The sordid tale of Michael Capps shows the value of local journalism | Editorial

Michael Capps is on his way to prison. It’s been a long time coming and it’s where he belongs.

And this newspaper is proud to have helped put him there.

On Thursday, Capps was sentenced to federal prison after being found guilty of 12 felonies related to defrauding COVID-19 relief programs when he was a member of the Kansas House of Representatives.

During the time of national emergency, while others experienced grief, mortal danger and economic pain from an unprecedented pandemic that killed more than 1 million Americans, Capps saw an opportunity to work the system for personal gain.

Companies run by Capps, and a bogus charity he controlled, applied for and received approximately half a million dollars in federal grants that were supposed to help keep small businesses afloat and keep employees paid during COVID-mandated shutdowns of 2020.

Capps got the money through the simple expedient of lying on application forms. He claimed he had 38 employees, but they were phantoms. Capps hadn’t issued a single paycheck in 2019, the base year for obtaining COVID grant funding.

It’s not an overstatement to say that this would likely have never come to light without several years of diligent reporting on Capps by this newspaper, and in particular, investigative reporter Chance Swaim.

The official investigation of the COVID scam didn’t begin until Swaim started asking questions.

Reporters don’t have the power to subpoena the bank and business records that proved Capps lied to get money he didn’t deserve.

But by analyzing government records and sifting through court documents from unrelated cases, Swaim was able to establish that Capps’ businesses and foundation were basically shell companies that did little commerce and had few, if any, employees.

He and other Eagle reporters were already familiar with Capps’ businesses from investigating a campaign scandal involving Capps, his business partner and former Wichita City Council member James Clendenin and former Sedgwick County Commissioner Michael O’Donnell.

The trio set up a fake, anonymous shell company in New Mexico to launch a false video smear campaign against mayoral candidate Brandon Whipple in his race against incumbent Jeff Longwell. Whipple was a state legislator at the time and the fake ad used paid actresses in silhouette reading a script of sexual-harassment allegations that were actually made against other legislators.

When the ad scheme backfired, Capps went on the radio accusing then-Sedgwick County Republican Chairman Dalton Glasscock of masterminding the video, although he had nothing to do with it. That blew up in the plotters’ faces when the young producer of the video revealed a secretly made recording of Capps, O’Donnell and Clendenin conspiring to frame Glasscock.

Capps was in trouble from practically the moment he entered the public eye.

Shortly after the Republican Party appointed him to fill an unexpired term in the Legislature in 2018, reports surfaced that the Kansas Department of Children and Families had found he emotionally abused a young boy while serving as a court-appointed special advocate for the child. Capps appealed and won, because of deficiencies in the paperwork filed by DCF, which he claimed as vindication.

In a civil case, he was ordered to pay $200,000 for cheating on an agreement he made when selling a technology company he started to another firm.

On Thursday, Capps caught a break at his sentencing for COVID fraud.

Judge Eric Melgren gave him 27 months in prison, a downward departure from the 41 to 51 months that sentencing guidelines call for.

During the sentencing hearing, Capps cried and portrayed himself as too pathetic for prison. He claimed to suffer from post traumatic stress syndrome and weight-related pre-diabetes. He leaned on his Air Force service 20 years ago, and maintained he would be at high risk of death if he caught COVID in prison — ironic since he’s on his way to prison for ripping off other people’s COVID relief money.

Moments after the sentencing he was back to his old arrogant self. Walking to his car from the courthouse, he flipped a middle-finger salute to Swaim, the reporter who started the case against him.

A strong takeaway from the sordid story of Michael Capps is the importance of local journalism. It was, more than anything else, diligent reporting that brought him to justice.

Capps’ final comeuppance was the result of years of hard work by Eagle journalists. Without it, the smear campaign on Whipple might never have been revealed for the sham that it was. Capps might still be writing our state laws and O’Donnell would almost certainly still be on the County Commission. Clendenin would have been term-limited off the City Council, but who knows where he might have landed.

But most important, Capps would probably still be walking around with a few hundred thousand dollars of ill-gotten gains, stolen from taxpayers and the people who really needed that money to keep body and soul together through the pandemic.

We followed this story not for the Internet clicks it might generate, but because it needed to be done for the good of our city and our state. We spent more than we made on it.

It’s called public-interest journalism. And it’s what we do.