The Billionaire Bully
NEW VIDEO! We’ll try again Tuesday to get a little justice in crazy Waller County… in front of a judge who should not be on the bench! We’re also calling out THE BILLIONAIRE BULLY who is more worried about shutting down a women’s group fighting for justice than finishing his secretive divorce. We are not going to be threatened either!
The Billionaire Bully
“He’s not a fan of mine,” Wayne Dolcefino said.
“That is to say the least,” Nick Kacal said.
My lawyers had just been warned.
An elderly judge in clear cognitive decline had gone off the rails with another rant about me.
Imagining again that I was coming to his house, spying on his family.
It’s crazy talk.
All I had dared to do was ask the judge questions as he left the courthouse.
“The judge is very perturbed about the interaction with Dolcefino,” Kacal said.
“Robert Kern was threatening to arrest me again if I violated his illegal court orders again,” Dolcefino told the camera.
“Just don’t film the judge if there’s an order not to,” officer said.
We are warned by a deputy it is a violation of Kern’s court order to even film the judge in a parking lot paid for by taxpayers. Yeah, right.
“It is what it is. Public space,” Dolcefino said.
When the judge leaves the courthouse in late January, he is flanked by a growing number of Waller County Sheriff’s deputies.
Count them. One. Two. Three. Four. It’s not their fault, but what a waste of government resources.
All that so this unelected judge can avoid me.
She’s the deputy that’s going to get me first if I dared to try to exercise my evil journalism.
You know me. I tried to make her laugh.
“Are you my bodyguard today?” Dolcefino said.
“Not at all, not at all,” Deputy said.
It didn’t work. I thought I was funny.
I’m on my best behavior though as the judge leaves. I use my inside voice.
“We just think the public has a right to hear from you,” Dolcefino said.
I stayed out of jail that day, but I have another chance on March 3. I can’t wait.
Actually, it was Groundhog Day in Hempstead, Texas. Another delay in doing the right thing.
“The Judge had a lot of things to say about us today,” Dolcefino said. “That is the least to say,” Kacal said.
While deputies guard me, we notice they are serving as a protective escort for this guy and his lawyer.
“It’s nice to see you, Wayne,” Jay Sears said.
“Good to see you too,” Dolcefino said.
Why are taxpayers paying for that? He must be special.
That was July of last year, the last time Jay Sears said a word to me.
He’s the co-founder of NewQuest Properties, Waller County’s biggest commercial real estate developer, a multibillion-dollar company.
And now Jay Sears is using some of his army of lawyers to try and find out who hired us to investigate his company’s political connections.
And his ugly divorce case, a multimillion-dollar legal fight with his ex-wife Debbie McLeod that’s stretched over six years.
Sears lives in Harris County. So does his ex-wife. But he moved to Waller County just long enough to get a judge to let him keep his divorce case there.
Such an inconvenient drive all the time to come all the way to the Waller County Courthouse. Wonder why he wants to do it.
“Mr. Sears has been asking Judge Kern since December to try to force me to turn over what we are investigating. Who hired us, what we now know about Mr. Sears and NewQuest. So I have a message for both him and the judge. It ain’t going to happen,” Dolcefino said.
But that’s not why we are now calling Sears the billionaire bully.
He’s coming after the Women’s Justice Network too, a group fighting for justice for women in family court, including the injustice women face when their husbands are uber rich.
“I went through a horrible divorce several years ago where I just got a lot of trauma from my ex-partner, and so I try and stay under the radar as much as I can.”
We set up the interview through an encrypted app. They are that scared of Sears’ legal assault.
“We do receive a lot of inquiries from women all across the US trying to get help, and several months we receive quite a strange amount of numerous emails from women all over Hardin County.”
If you live in Hardin County, you probably saw this billboard on the Eastex Freeway.
It’s hard to be a woman in Hardin County, it read. Harder in divorce court.
We’ve heard the stories too.
“It’s been pure Hell all this time because they’ve given me a bad name because I stand up for myself and they don’t like that in Hardin County,” Wendy Rush said.
Wendy Rush is one of those women, representing herself in family court.
Never easy. Never a good idea.
“If you’re poor, you can’t afford a lawyer, your kid legally gets kidnapped,” Rush said.
There’s no custody battle in the Sears case, but Sears is involved in Lawsuits with his daughter, too. But the Women’s Justice Network has been all over Jay Sears on social media.
Lost. Cheating Husband. If Found Keep Him.
And they have been going after Judge Kern too. No clowns in court.
Who’s paying for justice in Waller County, they ask.
Sears has filed a defamation lawsuit against the group, claiming he even got a T-shirt that says Justice Wears a Blindfold, but We See Everything.
Someone put up signs in his neighborhood.
The group’s Facebook account is now suspended after Sears complained, but not before they asked what is Waller County hiding.
And that’s the same question we’ve been asking.
While he stalls his divorce case, Sears has gone so far as to threaten to sue a California comedian who made an Instagram video about his case.
“Can you talk to me about why Jay Sears is so special?” Andrea Palacio said.
It’s the unparalleled secrecy Sears gets that has brought us into the legal fight to unseal the divorce records.
“I was forced to go to the Texas Court of Appeals twice just to prove Kern had abused his power to keep the divorce records secret,” Dolcefino told the camera.
The Cobos Law Firm and the Akers Law Firm fought the battle for Dolcefino Media.
The appeals court ruling was the first time in a very long time confirming the right of media access in divorce cases.
“The original date that we had set for Judge Kern to hear our motion to unseal after our latest turn at the court of appeals was inexplicably canceled at the last minute,” Kacal said.
In January, after getting slapped down twice by the higher court, Judge Kern finally agreed to release the docket and some other basic stuff in the Sears divorce, but he passed a scheduled hearing in February to allow more access.
Our lawyers filed this emergency motion to get the rest of the records that should be public.
“We had no choice but to request an emergency hearing. That hearing has been set. We are set to go forward on March 3rd,” Kacal said.
Go to the Waller County website today, and you will still not find the Sears divorce case online. That’s insane.
We are even being denied transcripts of public court hearings.
This is an expensive war for the principle of the public right to know.
“NewQuest Lawyers claimed releasing transcripts of court hearings and legal filings would be, quote, Catastrophic for this multibillion-dollar company. Kind of makes you wonder what juicy stuff is in there,” Dolcefino told the camera.
“NewQuest doesn’t have any reason to hide that information from the public. Any documents that weren’t marked confidential throughout this case and were filed inside of the judicial record, that needs to be made public,” Kacal said.
Stay tuned. The March hearing marks a year that we’ve been fighting this judge and sadly warning about his cognitive decline. Someone has to do it.
“It’s getting crazier and crazier. I don’t think he remembers what he ordered,” Debra McLeod said
“We’ve all seen it in court. At the last hearing Judge Kern even forgot that the divorce case was no longer even in his court,” Dolcefino told the camera.
Sears and his wife agreed right before trial to settle their fight before another judge. That was months ago.
“Your honor, we would like to talk to you. Your Honor,” Dolcefino said.
But our fight, it goes on. It’s crazy, but worth it.
Hopefully it won’t be another expensive Groundhog Day in Hempstead when I see my buddies in Waller County.
“The Court of Appeals has twice now hinted to Judge Kern that, hey, we need to do this by the books and not try to hide this case in the shadows,” Kacal said.
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