Nuria Martinez-Keel, Oklahoma Voice

Oklahoma judge overseeing charter school embezzlement case rejects calls for recusal

OKLAHOMA CITY — A judge presiding over the major embezzlement case against the co-founders of Epic Charter School faces a call to recuse, with a defense attorney accusing her of being an “advocate for the prosecution.”

District Judge Susan Stallings denied the request for her disqualification during a hearing Thursday at the Oklahoma County Courthouse. Both she and prosecutors from the Attorney General’s Office disagreed with the defense’s argument that she is unable to be impartial.

“The court finds there were a lot of assumptions made but no facts,” Stallings said.

Defense attorney Joe White, who filed the motion, said he intends to appeal Stallings’ decision. First, the matter would come before the chief judge in Oklahoma County, a responsibility the district judges share on a rotating basis. Then, if rejected again, White could raise it to the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals.

It’s not uncommon for a judge to receive a request to recuse, but most are resolved in private. Far fewer disqualifications are ever disputed in a public hearing.

White said Stallings should be disqualified because of her work history at the Oklahoma County District Attorney’s Office, which investigated Epic and filed charges against the school’s co-founders.

Stallings is a former Oklahoma County prosecutor who led the DA’s Domestic Violence Unit.

“You may well have been a participant at least in hearing information about the Epic case,” White told the judge during the hearing. “There is reasonable evidence, reasonable reasons that I question your impartiality. What matters not is the reality of bias but its appearance.”

Stallings said she had no knowledge of the Epic investigation until the charges were filed years after she left the DA’s office.

The DA’s office charged Epic’s co-founders, Ben Harris and David Chaney, in 2022 with racketeering and a litany of financial crimes, accusing the defendants of creating a complex scheme to enrich themselves with millions of public education funds. Harris and Chaney deny ever misusing taxpayer dollars.

The Attorney General’s Office has since taken over prosecution of the case.

Epic’s former chief financial officer, Josh Brock, faces many of the same charges as Harris and Chaney. He has since agreed to testify against the co-founders in exchange for a plea deal that would guarantee him no prison time.

Although more than two years have passed, multiple delays have kept the court proceedings in their early stages.

A weeklong preliminary hearing in March laid out the evidence against Harris and Chaney, but a week wasn’t enough to get through all the witness testimony.

Special judge Jason Glidewell handled the preliminary hearing. He would decide whether prosecutors have established enough probable cause for the case to continue to trial with Stallings, who is Glidewell’s superior.

The preliminary hearing was set to resume in May, but it was stalled again by a motion to disqualify Chaney’s attorney, Gary Wood. Brock’s attorneys said Wood used to represent their client and therefore should be barred from cross-examining him.

Wood denies ever representing Brock.

In an unexpected turn of events, Stallings decided to handle Wood’s disqualification hearing herself, rather than the special judge overseeing the preliminary hearing.

White, who represents Harris, said Stallings’ work history came to light during meetings leading up to Wood’s hearing. He said she should have disclosed the information sooner.

The attempt to force Stallings off the case adds another delay to an already stalled case. It remains unclear when the preliminary hearing will resume or when the request for Wood’s disqualification will be resolved.

White complained Stallings can’t remain unbiased in Wood’s disqualification hearing when her old boss, former Oklahoma County District Attorney David Prater, could be called as a witness.

Prater’s former first assistant, Jimmy Harmon, said there is “zero” basis to remove Stallings and called White’s complaints an attempt at “judge shopping.”

Now the head of the attorney general’s criminal division, Harmon said any information about the Epic investigation stayed between himself and the DA. He said Stallings wouldn’t have known any details because team leaders didn’t talk in front of each other about ongoing, sensitive investigations.

“That’s not the way Mr. Prater ran his office,” Harmon said during Thursday’s court hearing.

White also contended that Harmon revealed details of confidential negotiations between Prater and Wood — information that he says now spoils the judge’s ability to be impartial. The information was disclosed in a witness list Harmon filed for the hearing on Wood’s disqualification.

The witness list states Prater would testify that Wood attempted to negotiate a settlement agreement on behalf of Harris, Chaney and Brock. The settlement, which never ended up happening, would involve the defendants paying “a significant sum up-front in restitution” in exchange for no criminal charges being filed, the witness document states.

The fact that Stallings is now aware of this information is disqualifying and “reeks of bias,” White said.

Prater declined to comment on Stallings’ and Wood’s disqualification proceedings.

“I believe it’s appropriate for any information about the Epic case to come out at future hearings in open court,” he told Oklahoma Voice.

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Oklahoma Voice is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Oklahoma Voice maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Janelle Stecklein for questions: info@oklahomavoice.com. Follow Oklahoma Voice on Facebook and X.

Controversial Oklahoma superintendent claims Chinese communist influence in public schools

OKLAHOMA CITY — Oklahoma’s state superintendent called Chinese influence a “pressing and deeply concerning” issue in American education during a congressional hearing in Washington, D.C.

State Superintendent Ryan Walters spoke to a U.S. House education subcommittee on Tuesday, alleging the Chinese Communist Party has attempted to influence learning in Tulsa Public Schools and other districts through Mandarin language programs.

The Tulsa district has denied receiving any funds from the Chinese government. The district paid for a Chinese language teacher at Booker T. Washington High School to take professional development sessions from a Confucius Classroom Coordination Office at the International Leadership of Texas Charter Schools.

Congressional Democrats said the hearing perpetuated a debunked conspiracy theory and could fuel anti-Asian American bias.

A nonprofit called the Chinese International Education Foundation manages the institute — not the government of China.

Walters and other speakers at the hearing claimed its K-12 language and cultural program, Confucius Classrooms, are part of the Chinese Communist Party’s propaganda arm.

“Through programs such as Confucius Classrooms, we are allowing a hostile foreign anti-democratic government a foothold into our schools,” Walters testified.

Walters also said Tulsa has a “disturbing connection” to the Chinese Communist Party, which he alleged whitewashes China’s history, indoctrinates American students and threatens U.S. national security.

He urged national lawmakers to ban schools from receiving money from hostile foreign governments and from entering into data-sharing agreements. The Oklahoma State Board of Education, which Walters leads, recently ordered all school districts in the state to report any financial contributions from foreign governments.

Republicans on the House panel voiced similar concerns, as did other speakers invited to the hearing — Heritage Foundation senior fellow Mike Gonzalez and Nicole Neily, executive director of Parents Defending Education.

None of Oklahoma’s all-Republican congressional delegation sits on the education subcommittee.

Congressional Democrats, though, dismissed the claims of Chinese influence as unsubstantiated.

Rep. Suzanne Bonamici, D-Oregon, noted an eight-month investigation by a Senate committee already looked into the Confucius Institute and found no threats to national security nor school curricula.

Bonamici panned the hearing as an attempt by the Republican majority to “inject culture wars and partisan politics into our public schools in a way that can fuel anti-Asian American bias.”

In a pointed line of questioning “for consistency,” Rep. Raul M. Grijalva, D-Arizona, asked Walters whether the oil and gas industry should dictate climate change curriculum, hinting it does so through PragerU, a media entity whose pro-America videos the state superintendent encouraged Oklahoma schools to use.

“These are American companies that are a benefit to the American economy, so I don’t see any issue with them having influence on our education system,” Walters responded.

Another invited speaker, Gisela Perez Kusakawa, encouraged the subcommittee to exercise caution when crafting laws and rhetoric on China.

Kusakawa, executive director of the Asian American Scholar Forum, said Asian Americans and immigrants suffer discrimination when the country’s leaders espouse anti-China language.

“For many of them, they are not differentiated between this foreign government and who they are here,” Kusakawa said. “I really ask that folks consider that even though there are real, genuine threats (from the Chinese government), there is also a real, genuine backlash that the Asian American and immigrant community faces, and this means that we have a responsibility to think on how we can have a nuanced approach moving forward.”

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