Well hey, it’s Friday. I usually try to do these in the morning and was not successful today. But I wanted to at least close out the week with something fun or at least something that you may laugh at that is more annoying for a reporter to deal with than anything else, but I find it entertaining. So about a decade ago, in fact, on December 20th, 2015, Jay Westerveld we’ll get to him in a second, proposed a monument in Sugarloaf for a state trooper that was murdered.
His name was William V. McDonough.
I won’t go into the whole thing, but it happened … my family moved here in the 80s. So it happened a decade before we even got here. But Officer McDonough is memorialized both in Monroe and Middletown, and believe in another place as well. And Mr. Westerveld, as he wants to do about a decade ago, started pushing for some kind of monument or memorial in Sugarloaf for Officer McDonough.
Here’s the thing, both a decade ago and recently, if you read this week’s edition of The Photo News, Mr. Westerveld has not talked to the family of Officer McDonough. He has not obeyed their wishes that they do not want a memorial of any kind for Officer McDonough. They don’t want to commemorate where he was murdered, essentially.
And yet, because Mr. Westerveld wants it … Here we are talking about, so what’s going on?
Well, some of you remember back in September of 2024, we started an investigation into Mr. Jay Westerveld. So there’s like a litany of people who approached us that said that he was bullying them, that he’s made racist comments. We were told that he made racist comments towards the Chester Conservation Advisory Chair. We were told that he was bullying and harassing Riverkeeper. We were told that Mr. Westerveld was bullying and harassing Sustainable Warwick. We were told that he was bullying and harassing the actual Sugarloaf historical society and on and on and on and … like there is a laundry list of people that that wrote to us and said “What the fuck” and “this guy is an asshole. Can you say something?” Can you write about it?”
So we started digging around and in September 2024 we made a request to Mr. Westveld. He claims to be like in charge of all these different organizations
And so what we did was, under federal law, if you run a not-for-profit and someone says to you, I would like to see the last three years of your Form 990s, under federal law, they have to give that to you. Otherwise, you’re in a lot of trouble. And it raises questions of whether or not you are actually running a not-for-profit. Mr. Westerveld in those two years, has never, never turned over any documentation ever to show us his Form 990s, the Articles of Incorporation, the meeting agendas, the board minutes. Nothing.
We’ve tried to find websites for some of these different organizations. They don’t exist. The one that he does use most often, which he calls the Sugarloaf Historical Society, which is not the actual official historical foundation that protects and preserves the memory of Sugarloaf and all the wonderful things that have happened there. He’s just sort of created like his own thing, essentially. That is the one that is incorporated, if you go looking, but...
Again, we asked for the Form 990s. So like he’s filing something to the IRS, but he has not provided the documentation publicly for reviews, which is incredibly sketchy. We looked into the other claims involving the racist comments, you know, the poor behavior at meetings, throwing temper tantrums. Those have all been independently confirmed by multiple sources, but we don’t have like a smoking gun. (Meaning, there’s no recording to share of this behavior.)
We do have this though …
And if you’re looking at the screen, what you see right now is Mr. Westerveld promoting an anti-Semitic conspiracy about yours truly, wherein he’s saying that I filed for bankruptcy and I received big bags of money from the Satmar.
So you can see, like, he’s implying that the Monroe Gazette represents some kind of psyop that’s funded by “them”, by the Satmar by the Jews, which is anti-Semitic. So I can say I have factual evidence of Jay Westerveld spreading anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.
His statements are factually inaccurate. They’re libelous, and we were ready to take him to court. We had a number of lawyers review Mr. Westerveld’s comments as well as talk to the people that he has attacked.
Factually, we can say that he’s a bully.
What we found in our review of his finances was that he does not have any assets. Kind of interesting, right? This guy has all these not-for-profit organizations and all these different groups that he claims to be running. He has not turned over his Form 990. And wouldn’t you know it, we couldn’t find any real assets either.
So the question the lawyers were like was, well, what do you sue him for if he owns nothing or if he’s like hiding his money somewhere? And so we started to do some more digging and we noticed that Mr. Westerveld for years was telling people that he was a guest lecturer at West Point and at Columbia University.
The Columbia University at West Point things are half truths at best, depending on how generous you want to be. I think they’re completely fraudulent. That’s my opinion. I taught once, for example, I did a guest lecturer once at SUNY Potsdam and I’ve given guest lectures at other institutions, including Marist College and Alfred State and down at NYU and down at Columbia University at their J-school. Like I’ve given guest lectures all over the fucking place. Never once have I ever said that I was a continuing lecturer at any of those institutions.
But for years, Mr. Westerveld and we’re gonna put up a copy here on screen so you can take a look at it, has presented a bio to the public saying, you know, that he’s a regular guest lecturer.
What we were able to find is that Mr. Westerveld one time provided a walking tour at West Point and one time, again, as far as we can tell, offered a guest lecture at an adult extension school that linked to Columbia University.
So he was not a guest lecturer at Columbia University. He gave one lecture, again, as far as we can tell, at Columbia University’s extension school one time over a decade ago. And yet that hasn’t stopped him from repeatedly telling people that he’s a guest lecturer at these two institutions.
So we reached out to Columbia University and West Point for comment. Both of them said, “we can’t verify that this guy ever taught here.” We talked to the people at West Point off the record who adamantly said, you know, if this guy’s running around saying he’s giving guest lectures at West Point, that’s a problem.
So I tell you all this because...
There’s an article in the Photo-News this weekend and in the Chronicle and in the Warwick Advertiser. And I don’t know where else Jeanne Strauss put it. We could talk about the The Photo-News at length some other time, but there is a article or there is a letter to the editor in the The Photo-News where Mr. Westerfeld did not use his name. And I kind of wonder if that happened because we wrote to Jeanne Strauss and we showed Jeanne Strauss the anti-Semitic comments that were factually inaccurate that were posted and spread by Jay Westerfeld and some of his fake accounts that we’ve been made aware of.
And so we said to her, you are a platforming a Nazi, essentially. Like this anti-Semitic conspiracy is virulent You’re implying that there’s like some Jewish conspiracy involving a Jewish reporter and the Satmar.
So why do you, we said to Strauss why do you continue to platform a Nazi essentially? So this morning, if you look at the photo news, which is where I saw it, there is a letter on behalf of the Board of Directors of the Sugar Loaf Historical Society.
We don’t know who those board of directors are as far as we know. It’s just Jay Westerveld. He did not put his name. He also claims that he’s essentially being derailed in some way that we should have a monument in Sugar Loaf for Officer McDonough, despite the fact the family has said, no, we do not want it. We do not want it.
This man, this con man, and I have no problem saying to you right now. And Mr. Westerveld, I know you’ll watch this at some point. Feel free to sue me. Because I believe that J. Westerveld is an anti-Semite and a con man, and I got the receipts. And if he wants to use the memory of a brave man who served our community and was murdered in the line of duty, well, I think that just speaks volumes about him.
Any chance that I get to take a shot at a con man and anti-semite Jay Westerveld, I will do it because I believe these people are dangers to the community and they’re vectors of disinformation and misinformation. And in the case of Mr. Westerveld, there is all, like I said, all litany of groups and people who have been bullied by him, who have been mischaracterized by him, who have been on the receiving end of letters to the editor that Jeanne Strauss has published without fact checking.
The one that ran this weekend is another example of something that was not fact-checked and probably should have been fact-checked, but wasn’t. So I just think it’s important to call these things out.
One other fun thing about Mr. Westworld, he’s tried to make himself a public figure. He claims that he invented the term greenwashing. There’s no evidence of that. He might have used it once in an essay that was published back in 1983, but it’s not clear how many people actually saw that essay. What is clear, however, is that he’s certainly taking credit for creating the word, greenwashing, but there’s no peer-reviewed research anywhere that he’s ever published. And so this claim that he’s an environmental expert does not hold much water. (I don’t dispute that he’s done work in the field, but based on his online behavior, I am skeptical of his overall expertise.)
In fact, one of the organizations that I can factually say he started shit with is Riverkeeper. And if you’re starting a fight with, I mean ... Riverkeeper isn’t perfect.
But if you’re starting shit with Riverkeeper, in this area, if you know the history, like if you know the environmental history of Southern Orange County involving Cornwall and Cornwall on the Hudson and the plant that they wanted to put there, and the huge battle that took place, which led to, I don’t know if it was the formation of Riverkeeper, but it was one of the early significant battles that Riverkeeper waged on behalf of this community. So if you’re talking shit about Riverkeeper, I mean, that says a lot about you. (For more on Riverkeeper’s founding and action in Cornwall), see the recent documentary, “The Keeper”)
So, Jay Westerveld is a con man and anti-Semite. I will say that every single day at every opportunity. He’s free to sue us because if he does, we get to depose him. And that also means that we get to talk to everyone that he’s ever bullied and we get to bring them to court as well. And believe me, these people have wanted a day in court with Mr. Westerveld.
So, please bring it Jay.
I hope you all have a great weekend. I know it was a rough week. Things are very challenging in the world right now.
I was hoping this ridiculous story might bring you some entertainment or amusement. I don’t know if it did. It might have pissed you off if anything else. And so, you know, I just want you to keep an eye out for organizations and people like this because we need fact checkers and we need people to stand up and say, that’s misinformation, that’s disinformation. And so in the case of Mr. Westerveld and his … to me, it’s grave robbing. Honestly, like I feel like it’s a local anti-Semite doing some grave robbing to continue his quest to remain relevant.
Leave this trooper alone. Leave his family alone. This has been some kind of like sick quest of his for over a decade now. We’re tired of it. We’re tired of the bullying. We’re tired of misinformation. And from now on, every single time his head comes out of the sand, we’re gonna be there to smack him back down.
I’ll catch you on Monday.
