Hello friends.
Our post today was slightly delayed.
I spent most of my afternoon in an attorney’s office yesterday.
Perfect place to be too.
As I was sitting there, my phone was blowing up with Convicted Felon Tim Mitts’s latest round of slopaganda about yours truly.
Before you ask, yes.
We informed Pamela Lee’s attorney, because Tim Mitts doesn’t actually own a goddamn thing and Ms. Lee’s name is on all of his LLCs as the owner, that if the slopaganda continues, we’ll sue her to get to him.
Pictured Above: Man, if you’re going to show me bending over doing anything, get my ass in there. My ass looks great in jeans.
Also, I can’t lift anything over fifteen pounds because of massive heart surgery about a decade ago. So … Yeah. I ain’t lifting shit, brother. Let alone a bunch of batteries to throw into a lake.
(Sadly, at least one person thought this image was real. Look at the comments. Although it’s less sad when you consider, because someone thought it was real, I can now help demonstrate reputational harm to a judge.)
How to Unmask Anonymous Facebook Trolls
God Bless that man because he truly is the gift that keeps on giving.
We have a section in my new book — which you can read here for free — about how to deal with online creeps, freaks, and weirdos.
One of those steps involves going to New York State Small Claims Court for assistance in unmasking “anonymous” Facebook accounts.
There is actually something happening right now, involving South Blooming Grove, that might be the example I wind up sharing with readers.
I can’t say more than that until the lawsuit is filed. Because if that person knows it’s coming, they’ll stop posting.
I can say, if you are in any of the local Blooming Grove community groups, you’ve absolutely seen this person.
I can also say that the person in this potential lawsuit is not Mitts. It’s also not Jay Westerveld, the other local loser who wants desperately to be the Main Character on Facebook.
But.
If that lawsuit doesn’t happen, or work out for whatever reason—using New York State Small Claims Court to unmask Facebook accounts can be done, but it’s easier said than done—I can totally use this alcoholic, brain dead limp dick half-man instead for demonstration purposes to readers of my book. (Mitts. I mean. I don’t know if any of that is true for Westerveld other than he seems to suffer from the same mental impairment Mitts does.)
After all, Mitts freely published this stuff himself, not understanding that:
1. Reporters are not public figures.
2. AI Image and false statements knowingly posted by an individual meets the legal threshold for libel. (The Facebook Group Admin is also liable for letting this stuff get posted, so we’ve alerted the person running Monroe Matters Unfiltered also.)
3. We can demonstrate “actual malice” to a judge because the slopaganda started right after we exposed Mitt’s latest scam to sue the Town for millions, while making Monroe Taxpayers foot the bill for it.
Unlike with the South Blooming Grove person that’s about to be sued, with the above Facebook posts, we know it’s Mitts because, in the past, he’s demonstrated a weird obsession with posting photos of me either near naked or in high school when I was 15.
(After we sent a cease and desist letter to his attorney early yesterday evening, he also made a follow-up post with him as the target, likely figuring no one would know it’s him if he targeted himself. Unfortunately for this convicted felon, we’re smarter than he is.)
So while I can factually tell you Timothy J. Mitts is a convicted felon who went to prison for defrauding not only the federal government but his clients as well, I can only assume and state that it’s my opinion that this public figure may also be a sex offender with pedophilic tendencies. If you’ve got kids in high school, I’d say to keep them away from that man. I mean, how can you look at this image he made and not imagine this weird ass old man writing stuff like “Near naked BJ Mendelson being shoved in locker by high school boys.”
(Mitts is a public figure having recently run for Monroe Town Supervisor in 2025, and then in the year prior, running for State Senate as the Conservative Party candidate in 2024. Whether or not yours truly is a public figure is debatable. I may qualify. I may not. I’d argue I was one, but am no longer, given that my full time job is taking care of three disable adults, and that The Monroe Gazette barely qualifies as a job because of how little money it makes.)
I laughed, by the way, when I saw this.
For starters, my legs look great here. Clearly AI BJ has been hitting the gym.
Although I’m also weirdly smooth, which as a Jew, I can tell you is not the case. We are hairy fucking people.
So maybe Mitts put in something like “Hairless Jew, hot, pink bra, pushed into locker” for all we know. Maybe it’s his kink? I don’t know. I don’t want to kink shame anyone.
Alas, pink isn’t my color. I’m more of a purple guy.
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None of this has anything to do with why this post was late today.
The post is late because I am reading all of the Town of Monroe’s documents concerning 232 Seven Springs Mountain Road LLC, which would represent Joel Stern’s first encroachment from South Blooming Grove into Town of Monroe business.
Yesterday evening, I also received a major document dump from Orange County concerning Al Fusco Jr. and Fusco Engineering. (See above for just one, of many, gems in that batch.)
These .pdfs were sent to me in multiple documents.
So I wasn’t able to upload everything (yet) to one place.
I’ll do my best to get these online for residents to take a look act.
I am going to need some time to review all of these. If you see a short post tomorrow and/or Friday, that’s why.
That Brings Us To Walden
The other day, I briefly mentioned FOIL requests and then I kind of blew by them because we’ve covered them ad nauseam here on The Monroe Gazette. But it’s been a minute since we posted a FOIL Appeal.
The thing that sucks about FOIL is that it’s slow. For example, our massive FOIL sent to the Village of Monroe, which would reveal wrong doing on the part of Alex Melchiorrie, current mayor and soon to be former Blooming Grove Police Chief was received on August 9th.
If we’re being generous, both because the FOIL is huge and the Village failed to give us a potential date when a response would be provided, that puts us at September 18th, 2026 for when the Village of Monroe has to respond to our request.
Not necessarily provide the files. They just need to give us an update on what records they have and when we can expect them to be provided.
From there, depending on what they would do, and if we appeal, it would be another ten business days for the Village to respond to the appeal, putting us at October 1st.
As of October 1st, if the Village of Monroe doesn’t properly provide the information we’ve requested, we’d then have to sue them, which we will because we know exactly what documents to look for and we also know they exist.
So I want to caution Monroe Village residents that we have documents that we think Alex Melchiorrie is going to try to hide, and we’re going to sue him to force him to turn those documents over if he tries to pull a fast one. We don’t want to sue the Village. We’re going to do everything we can to get these files. But if Melchiorrie doesn’t cooperate, we want you to know there’s a legal bill coming and the Mayor is responsible for it.
But as you can see, we’re talking months here.
Ditto for FOIA requests concerning the Army Corps. of Engineers and the EPA as it relates to Round Lake.
It’s going to be a while.
I’m sorry.
If you want FOIL to go faster, demand Skoufis, Brabenec, and Maher fix it. Skoufis likes to pretend he cares about FOIL, but anyone knowledgeable about FOIL will tell you Skoufis’s bills look good on paper and do NOTHING in reality.
This stuff takes forever. And the bad guys know that. So just an FYI if you see or hear Alex Melchiorrie, for example, mumble about things being said about him online that aren’t true. (You can see Melchiorrie mumble this during last night’s Village Board meeting. More on that meeting soon.)
Melchiorrie is going to play that game as long as he can until the documents come out. Just like his friend, Tony Cardone, who is the subject of the Walden FOIL I’m going to show you.
An Example FOIL
Since It’s been a minute, here is a copy of our FOIL to the Village of Walden concerning Tony Cardone’s hiring as the “Interim Village Manager” sent on June 12th. You can use this format for yourself, just swapping out the numbered items for whatever you’re asking for, and keeping the rest of the email the same.
6.12.26
To: FOIL Records Access Officer
Via email: clerk@villageofwaldenny.gov ←-Put the email here of the Clerk you’re FOIL’ing.
RE: Freedom of Information Law Request
Dear Mrs. Valdez,
The following records are hereby requested pursuant to the New York State Freedom of Information Law (Public Officers Law §§ 84-90):
All records (emails, files, notes, and other misc.) concerning Tony Cardone. Suggested keyword search: Tony Cardone
All human resources related files, notes, emails, and other misc. and errata concerning the hiring of Tony Cardone.
If any of the requested records are withheld or redacted, in whole or in part, please specify with particularity the statutory basis for each such claimed exemption and the reasons why each such record or portion thereof is claimed to be exempt from disclosure.
Please provide electronic copies of the requested records via email attachment.
We are also requesting a signed POL89(3)(a) certification to accompany this request and an explanation from your office to describe, in detail, how you define a “diligent search” and what steps were taken to search for these records.
We kindly ask that you reply to this email to confirm receipt.
Thank you for your time and attention. Counsel has been copied on this email for their records.
In response to our FOIL, the Village of Walden gave us Tony Cardone’s resume, with the section about his time as a manager of the Hallmark store in the Village of Monroe blacked out.
(The business eventually went bankrupt, just like how Tony Cardone, Dorey Houle, and Sal Scancarello helped bankrupt the Town of Monroe. Because of them, your taxes need to go up by ~ 30% just to fix the damage they did.)
The Village did not provide us anything else. So we sent the following appeal to the Village Clerk.
You should know that the reason I wanted to show you Tim Mitt’s latest round of slop in this post was to demonstrate how Fox News addled Grandpas use AI.
But there are specific use cases where AI can be useful.
For example, I put the Walden response letter through Claude Haiku and Duck.Ai, and then ran that response by our attorney to make sure Claude wasn’t making anything up (because you should never, ever, trust AI results on their own, or AI search snippets that Google shows you.)
Once we verified that Claude was legally correct, and after some feedback from the attorney, we sent this appeal:
An Example FOIL Appeal
August 18th, 2026
Mayor Pearson
Mayor and/or FOIL Executive Records Access Officer
Village of Walden
1 Muncipal Square Walden, NY, 12586
Re: FOIL Appeal - Improper Redactions in the Village’s August 17th, 2026 Partial Production for FOIL: “Tony Cardone” request dated June 12th 2026
Dear Mayor Pearson
I appeal, pursuant to Public Officers Law § 89(4)(a), the Village’s August 17th, 2026 determination and partial response to my FOIL request (” Tony Cardone“) on the following grounds:
1.Insufficient Explanation for Withholding Records:
New York Public Officers Law § 89(4)(e) requires agencies to provide “a detailed explanation of the legal basis and factual justification” for each withholding.
Instead of providing all records requested, with key information redacted with the legal rationale for each such redaction, the Village’s response is conclusory—it simply states that records “constitute intra-agency materials not otherwise subject to disclosure under FOIL” without explaining:
- Why these specific communications qualify as deliberative or pre-decisional
- What decision was pending when these emails were exchanged
- Whether the materials contain factual information (which must be disclosed even if embedded in exempt deliberations)
- What the relationship is between these materials and any final agency action
2.Misapplication of the Intra-Agency Materials Exemption
The intra-agency exemption (§ 87(2)(g)) protects deliberative materials, but it does not protect:
-Working Law Exception
If these emails were actually relied upon as the basis for final agency action by the Village to hire Mr. Cardone, for example, they must be disclosed. The Village must prove these records remain deliberative and haven’t become the basis of final decisions. It has not done so.
-Factual Information
Even if communications are otherwise protected, any factual information embedded within them must be segregated and released. The Village appears to have withheld 11 entire emails without segregating disclosable facts.
Under § 89(4)(b), agencies must separate and disclose segregable, non-exempt portions of documents. The Village has not indicated whether it:
- Reviewed each email for factual content that could be released
- Attempted to redact only exempt portions
- Considered partial disclosure
The blanket withholding of entire emails suggests inadequate segregation.
-Borderline Intra-Agency Status
Communications between the Mayor and elected Village Trustees in 5 of these emails present a closer question than typical internal deliberations. Depending on the Trustees’ roles and the nature of the communications, these may not qualify as traditional “intra-agency” materials. However, since the Village didn’t bother to disclose any of the withheld records identified, we can’t determine if this is the case, making in our opinion the FOIL response from the Village deficient.
Finally, for the materials redacted under privacy grounds (§ 87(2)(b) it’s not clear if the Village did any of the following:
- Did the agency properly balanced privacy interests against the public’s right to know?
In this case, Tony Cardone is a former Town of Monroe Supervisor, for nearly a decade, and constitutes a public figure who made critical decisions impacting thousands of residents and managing millions of dollars of state and municipal funds going back to 2017 in his capacity as a Town Board member.
[Reader note, the below paragraph explains one of two reasons why we bothered asking for this stuff in the first place:]
During his tenure as the Walden Village Manager this Summer, Cardone appeared at Town of Monroe meetings to repeatedly, and factually, lie to Monroe residents about his track record while in office. This includes false statements, for example, concerning the Town’s negotiations with the Village of Monroe police department, and his rationale for cutting the budget after his election defeat in November of 2025.
We believe Tony Cardone is a public figure, his recent actions WHILE ACTING AS INTERIM VILLAGE MANAGER OF Walden are of public interest to both taxpayers in Walden and the Town of Monroe, and that he is not subject to redactions made on privacy grounds.
For reference, the following 11 items were withheld from our FOIL request:
Two emails dated May 8, 2026, from Mayor Pearson to the Village Trustees.
One email dated May 10, 2026, from Mayor Pearson to the Village Trustees.
Three emails dated May 10, 2026, from Trustee Hall to Mayor Pearson.
Two emails dated May 10, 2026, from Mayor Pearson to Trustee Hall.
Two emails dated July 20, 2026, from Mayor Pearson to the Board of Trustees.
One email dated July 20, 2026, from Lynn Thompson to the Board of Trustees.
For the above reasons, the August 17th, 2026 partial production should be deemed insufficient and in violation of FOIL and the Village should be directed immediately produce a complete and unredacted response to my request.
Pursuant to Public Officers Law § 89(4)(a), a written determination of this appeal is required within ten business days, i.e., by close of business on September 1st, 2026.
[Reader Note: Below is the second reason why we requested these records.]
We’ll note that the Village has not replied to requests for comment explaining the rationale for hiring Tony Cardone given the numerous public controversies he’s engaged with, and the Village has not responded to request for comment concerning it’s alleged hiring of Tony Cardone’s best friend, Kathryn Luciani, to be the new Village of Walden Manager.
Please be mindful of the grounds we are using here for appeal as it relates to our second FOIL request, currently before the Village, involving Kathryn Luciani, the former controversial Supervisor of Woodbury.
We encourage you to consult with legal counsel at your soonest opportunity.
Thank you.
We’ll let you know what, if anything, the Village of Walden does in the next ten business days.
As far as Mitts goes, if you see that weird vile shit, feel free to report it to the Monroe Matters Unfiltered Group Admin (he’s legally liable for Mitt’s stuff by allowing it to be published in his group) and send me screenshots to bj@monroegazette.com
We’re collecting all of them for the inevitable lawsuit.
P.S. I’m pretty sure Tim Mitts wants to fuck me. Here’s his latest post.
