No Badge, No Case, No Truth: How a Rumor Became a Weapon
At Sullivan’s Legacy, we have a vested interest in local politics. As a registered Independent Expenditure Committee, we raise and spend money to support local leaders we believe in. Since we’ve started, we’ve fought alongside several campaigns, including Marc Molinaro and Lou Ingrassia, and we were even invited as special guests to Trump’s Nassau and Madison Square Garden rallies in 2024 (Not bad for just some local organization, right?).
So when the FBI rumors started circulating, it raised the real concern that we might have to run a campaign against an incumbent sheriff who appeared unaligned with our values.
We first saw the rumors on Facebook around the end of 2024. They were mostly cryptic comments, but loud enough for Tim Dymond, who launched his campaign incorporating these rumors in January. So, we did what any responsible organization would do: we filed a Freedom of Information/Privacy Act (FOIPA) request with the FBI in January for documents related to an investigation and went public with our findings.
Then came the article.
The River Reporter published a conveniently timed piece citing testimony from Jack Harb’s disciplinary hearing, notably three days after we brought our FOIPA findings to the public at the county legislature. Tim Dymond posted it on February 10th, and within hours, his surrogates were using it as “proof” the FBI rumors were true.
If this tactic seems familiar, it’s the same strategy we saw during the “Russia Collusion Hoax” against Trump, and what people in the political industry call “circular reporting”: Person A makes a claim, Person B reports on the claim, and Person A then circulates it as true.
While The River Reporter reported about an FBI investigation our own research and reading of the testimony found a whole new set of facts.
Here’s some of what we identified which had gone previously unreported:
Mr. Slavik, whose testimony served as the key source of the claim, testified that there was an active FBI investigation: “Yes, there is.” (Page 208, Line 5), yet moments later, admitted he had no confirmation it existed: “I believe it’s ongoing. I’m not exactly sure. They won't discuss that with me.” (Page 208, Line 6-10).
Slavik repeatedly claimed that he was “cooperating with the FBI” for over two years, but offered no written agreement, cooperation paperwork, or liability protections (e.g. proffer agreement) that would accompany involvement with an FBI investigation. His “cooperating” claim remains entirely unsupported in the transcripts.
Despite directly naming an FBI agent (P. 196, L.14-19), Slavik provided no documentation to support any interaction, and no part of his testimony was sealed, redacted, or challenged by federal authorities.
Jack Harb explicitly stated he had no direct knowledge of any investigation (P. 182, L. 4-6), and that he only learned about it from Slavik and Chief Muthig. (P. 181-182, L. 16-2, 4-6). Chief Muthig never testified.
Both the Sheriff’s Office attorney and the hearing officer (essentially the judge) questioned the relevance of testimony and why Slavik was testifying about the FBI, noting it had no relevance to Harb (P.206, L 6-15).
Slavik stated that he attempted to take internal documents from the Sheriff’s Office to give to the FBI, saying “I believe I needed actual proof.” (P. 204, L. 20-25). Once he lost access, he asked Harb to retrieve the documents for him: “I was basically kicked out of the office prior to obtaining it. And I asked Jack Harb to finish what I started. My intent was to give it to the FBI.” (P. 199-200, L. 22-11). Meanwhile, the FBI has full subpoena and warrant authority to seize evidence directly.
Despite all this, and while Tim was running victory laps with the article, Sullivan’s Legacy submitted a second, more detailed FOIPA request, based directly on these new claims. We asked for all documentation spanning as far back as 2017: criminal database results, FD-302s, FD-209s, proffer agreements, and even preliminary investigation records (used when there’s not enough to justify an investigation). The result was the same: “… unable to identify records subject to the FOIPA.”
But this time, we included one crucial line:
“This request serves to verify the validity of Paul Slavik, who publicly stated and testified in a Section 75 hearing under oath that he is a cooperating witness to an investigation into the department.”
Why this matters: while Tim argues that the FBI would never confirm or deny the existence of an investigation, they absolutely would move to protect it.
It has now been three months since our request, and almost a full year since the hearing, and there’s been no evidence the FBI has taken any steps to corroborate or shield any investigation. As of June 6th, the transcripts cited by the River Reporter remain unsealed, unredacted, and unchallenged, nor has the FBI taken any steps to stop Tim from campaigning on their investigation. As recent as June, Tim mailed every Republican voter claiming, without proof, that the FBI was investigating the Sheriff’s Office.
This is why we confidently filed our ethics complaint against Tim with the Board of Elections in May.
As I pieced all of this together, it became clear to me that Tim has no actual knowledge of an investigation. Tim’s a retired senior investigator who’s spoken publicly about testifying on high-profile drug cases, worked complex investigations, and even said he worked with the FBI on his interview with Catskill News Talk. If that’s true, then he absolutely knows that the FBI would never allow a civilian to testify openly and without approval, they would intervene to protect their case, and absolutely would never allow a political opponent to jeopardize their investigation for a cheap win.
I’m also confident Tim knows the difference between direct and hearsay testimony. In his grand speech about “corruption” in front of the legislature, he stated that he heard this testimony personally. So he had to have heard contradictions himself, yet still pushed them as truth. Why? Because I think he knew Mike Schiff couldn’t defend himself against an accusation that never had to be proven.
This was designed to be a political weapon from the start - built on the “Burden of Proof” fallacy, known as a “Kafka Trap”. The goal is to trap Mike Schiff in a double bind: deny it, and he’s accused of a cover up; acknowledge it, and he looks guilty. In both cases, denial becomes evidence. All that needed to happen was to get these claims legitimized in public testimony.
As I said in February, the evidence still overwhelmingly shows that there was no investigation from the FBI. No FOIPA documents. No sealed testimony. No federal objections. Nothing. And most telling— no one but Tim seems to be allowed to talk about it with certainty. Challenge the rumor, and you’re met with the same dodge Tim gave Catskill News Talk: “they’re not going to tell you… until they tell you”. But I doubt the FBI is too secretive to confirm or deny anything, but not secretive enough to stop Tim from jeopardizing it.
This was never about an FBI investigation. This was about building a political weapon no one could fight. That’s not “new leadership”, that’s political thuggery. We have an obligation to reject this kind of “leadership” at the ballot box.
In the interest of transparency, all documents are available at www.sullivanslegacy.com/fbi.
Only one person actually talked the FBI.
(Founder, Nate Henderson, outside the J. Edger Hoover Building)
