1988” by the library. So he was at OARC, or had at least been assured that would be his address, before the directory’s cut-off date, which was April 1988.
I’ve pointed out that the law school Gleason attended requires an LSAT score only in the 25th percentile for admission, and expressed strong doubt that anyone who scored that low on the LSAT would be able to pass the Colorado Bar Exam. I questioned whether someone just “gave him a bar ticket,” therefore. I now have support for that thesis. On the Board of Law Examiners when Gleason was admitted to the Colorado Bar in 1985 were two powerful lawyers, James Lyons and John Moye. While there were others on that board I would also be suspicious of, these two were co-owners of a bar refresher course at the time (which that article says was acquired by Bar/Bri–I took the Bar/Bri course myself, in Spring 1987, to prepare for the bar exam). This is a clear conflict of interest. These two men had access to the actual bar exams before they were administered, and even oversaw the grading. As for the bar review course, it is the more odd, because Moye and Lyons were not exactly unemployed when they had this business on the side: both were partners in powerful law firms pulling down big bucks. Bar/Bri focuses solely on the Multistate Bar Exam (MBE), a standardized multiple choice test. At the time I took the Colorado Bar Exam, 1-1/2 years after Gleason reportedly did, if your MBE score exceeded 150, you passed automatically. They did not even grade your essays. That is how I was admitted, myself. The Bar/Bri sample exams were dead ringers for the MBE, as I recall. Moreover, with a few answers to multiple-choice questions blacked in in pencil being all that separates a fail from a pass, it is easy to see how a grader could undetectably cheat someone in (as was alleged in RICO cases alleging teachers doing just that in Atlanta and El Paso).
Lyons and Moye are part of what can aptly be called the Irish Catholic Mafia which runs Denver, as well as the State of Colorado. I’ve previously written about Catholic control of the bench in Colorado, which is also the case with the U.S. Supreme Court. (Ditto for law enforcement.) I will do more on Moye and Lyons in future. Suffice it at this point to express an opinion–shared, I know, by other members of the Colorado Bar–that these two do not necessarily have awesome lawyering skills. They are better characterized as “fixers.” I suggest that Moye and Lyons concocted a plan to protect white-collar crime within the Colorado bench and bar by installing the compromised John Gleason as Colorado Attorney Regulation Counsel, and that they figured out how to get him admitted without actually passing, or maybe even taking, the bar exam. Of course, they also had to install their puppet Mary Mullarkey as Chief Justice of the Colorado Supreme Court, so she could sign the paper elevating Gleason to top dog at OARC. Maybe, now I think about it, they installed ALL the judges, ensuring their loyalty by means we can only guess at (as I have, in Billy Lucero’s Inquisition). Maybe it was a quid pro quo for getting them a pass on the bar exam.
Many other things about Gleason’s background raise serious red flags. His online bios (Exhibits 1 and 2) fail to mention, for example, that he spent nine years in the Ohio Air National Guard (a coveted spot for a man who was draft-eligible during the Vietnam War, as we know from George W. Bush’s achieving a similar cushy placement). When I learned of his service–again, not a word of which appeared in those bios–I obtained a few records from the Ohio Air National Guard, but–just as in Colorado–have been denied others, without any legal basis. One I did get is this letter dated March 7, 2014, which for “Duty Status” states “Discharged,” without saying “honorably” or “dishonorably.” In addition, it says Gleason’s service lasted from Sept. 17, 1968, to April 10, 1978, but how can this be? He started work at the Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Department in Colorado on November 19, 1977. Did he go AWOL? Shades of Dubya! In addition, the last page of the letter, listing his duty postings, ends on Nov. 11,1972, yet I had asked for all his duty postings, so it should have ended April 10, 1978. That’s six years unaccounted for of the 9-1/2 years he was in the service. Lastly, and most intriguing, is the entry, “Transcript of Court Martial Trial: Not in File.” I have spent over a year trying very hard to get that transcript, or even confirm it exists. Although I’ve had indications it does, I have been stonewalled in my attempts to get it.
This could very well be because, as Gleason stated in one interview, he received “top secret” military training. This sounds like CIA. CIA works hand-in-hand with the Mafia (see Pete Brewton’s book, George Bush, the Mafia, and the CIA); I have come to believe the Mafia also serves as the enforcement arm of the Vatican. In other words, I hypothesize that Gleason went through a court-martial, and they made a deal to sweep it under the rug in return for his taking on the future role of High Poobah of the Colorado Bar Moral Police, in which he would use his power unethically ever after to protect criminal conduct by attorneys and judges. This devil’s bargain would explain why I cannot get records.
It’s also weird that Gleason was a medic in the military. He never breathed a word of this, either, prior to his application for the job in Oregon (the equivalent position to the one he held in Colorado, which he was hired to in early 2013, and kept for a year). An acquaintance has suggested the court martial may have been for a drug offense, which would make sense if he were a medic.
There is other evidence that Gleason was not honorably discharged. In his file at the Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office, where he worked from 1977 to 1982, there is no certificate of honorable discharge. There is such a certificate in the personnel file of his boss, former sheriff Ed Nelson (pp. 38-41 of 130), reminding us of the simple fact that anyone with a service record employed by law enforcement–not to mention the Colorado Supreme Court–MUST PROVE HE WAS HONORABLY DISCHARGED. Not Gleason, though. Another pass. Ed Nelson’s file also contains an FBI report, copy of his driver’s license, photos, and a completed application responding to much more intrusive questions about his past, such as credit history, criminal convictions, health, etc., than Gleason was required to answer. Gleason’s application to ACSO is all of one page!
Gleason claims, on his Oregon job application, that he was honorably discharged, but says it occurred in 1977. He has to say that because his service, in Ohio, should have ended before he started his new job with ACSO in Colorado on Nov. 19, 1977. I’ll bet he was not happy to see I have these records from the NPRC saying he was discharged April 10, 1978. Guess that’s what comes of not actually having a certificate of honorable discharge in one’s possession: he doesn’t even know the date he supposedly mustered out. (Oregon told me, by the way, that they did no background investigation of Gleason before hiring him!)
It behooves us to turn to Pat Sullivan for a moment: he was Gleason’s supervisor at ACSO and gave him positive reviews, which are in Gleason’s file. On the sudden death from heart attack of Sheriff Nelson, who was only 57, Sullivan acceded to the position of sheriff, a job he then held for 20 years. He was lauded all over the place; the new Arapahoe County Justice Center was named for him; and his ACSO personnel file is stuffed full of commendations, including one from Pres. Bill Clinton. (Interestingly, it also lacks the documents in Ed Nelson’s file: no dates of military service are even given, no certificate of honorable discharge is in the file, almost no meaningful questions are on the application). The testimonials in Sullivan’s file were obviously solicited by the creep himself–and “creep” is what the people of Colorado finally learned they had in Sullivan when he was arrested in 2010 for offering to trade meth for gay sex, and his male lover’s body was found floating in the Platte River. One intriguing story claimed Sullivan had coerced jail inmates with offers to bond out in return for sex. The Denver Post, true to form, whooshed all of this off the front page as soon as it could, and Sullivan got probation, true to form for “Colorado law enforcement.” So when you see the commendations Sullivan (and others) made of John Gleason which are in Gleason’s file, take them with a grain of salt. These guys create false testimonials to put in each other’s files. This is what keeps them in power.
And that leads to the fact that, at least since 2007, Gleason has moonlighted as CEO of a large youth sports organization he founded, called “Warriors Youth Sports.” This would seem a full-time job in itself–yet here he was also “working 60- to 70-hour weeks” for the Oregon State Bar, not to mention as Attorney Regulation Counsel for the Colorado Supreme Court before then. I was contacted by a parent of a child involved in this organization who was angry about the expensive uniforms, which could only be bought at the shop run by the “nonprofit” Warriors (which owns a big field house). [In fact, I see that Warriors was NOT incorporated as a nonprofit: 5 shares of stock were issued!] The parent told me Warriors had put on a fundraiser in November 2013 featuring illegal gambling. I agreed it looked illegal, and brought it to the attention of three different law enforcement agencies. Again, nothing happened. More important than the gambling is the implication this kind of access to youth has, given the abundantly documented pedophilia within the Catholic Church and its cover-ups of sexual misconduct–and murder–by priests. As ugly as I know it seems to say so, that Gleason is running this youth sports organization sets up the possibility that he is a procurer of children for Church higher-ups, another reason he has been protected and, indeed, celebrated.
In the OARC job Gleason also not only decided which attorneys to go after, and which to be given a pass, but advised the Commission on Judicial Discipline and the Attorney Regulation Advisory Committee. All discipline connected with not only attorneys, but judges, was in Gleason’s discretion, therefore. So when I complained to the Attorney Regulation Advisory Committee about Attorney Regulation employee April McMurrey, the lying Nazi whore Gleason sicced on me for four years, my complaint went to a shill named David Stark, who referred it right back to–you guessed it–John Gleason, McMurrey’s boss. Another clear conflict, of course. Complaints about judicial misconduct go to the JDC, which then also turned to Gleason for “legal advice”–and of course he would almost always advise that there’s nothing to go forward on, because he was there not to protect the public, but to protect the criminal enterprise. You might call John Gleason a keystone species. The whole Ecosystem falls apart if you take him out.
A last word on the man has to do with his childhood, again not as he has represented. Gleason referred to his youth as “hardscrabble” in one interview, and said he was a “hard kid to raise.” “Hardscrabble” sounds like poverty. Yet his father was an executive with La Choy foods who traveled to China shortly after Nixon’s visit in 1972, and many times afterwards. One obituary reported that 10 men and women came from China to attend John Gleason’s mother’s funeral in 1992, in Bryan, Ohio. This suggests not only that the father caused money to flow into Chinese pockets, but also that he may have been CIA. In fact, I did a FOIA on Customs and Border Patrol for records of James Gleason’s entries into the country, and only one comes up, from 1982. CBP says the records are only “partially releasable.” So all these trips to China in the 1970’s must be classified. (I also did a FOIA to the CIA, which responded “Nanner, nanner, we don’t have to tell you,” saying the fact of existence or nonexistence of an agency relationship is itself classified.) Consider also John’s cushy placement during the Vietnam war, suggesting his pa had clout. John’s wedding announcement, from 1968, says they had 400 guests at a buffet dinner reception, also a sign of money.
One might hope that the Colorado Supreme Court would realize how corrupt its having elevated this unqualified man and pathological liar, John Gleason, to the important and sensitive post of Attorney Regulation Counsel appears–and truly was–and clean house, but its members have shown they are not the solution. They are the problem. The procedures implemented under Gleason do not protect either the public or the target attorneys, as I will be discussing in detail in future. “Clean house” means to get rid of Gleason’s acolyte and successor James Coyle, as well as the other ethically challenged employees of that office. Coyle, like Gleason, is a liar, scofflaw, and abuser of power, too.
I will in future write about Gleason’s bizarre caper in Arizona, where he was imported by the Arizona Supreme Court–outrageously–to remove the threat of prosecution corrupt judges there faced from the county attorney, by DISBARRING that POPULARLY ELECTED PUBLIC OFFICIAL, Andrew Thomas, along with two of his deputies, so he could no longer do the job the citizenry elected him to do.
As I found out myself, you don’t make use of RICO when Gleason’s around. Gleason trumps Congress.
*I finally found out, in 2021, that none of the OARC employees who prosecuted me ever even filed an application, or went through any competitive selection process, in violation of the Colorado Constitution. They did not even undergo background checks, let alone an evaluation of character and fitness–and I have not found ONE who is a competent attorney. These individuals were installed for no other reason than that they are obedient Catholics. This is true also of the goon who held the position of presiding disciplinary judge for 18 years, William Lucero.
**5/6/22: I am aware this link now comes up “page not found.” Was it because of this post?