Documents reveal details of Wakulla Commissioner Mike Kemp's arrest

Wakulla County Commissioner Mike Kemp was so eager to expose an anonymous Facebook “troll” who criticized him as he was locked in a tight re-election race that he became the alleged “keystone” in a clumsy plot that turned into a “criminal conspiracy.”

As the case began to unravel, he tried to cover it up with the help of two other people involved in the scheme, according to reports from the Wakulla County Sheriff’s Office.

Now, Kemp, who lost his re-election bid last month, and his two co-defendants, Donald Newsome, a WCSO deputy, and Rebeccah “Becky” Whaley, a longtime friend of Kemp’s who ran the Wakulla Citizens Facebook page for years, are facing criminal charges — all stemming from an incident that began months ago with a cyberbullying complaint.

The three men were arrested Friday, booked into the Wakulla County Jail and released shortly after on their own recognizance. Kemp and Whaley were arrested for using personal information through public records for the purpose of harassment, while Newsome was arrested for accessing a computer device beyond authorized limits, all third-degree felonies. Kemp also faces a more serious charge of witness tampering, a second-degree felony.

A Quest to Unmask “Thunder Lightening,” an Anonymous Internet Troll

Their arrests have become the talk of Crawfordville and elsewhere in the coastal county, which has a long history of community divisions over growth and development, not to mention alleged political shenanigans and conspiracy theories.

“This information was kept secret until after the election,” one person wrote on the Wakulla Citizens page, the very site at the heart of the WCSO investigation. “How convenient.”

WCSO Col. Chuck Whaley said in an interview Wednesday that election-year politics did not impact the investigation. Kemp, first elected in 2020, lost to Valerie Russell in the Aug. 20 primary.

On Wednesday, the sheriff’s office released more than 100 pages of documents in the case, including the incident report, interviews with the defendants and others involved in the case and phone records that it said showed a “criminal conspiracy” between Kemp and Whaley.

The documents detail how the two men allegedly worked together to try to expose the identity of an anonymous Facebook user named “Thunder Lightening,” who criticized Kemp and others, including Wakulla County Commissioner Ralph Thomas, in posts on the citizens’ page.

“Thunder Lightening,” described by one investigator as an internet troll, was a man who described himself as a “lesbian woman of color” and whose profile picture included an “Ex-Men” logo with photos of transgender people, “apparently to mock them,” according to reports.

Sheriff’s office records also indicate that Kemp tricked Newsome into helping him obtain what he thought was the real name “Thunder Lightening,” but it turned out to be someone else, whom Whaley falsely “exposed” on his Facebook page.

“Commissioner Kemp was the linchpin of this entire enterprise,” the WCSO arrest report states. “When Commissioner Kemp later realized the risk he was taking, he attempted to cover it up.”

Victim’s wife did not understand why the commissioner was involved in ‘petty’ fights on the Internet

The investigation that ultimately led to Kemp and one of the sheriff’s office deputies began on May 7, after a victim came forward to report a cyberbullying incident involving Whaley.

The victim, a relatively new Wakulla County resident, told a WCSO deputy that Whaley accused him of being “Thunder Lightning” on his Facebook page and disclosed “sensitive” information about him, including his voter registration card, which listed his name, address and date of birth, among other things.

When the complaint was received, Kemp’s truck was captured on the deputy’s body camera as it drove past the victim’s home.

The MP wrote in his report that “further investigation” revealed that neither the victim nor her family had been the victims of “any crime” related to Whaley’s position and that the victim’s details “appear to be public information.”

The case was closed. But six days later, it was reactivated after the victim went to the sheriff’s office and asked to speak to a detective. The victim spoke to Deputy Christopher Ormerod, who described him in his report as “extremely hesitant to talk to me” and that he “was paranoid about who he could trust.”

The victim described and at one point provided a screenshot of Whaley’s post on the Wakulla Citizens Facebook page.

“I present to you Thunder Lightening from the public record, registered to vote in 2022 according to the records and data shows he has never voted!” Whaley wrote. “Show your face and own your truth. You still have time to register to run for office!”

The victim told Ormerod he had not even heard of “Thunder Lightning” until Whaley’s Facebook post and said he suspected Kemp had given Whaley his voter registration card. The victim noted that “Thunder Lightning” was critical of Kemp and supportive of his opponent Russell on Facebook.

“(The victim) stated that Ms. Whaley’s purpose in trying to expose the owner of “Thunder Lightening” was to embarrass that person, but she targeted the wrong person.”

The victim’s wife later said she was sorry for involving the sheriff’s office but was “at her wit’s end.” She said her husband had moved to Florida from Illinois “to escape the liberal politics of that state” and that they were “terrified” after being targeted online.

“(The victim’s wife) explained that until this incident, they did not even know who Ms. Whaley or Commissioner Kemp were,” the report states. “(She) … did not understand why Commissioner Kemp would get involved in such petty online arguments. (She) said she thought it was unbecoming of a sitting county commissioner.”

The investigation revealed that another county commissioner had sought out the victim’s voting information and passed it on to Kemp.

According to WCSO reports, the victim believed Whaley and others had mistaken him for the real “Thunder Lightning” because of two separate incidents involving white trucks, one involving him and the other involving the anonymous Facebook commenter.

On March 28, the victim called the sheriff’s office to report that a white box truck had run him off the road on Highway 319. Two days later, “Thunder Lightening” posted a photo on Facebook of another white truck, a pickup truck, that had nearly hit his wife in a grocery store parking lot.

Investigators eventually confirmed the victim’s theory. According to their reports, Kemp, a former long-serving major in the sheriff’s department, “misleadingly informed” Deputy Newsome that he was “investigating a citizen’s complaint” and asked him to help him obtain the name of a person involved in an incident involving a white truck. Newsome, who had responded to the scene of the Highway 319 incident, gave him the victim’s name.

The investigation also determined that Kemp had asked a colleague, Wakulla County Commissioner Ralph Thomas, to look up the person’s voter information. On April 28, Thomas used a subscription service called webElect to obtain the victim’s voting records and forwarded them to Kemp.

Col. Chuck Whaley, who said he may be a distant relative of Whaley but does not know her, told the Democrat Thursday that there was “no evidence” that Thomas knew the victim’s information would be passed to Whaley for dissemination.

Thomas also told the Democrat on Thursday that he did nothing wrong and even warned Kemp that he might not have the right person.

“The only thing I can say is that ‘Thunder and Lightning’ has certainly made all sorts of comments,” Thomas said. “It’s not unusual that when someone makes comments under an anonymous name, you wonder who it is and you try to figure out who it is.”

Kemp, who was elected to the Wakulla County Commission in 2020, denied any wrongdoing in a statement to the Wakulla News. His attorney, Stephen Webster of Tallahassee, declined to comment for this article.

Kemp, who agreed to an interview with investigators, was “extremely dishonest” in her answers, according to WCSO reports. Investigators wrote that at one point, as the scheme was unraveling, Kemp told Whaley that she would be the only one to fall.

“Commissioner Kemp even had the gall to suggest that his political opponents were somehow involved, completely ignoring his own outrageous personal conduct,” a report said. “Commissioner Kemp showed no real remorse for his actions and showed real gall to Ms. Whaley when he informed her that she was going to prison, which he was not.”

The sheriff’s office says the crimes would not have happened without the help of the deputy sheriff

Sheriff’s office reports show the victim’s wife contacted Whaley on the night of May 7 after he posted their personal information on Facebook and asked him to remove it.

But Whaley, so sure she had found the right person, told investigators in the first of her two interviews that she had “ignored” her and gone to bed. Whaley, however, deleted the post early the next morning. She also apologized to the victim’s wife and promised to remove the post, but never did.

Investigators asked Whaley, who was in tears during questioning, who had given her the victim’s name. She sat silently and said it was someone “very high up.” A detective slid a notepad across the table and asked her to write down the name.

“Ms. Whaley began crying again and said she did not want to hurt anyone’s feelings,” the report said. “Ms. Whaley then very reluctantly wrote ‘Mike Kemp.'” She said someone else had “dug up” the name but she did not know who it was.

The report said Whaley was truthful in some, but not all, of her answers, but provided “critical evidence” and “substantial cooperation” to the investigation.

Arrest records say Newsome accessed sheriff’s office records to give Kemp “real-time” information he otherwise would not have been able to obtain. They say he allowed himself to be “used as a tool” by Kemp, even after he knew the case was under criminal investigation. Newsome is on leave pending the outcome of the prosecution.

“Without the irresponsible actions of Congressman Newsome,” the report states, “this incident would never have occurred.”

Contact Jeff Burlew at [email protected] or 850-599-2180.