Carpetbagger Attack By Veteran Congressman Tom Cole Against Hard-Charging “Trump Republican” Businessman Boomerangs Badly

Veteran Oklahoma Republican Congressman and Washington insider Tom Cole, a veteran of the Washington establishment, has been caught by surprise in a spirited June 18th Republican primary election challenge from Paul Bondar, a self-described Christian, and successful businessman, husband, father, and strong Trump Republican.

“I’m certainly not a career politician,” Bondar told Slingshot.news. Bondar, who by his own admission moved to Oklahoma after consolidating businesses in Illinois and Texas, the “business success,” Bondar told Slingshot.news, was necessary for him to buy 300+ acres in Oklahoma in 2023 to build his dream home.

Bondar is self-financing his campaign and reliable sources tell Slingshot.news that he may spend as much as $7 million of his own fortune, legally, on his insurgent campaign.

Rep. Cole Caught By Surprise

Caught by surprise, Cole, who is registered to vote at an address in Oklahoma that is a home owned by a trust for his wife, is seldom in the Sooner State. His official campaign filing shows that he pays a monthly fee to a storage facility in Oklahoma. Nonetheless, Coles’ campaign lashed out with a hard-hitting advertisement in the Oklahoma City market claiming that Bondar “owned no property in Oklahoma, and was delinquent in paying some State taxes.”

Bondar fired back immediately with a letter he made available to Slingshot.News. Within that letter, Bondar slammed the attacks by Cole directly. He began by addressing a claim by Cole that Bondar owes unpaid taxes, marking the claim ‘categorically false.’ The letter states,

“Regarding your claim I owe unpaid taxes, I assure you and anyone else reading this letter that all of my taxes are paid and up to date. I believe you are making issue over a $6,000 property tax balance that was open temporarily as a property being sold where taxes are paid at closing. Painting a story of anything else is categorically false.”

OK-4 CANDIDATE Paul Bondar

Bondar then adds,

“This is how career politicians smear average citizens who choose to challenge them on their failure to stand up for conservative principles in Washington.”

OK-4 CANDIDATE PAUL BONDAR

Next, Bondar raises a pointed counterattack on Cole for raising the issue of residency in this Primary election, saying,

“I find it somewhat hypocritical you would want to raise the issue of residency in this campaign for Congress. A review of Oklahoma election records show you have not voted in person in any general election in Oklahoma since 2004. You are an absentee voter, never voting in person in two decades. You are attacking me on recently moving to Oklahoma, while the records show you have disconnected from Oklahoma long ago.

While you keep a legal residence in Oklahoma on file so you can continue to maintain your position in Congress, you are in fact a resident of the D.C. swamp. You have long abandoned any Oklahoma values. I have chosen to be in the great state of Oklahoma. I purchased a home in Oklahoma in 2022. My family loved Oklahoma so much we sold our original property to buy a 500+ acre ranch in 2023, allowing me to build the dream home my wife and I have long talked about for ourselves and our two children. The truth is I have committed to Oklahoma and your claims I have no property in Oklahoma are categorically false.”

OK-4 CANDIDATE Paul Bondar

Bondar then finished his letter by stating that Cole had betrayed the people of Oklahoma’s 4th Congressional district, firing off,

“The real issue at hand is that I am running because change is needed and you are failing the great people of Oklahoma and the great people of the United States of America who deserve better than how they are being treated by you and the other D.C. insiders.

In the interest of fairness and accuracy, I urge you to take down these false attacks on me, which is nothing more than an effort to confuse voters over frivolous issues not concerning your voting record and the disconnection voters see with your policies working against them, rather than for them. Please address the questions I have raised regarding your support for TRILLIONS in new deficit spending and the lack of a voting record that aligns with the Oklahoma residents and conservatism you claim to be representing. I will tell you, after speaking with thousands of voters personally during this campaign, they feel betrayed, abandoned, and alone.

I eagerly await your response.”

OK-4 CANDIDATE Paul Bondar

The full letter can be viewed below,

Congressman Tom Cole’s Support For Establishment Republican Issues

Cole has generally voted with more moderate Republicans for billions in new deficit spending, which Bondar insists is responsible for the high rate of inflation. Bondar says this inflation “is robbing the buying power of our dollars.”

Cole also recently voted for $62 Billion in additional funding for the war in Ukraine, on top of the more than $100 Billion that he voted to previously approve.

Cole also cast the tie-breaking vote in the U.S. House to extend the controversial FISA program, which had already been abused by the intelligence agencies to spy illegally on members of Donald Trump’s staff, with the probable cause for the FISA warrant being entirely manufactured.

The release of the Durham Report, a 5-year investigation by Special Counsel John Durham, found that the process of obtaining FISA warrants to spy on Trump campaign aide Carter Page, which was then used to surveil Trump and his associates, were politically motivated in nature. Durham deemed the FISA warrants to be inappropriately obtained.

U.S. citizens can be spied on without a warrant. Cole opposed amendments to the FISA program that was so easily abused to frame President Trump.

Cole has offered no response to the growing issue of Chinese interests acquiring hundreds of thousands of acres of prime ranch and farm land in Oklahoma, and a quick search of filed legislation in the U.S. House shows that Cole is not even a co-sponsor of the several bills that were proposed to make these acquisitions strictly prohibited and illegal.

Bondar Vindicated By The Truth

Slingshot News reviewed various deeds and other documents that prove unquestionably that businessman candidate Bondar is a legal resident of Oklahoma, owns more than 300 acres of land, where he has a home under construction, and is currently living at an Oklahoma address, having sold the home that he owned previously since 2022. “My family loved Oklahoma so much we sold our original property to buy a 500+ acre ranch in 2023,” Cole said.

The attack on the little-known Bondar may have boomeranged badly on career politician Tom Cole.

A canvas of the neighbors adjacent to the house that he lists as his residence on his Oklahoma voter registration (public information) yielded not a single person who ever remembers having seen him. Several volunteered that they believed Cole’s wife resided in the home, and that they rarely saw her.

Cole rolled out a big endorsement from U.S. Senator Markwayne Mullin in the middle of the entire controversy.