Ottawa County taps conservative political pundit Benjamin Wetmore for deputy role

OTTAWA COUNTY — Ottawa County has hired a new deputy administrator with a long history of conservative political activism.

According to multiple county employees, Benjamin Wetmore has been tapped for the role. A county spokesperson confirmed the hire Thursday afternoon, Nov. 16.

Wetmore, 42, is an attorney licensed to practice criminal, real estate and nonprofit law in Texas. He moved to Michigan around 2021 and most recently worked as a legislative aide for Rep. Matt Maddock, one of several lawmakers active in Michigan's "Grand New Party," a far-right offshoot of the Republican Party.

Maddock is husband to former MIGOP co-chair Meshawn Maddock, one of 16 people charged for allegedly acting as a false elector in the 2020 presidential election.

Wetmore is also the founder of Victory Strategies LLC, a political consulting agency that began assisting conservative state representative campaigns in 2021. The agency recently employed Jordan Epperson, who was hired in August to become Ottawa County Administrator John Gibbs' executive aide.

Gibbs has since been accused of age discrimination in the Epperson hire after another finalist sued the county in October, claiming he was more qualified, but that Gibbs favored the 23-year-old Epperson because he was "young" and could be "bossed around."

Several residents also expressed concern to county commissioners about several controversial posts on Epperson's social media accounts.

More: Documents: Executive aide hire falls short of county's mandatory credentials

More: Lawsuit: Gibbs committed age discrimination in hiring executive aide

According to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, age discrimination is treating an applicant or employee less favorably because of his or her age. There are specific legal protections afforded to individuals over the age of 40. The law prohibits discrimination in any aspect of employment, including hiring and firing.

Wetmore replaces former Deputy Director Patrick Waterman, who resigned in July citing a strained working relationship with Gibbs and a "lack of effective leadership" by the new Ottawa Impact majority on the board of commissioners.

Ottawa Impact is a far-right fundamentalist group formed in 2021 in response to school mask mandates during the COVID-19 pandemic. OI now controls a six-seat majority on the 11-member board after infighting caused at least one member to sever his relationship with the group. Two other conservatives on the board have publicly distanced themselves.

Waterman, who was present during the hiring process for the aide position, said he had concerns about Epperson over "certain behaviors" he showed during his interviews.

"To my recollection, Mr. Epperson raised support for Ottawa Impact in his interviews," Waterman testified Oct. 24 during a termination hearing for the county's administrative health officer. The hearing concluded Oct. 25, however, the board has recessed three separate times without making a final decision on Health Officer Adeline Hambley's employment with the county.

More: Heavily redacted emails suggest Ottawa aide's hire was contested

Waterman said he became concerned when he asked Epperson about his definition of ethics.

"His answer was: ‘Ethics depends on who you’re working for.’ I thought that was a concerning answer. I also asked him if he felt the role of government employees are political and he said ‘absolutely.’ Those were a couple of responses that gave us pause, aside from the fact that there were some qualification concerns there with what was written in the job description," Waterman said in October.

Wetmore, meanwhile, took part in several political stunts with James O’Keefe, the controversial founder of Project Veritas, a conservative nonprofit that uses undercover video and staged encounters in an attempt to reveal media bias. (O'Keefe, who was fired from the organization earlier this year, is under investigation in New York over allegations he mistreated workers and misspent organization funds.)

In 2009, the two pretended to be volunteers for the Love Thy Prisoner Campaign, where they tried to get residents in Boston to "adopt a Jihad detainee" and become "pen pals with Guantanamo Bay detainees and put them into their loving homes."

In addition to his legal background, Wetmore is a citizen journalist with a well-documented history as an associate of O’Keefe and later the guerrilla journalism nonprofit American Phoenix Project, according to reporting by The Austin American Statesmen in 2018, when Wetmore unsuccessfully ran for a Texas district judge seat.

Wetmore started making waves as a political science and history major at American University, where he started a website blasting the university president’s spending habits.

More: District Court judge candidate has ties to controversial activist

He later attended law school at Loyola University New Orleans, and in 2010, he housed O’Keefe and three other men accused of plotting to tamper with the office phone system of then-Texas Sen. Mary Landrieu. O’Keefe was convicted of a misdemeanor for entering Landrieu’s New Orleans office under false pretenses.

Wetmore also self-published a book in 2010 called “Getting a Job in Politics, and Keeping It,” in which he said he's worked for various political organization groups, trained more than 2,000 activists and helped start 120 campus publications around the country.

Wetmore’s association with O’Keefe appears to have ended around 2010. But he continued to work with O’Keefe associate Joseph Basel, one of the four men arrested in the New Orleans incident.

Wetmore was counsel for the American Phoenix Foundation, a nonprofit led by Basel that aimed to secretly tape Texas legislators and lobbyists using guerrilla tactics similar to those employed by O’Keefe’s Project Veritas. The nonprofit has since been placed in receivership.

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Wetmore has written recently for The Gateway Pundit, a website known for publishing falsehoods, hoaxes and conspiracy theories.

On Oct. 30, he published a piece claiming the plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer was a "big federal hoax."

— Sarah Leach is executive editor for The Holland Sentinel. Contact her at sarah.leach@hollandsentinel.com. Follow her on Twitter @SentinelLeach.

This article originally appeared on The Holland Sentinel: Ottawa County taps conservative political pundit Benjamin Wetmore for deputy role