Sarah Ramsey
Cincinnati Council Member Wendell Young is pleading not guilty to a tampering with records charge. Young filed the plea in the Hamilton County Common Pleas Court Thursday.
The investigation stems from text messages exchanged between Young and four other council members in 2018. The group discussed and made decisions about city business, in violation of Ohio s Sunshine Law.
Hanley says Young further violated the law by deleting some of those text messages.
Young told several local media outlets he deleted the messages before an order not to do so, but after turning them over to the city solicitor s office and seeing them published in the media.
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Cincinnati Council Member Wendell Young is under indictment for his part in the text messaging case involving four other city council members in 2018.
Young was indicted on one count of tampering with records for allegedly deleting text messages related to the so-called Gang of Five case.
In a release, Special Prosecutor Patrick Hanley writes, The grand jury has decided that probable cause exists that Councilman Young has committed a violation of the law, tampering with records. It is my intention of taking that charge into court and establishing he is guilty of that offense beyond a reasonable doubt.
The charge carries a maximum sentence of three years in prison, according to the statement.
Aftab Pureval, Cecil Thomas, David Mann.
Those are your top tier candidates in the May 4 Cincinnati mayoral primary. Not necessarily in that order.
And only two of them can survive the primary.
If the turnout is as low as it has been in previous mayoral primaries, there s no telling what might happen.
Nine potential candidates filed petitions with the Hamilton County Board of Elections by Feb. 18 to run in the primary, but the ranks are thinning out.
Cincinnati Council Member Wendell Young has already been eliminated; he failed to meet the threshold of 500 valid signatures of Cincinnati voters. And he failed by a long shot – he was short 151 signatures, according to the board of elections.