How Being Compromised Leads to a Culture of Corruption
Jeopardizing integrity and accountability creates an environment where corruption can develop and spread.
Compromise involves concessions that weaken principles, values, or ethical standards. Over time, repeated compromises erode moral conviction and accountability, making unethical behavior more likely.
In governance and business, this often happens when leaders:
- Lack integrity: fail to act honestly or uphold moral principles.
- Lack accountability: avoid responsibility for decisions and their consequences.
Once these safeguards are weakened, individuals may:
- Accept bribes or kickbacks.
- Misuse authority for personal gain.
- Cover up misconduct.
These actions constitute corruption and undermine trust, the rule of law, and equitable distribution of resources.
How the Process Unfolds
- Initial compromise: a minor deviation from ethical standards, often justified as “pragmatism” or “realism.”
- Normalization: the compromise becomes accepted practice, lowering the threshold for further ethical breaches.
- Cumulative effect: repeated compromises weaken moral resolve, making corruption more likely and difficult to reverse.
- Cultural shift: leaders set precedents, prompting others to follow and fostering a culture of corruption.
Do you believe the SBI will hold the Harwood administration accountable? In your view, will District Attorney Seth Banks ensure justice in the Madison County Sheriff’s Department corruption case?
The SBI has no good track record and cannot be trusted.
In Jackson County, a top SBI agent, Charlie Hess’s son, was involved in a juvenile sex crime involving numerous underage students, law enforcement, and a coach.
At the time, the sitting DA, Charlie Hipps, worked in Buncombe County. Charlie Hess and Hipps traveled to Jackson County to try to get Sheriff Jim Cruzan to drop the investigation. He refused. In the end, through the judicial process, Hess only received probation.
Concerns remain about the actions of certain elected officials, including Seth Banks. For instance, Assistant DA John Honeycutt’s departure raises questions about the office’s practices.
Reports indicate that detectives and deputies at the Madison County Sheriff’s Department sometimes failed to provide required legal paperwork for cases. Such omissions can violate the civil rights of those charged. It is alleged that Seth Banks instructed Honeycutt to proceed with prosecutions despite incomplete documentation. What has Harwood collected illegally on Banks?
Michael Garrison serves as both chairman of the county commissioners and evidence technician for the Madison County Sheriff’s Office, overseeing evidence destruction orders.
After court approval, deputies must witness the destruction of evidence. There are concerns that some deputies may have signed off without being present, which could explain the appearance of firearms in Unicoi, Haywood, Buncombe, and Yancey counties, and even Miami.
Buddy Harwood took a valuable gun from a veteran who was about to have his leg amputated for gangrene and had been involved in a domestic violence case. The veteran was acquitted. Public outcry was so strong that Michael Garrison had to go to Buddy’s basement to get the gun back.
Questions remain about whether Coy Phillips’ 5-7 year sentence, to be addressed during the November 19th plea bargain, will include time already served. Concerns have also been raised about Seth Banks’ handling of cases involving the Phillips-Quintero organization.
In Sarah Scully’s video showing a juvenile being tied up and restrained, a woman with long, bleach-blonde hair can be seen moving around during the incident and spraying pepper spray.
Her name is Brittany Green, and her salary is $53,376. Harwood says these detainees were dangerous and need to be restrained and pepper-sprayed to protect the officers. If Brittany Green was truly afraid, why was her hair loose? Wouldn’t you tie it back when dealing with someone aggressive and dangerous?
It seems clear she was not afraid of the underage juvenile; instead, she was abusing them. Brittany Green was also being paid to work at Beech Glen during early voting for Buddy Harwood.
Jeff Elkins also worked at Beech Glen. He dated a 17-year-old and got her pregnant; isn’t this considered statutory rape? Harwood has told supporters he will stay on for only two more years and then appoint Elkins as Sheriff. This raises serious concerns about who will be in charge if this criminal is elected.
I have been seeking clarification regarding Greg Christopher’s appointment to Madison County’s jail by Harwood. Christopher previously served as sheriff in Haywood County. I was informed of an incident involving a relative of Buddy Harwood, who, while accompanied by a local attorney, allegedly shot an individual whom the relative identified as a pedophile. The victim survived. I would like to know whether Christopher was involved in addressing or covering up this incident, and whether it relates to his current role in Madison County.
If you work for Harwood, it says a lot about your character and speaks volumes about who you indeed are.
I know many of you are tired of the corruption and frustrated with Harwood’s behavior and dishonesty. He showed this attitude in Chad Nesbitt’s paid advertisement called “Interview by Nesbitt.” Harwood is a paid advertiser on Nesbitt’s show.
Madison County has an opportunity for change with Robin Lyles running for sheriff. Lyles is committed to ethical and legal conduct on behalf of county taxpayers. The county’s future and reputation depend on making an informed decision.
Below is a straightforward, brave interview with a former Republican who was called “Homegrown” in a recent Madison County Republican Party video on Facebook. A London-based writer talks with Bonnie Whitener about why Republican Zionists and their Christian beliefs might face a major setback tomorrow.
Initially, Bonnie wasn’t planning to vote; however, she ultimately decided that participating in this election was too important to forgo, and by the way, she is not one of your fortunate ones…
Don’t forget the ethical Coy Phillips and Buddy Harwood are known for their speaking in religious tongues while raping the masses. Connect the dots notice who is using the fake Christianity during this election…
The Reawakening of Bonnie Whitener
A Midterms Dispatch from western North Carolina
Oct 30, 2026
Bonnie Whitener loved Donald Trump. She was mad for him. She could listen to him talk, for hours. She campaigned for him. She organised “Trump Trains” for him. When people asked her who to vote for, in the Appalachian cuisine restaurant she owns and runs in Madison County, western North Carolina, she said, vote for him.
Her restaurant – Bonnie and Clyde’s – was festooned with Trump paraphernalia. She paid for a billboard right across the highway: a black and white picture of a menacing Trump, scowling out at the farmers, the hauliers, the veterans, the retirees, and the artists, his finger pointed outwards. “In reality they’re not after me,” the billboard warned, “They’re after you. I’m just in the way.”
Bonnie has several photos on her phone which demonstrate what an ardent supporter she was. One stood out. It is a photo, taken at her restaurant, her young niece celebrating a birthday. The table is covered in white paper, the plastic forks are red and blue, and her niece is wearing a t-shirt that says, “Raised Right.” Taking up a lot of space on the table is an impressive, three-tiered birthday cake. Atop the cake, the letters USA are perched in blue, surrounded by red, white and blue stars, and a candle. The top tier is decorated with red, white and blue icing. On the middle tier an American eagle iced onto a white background takes center stage. The words, “Happy Birthday” are over to the side. On the bottom tier – the one with the most space on it – iced in blue on a white foreground, are the words, “FREEDOM ISN’T FREE.”
“I still have them to remind me of what an idiot I was,” Bonnie says.
She shows me a photograph of Trump, carrying a baby in a towel decorated with the colours of the American flag.
“Like he gives a shit about babies,” she says.
Madison County voted overwhelmingly for Trump in the 2024 elections. Just like they did in 2020 and in 2016. They also voted – a tighter race it’s true – for the rather insidious character that is Mark Robinson, he of the “Black Nazi” descriptor, the propensity for porn, and the ‘it’s your fault’ attitude to women who are the survivors of sexual abuse.
Trump is not on the ballot in the mid-terms but his policies are. On November 3, we will find out whether, having voted for Trump three out of three times, the voters of Madison County have had enough.
Bonnie thinks they have.
“People are not wearing their red hats anymore,” she says.
She thinks it’s because they are embarrassed.
She admits that she bought into Trump’s “scam.”
“I believed the lies,” she says, both of us sitting in her restaurant on a Monday afternoon in August, “and I fell for it for quite a few years. I was an avid, avid supporter, like almost sickening how dedicated I was to the Trump campaign and the Republican Party.”
It was a conversation with a customer that helped her start to see the light.
He was, as Bonnie describes him, a “Never Trumper.”
“‘You know you’re being played?’” he asked her, standing outside her restaurant, both of them dragging on a cigarette.
“‘They’re using you,’” she remembers him saying. “‘They don’t give a damn about you.’”
“But Trump’s going to do all of these great things,” she protested.
“‘No, he’s not,’” the guy said.
Bonnie has been voting Republican since she turned 18. She is now 38. She no longer has faith in either party.
“I say the Democrats doxxed me, and the Republicans used me.”
When we spoke, she had removed herself from the voters’ registry and she was not planning to vote in November. She now considers herself an Anarchist.
“I don’t want to do the shower curtain game anymore.”
She regrets ever telling anyone to vote for Trump.
“I’ve really told a lot of people to go vote and be part of this agenda, when in fact I’ve been pushing people to vote and support something that you shouldn’t be supporting,” she says, “and then, the war in Gaza …”
That was a real eye opener.
“My neighbor is from Yemen,” she says, “and I got to know him pretty well. And I mean, he’s of Muslim faith, and I was brought up in Christian faith, and so I just started talking to him, and we’re conversing, which around this area has never been a thing because Christians are supposed to hate Muslims. Muslims are supposed to hate Christians.”
Bonnie is expressive when she talks. She uses her hands, her eyes, her whole body sometimes. Right now, she is drumming down on the table to emphasize this point.
“We’re supposed to hate each other,” she says. “‘The Muslims want to kill us. We should hate them,’ and that’s kind of like what’s been going on in this area for many decades.”
“He’s not this big scary guy,” Bonnie continues, “and his beliefs are not scary. And if you read his religious texts and the Bible’s religious texts, a lot of things are very, very close, very similar. But I found people are very close-minded and they’re not willing to read or do research on their own.
“I’ve just got a very open mind about a lot of things.”
Until not too long ago, Bonnie hosted a monthly veterans’ dinner at Bonnie and Clyde’s.
She started hearing stories about the impact of Trump’s policies on veterans’ lives.
“You know these are mostly Vietnam guys,” Bonnie says to me, “so they’ve already suffered and had severe trauma, and were not treated like decent human beings when they were brought back to the States, so they kind of have a chip on their shoulder anyway, and I don’t blame them.
“But when the guys that have been avid Trump supporters are going, ‘well, he just screwed us,’ you know, ‘We don’t get this through the VA anymore,’ or ‘he’s cutting our doctors,’ or ‘we’re not going to be able to get this program anymore.’ And I’m going, ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa!’
“You know, he’s going on TV saying how much he loves the veterans and how much he loves America, but in fact, that’s not what’s being shown to the American people, and it’s certainly not what’s being shown to the veterans.”
“So he’s affecting a lot of people that were avid supporters of him that have now, I mean, they were all proud of the red hat, and then when it started affecting them, just the veterans’ benefits, that was a whole shift in that aspect with the veterans alone.
“And you know, I’m hearing this constantly of, well, ‘how am I going to get treatment?’ Or, ‘they’ve taken my doctor. I liked my doctor. I don’t want a different doctor.’ And it really just psychologically messed with them. They were comfortable, and then it’s like the rug got pulled out from under them.”
“I know people that literally can’t afford groceries now.”
Every year Bonnie organizes a Christmas Gift Drive for the Pine Ridge Native American reservation in South Dakota, one of the poorest counties in the country.
“For years, we’ve been taking Christmas to the children,” Bonnie says.
“So I’ve kind of grown close to these [people]. I think they’re fantastic people that the rest of the country just kind of ignores.”
From across western North Carolina, people come to her restaurant to contribute. Last year someone donated a hundred bicycles. So, every year, Bonnie gets to check in with this Native American community. She gets to hear first hand how they are being impacted by Trump’s policies.
“The first thing that was cut was their food, and I’m like, ‘wait a minute, wait a minute!’ Like I’ve seen the food that they get, and it’s nothing to be excited about, but it keeps them alive.”
“Can you see where these flags start popping up?” she asks me.
“So we had the veterans’ programs being cut. We had the Native Americans’ programs being cut, and it was just back to back to back of things that he had gone on TV and said, ‘Oh yeah, we’re gonna do this, and we’re gonna make America great, and everybody’s gonna be, you know, have so much money that we’re not going to know what to do with it,’ and, I know people that literally can’t afford groceries now.”
“It’s either pay their basic bills or buy groceries,” Bonnie says. “These are people that work really, really hard and they barely get by. You know they don’t live extravagant lifestyles. They don’t have a yacht and a mansion in Maui. You know these are people, just everyday people, that are barely surviving.
“That were avid supporters of Trump because they bought into the lie. A lot of us bought into it.
“But, a lot of us have realized, ‘look, we were lied to.’”
“If you keep believing this lie,” Bonnie puts her hand to the table, “then I feel like you’re at fault. When you realize you’re being lied to, and you continue to be lied to, that’s a you problem. Is how I feel about it.
“And when my eyes were opened, and I realized, ‘look, something’s not right here. This is all lip service.’ Then I said, ‘Wait, I’m going to start fighting as hard against this as I did for it.”
“This is much greater than your county, [it’s] our whole country, and it’s to the point of, if you’re Republican, Democrat, Independent, Anarchist, don’t care at all, we’re all in the same ship, and we’re literally sinking every day, and we’re not going to be able to swim our way out of this.”
Bonnie and Clyde’s is located on the highway right outside Marshall. It’s a small strip mall, on one side is a Vape Store, and, on the other, Bonnie has rented space to the Madison County Democrats.
“I’ve caught a lot of crap about the Democrats being in here,” she says.
But “they’re polite. They don’t bother anybody, they’re not out there cramming politics down your throat.
“I’m not affiliated,” she says again. “I can be nice to someone, and they can be nice to me without me being politically involved in anything. There’s Republicans that I’m nice to. There’s Democrats I’m nice to. And how you treat me as a human being is how I treat you. And I just tell people ‘Give them a chance. They’re nice people!’”
“But it’s also this divide and conquer. It’s kind of like back to the Muslim and the Christian.”
“So if we keep each other fighting and hating each other for no reason, you’re going to be fighting amongst yourselves, and you’re not going to pay attention to the big picture.
“Well, the big picture is our country is being destroyed. When we run out of fuel, this country is done. We’re not going to recover from this.”
She reminds me of how frantic we all were – the world over – when we thought our supermarkets were going to run out of toilet paper during the Covid pandemic.
“Everything is controlled by fuel. Your tractor trailers that bring you your goods. They have to have fuel. When your fuel goes to five, $6 a gallon, these independent drivers are not going to keep doing this because if they’re having to pay for their fuel, and the load increase doesn’t change. So you know, it’s like ‘Why? Why am I going to go to work? I’m not making any money.’”
“And it literally affects everything.”
You don’t need to look further than outside Bonnie’s window to see the truth in what she says. Trucks, tractor trailers, cars, are flying up and down that highway. You can not get anywhere in this part of the United States without a tank full of gas.
In August, gas in Madison County was at $3.89 a gallon. A gallon of diesel would cost you $5.39.
“Okay, this is not at the hands of anybody but the U.S. government,” Bonnie says.
“Before, I would have sit and listened to him speak for three hours and been on the edge of my seat, going ‘oh gosh, like this is so exciting, this is what’s going to happen!’
“Now I’m like there’s no way. I don’t even want to watch his lips move.”
“So we have a major problem here, and I mean every county in America probably has their own little issues. This is much greater than your county, [it’s] our whole country, and it’s to the point of, if you’re Republican, Democrat, Independent, Anarchist, don’t care at all, we’re all in the same ship, and we’re literally sinking every day, and we’re not going to be able to swim our way out of this.
“And we’re watching it happen, and nobody’s doing anything to stop it.”
“It’s like there’s no rules for the government,” Bonnie says. “There’s no rules for politicians. There’s no rules for wealthy elites, but we’re supposed to follow rules? No, it doesn’t work that way.”
I ask Bonnie why she thinks Trump is able to get away with it.
Fear is definitely a factor. “The government has everybody so scared and terrified. ‘If you do this, if you do that, we’re going to getcha,’” she says, but, she adds, “Mind control is a powerful thing.”
“I feel like people are so involved in the brainwashing, and they believe everything that comes out of his mouth.”
She knows what she’s talking about. “Before, I would have sit and listened to him speak for three hours and been on the edge of my seat, going ‘oh gosh, like this is so exciting, this is what’s going to happen!’
“Now I’m like there’s no way. I don’t even want to watch his lips move.”
Madison County is bible belt country. Over the crest of many a hill and down in the deepest coves, the white spire of a baptist church is rarely far from view. The religious billboards are everywhere. The one that I was taken with the last time I was here, HEAVEN OR HELL, YOU CHOOSE, has been replaced by one that says, EVERY KNEE SHALL BOW. I remember this hymn from my childhood, “every knee shall bow, every tongue confess, that Jesus Christ is Lord,” and belting it out in Catholic convent Ireland. Back then, there was a comfort in it. Here though it sounds like a threat.
“In the beginning, God Created…” is another, and the accompanying image crosses out the theory of evolution. No apes. Just man. It’s a county where many are hard pushed to believe the climate crisis is real. No, no, I was told. These are the end times.
But, Madison County is changing. The town of Marshall – the county seat – once a sleepy town, with no more than four stores, is now, although wounded – it was very nearly swept away in Hurricane Helene two years ago – a town revitalized, with restaurants, cafés, art galleries, tattoo parlors. The demographics have shifted. Newcomers have brought with them new ideas and traditions. Marshall now hosts a Mermaid Parade. In 2025, the town of Hot Springs hosted the first Pride Festival in the county’s history.
When a woman I met at the Republican county headquarters tells me that her reason for moving to Madison County was because the county had “Christian values,” and that she wants to “protect” them, she wants to protect the county from this.
In January 2024, the Madison County health department hired a health inspector whose name is Burgin Mackey. Burgin is from Madison County – definitely a plus – and had a strong resumé.
In Bonnie’s retelling of the story she mimics a person reviewing a resumé. ‘oh my gosh, like you have outstanding credentials. You excel in this,’ right. Like that’s what gets you hired on a resumé, not your appearance.”
Burgin went to school in Madison County and attended college at Western Carolina University.
“Well,” Bonnie says, “the problem is Burgin dressed like a lady and wore makeup, so that was not a hit in this area.”
Truth be told, it wasn’t a hit for Bonnie either.
When Burgin walked into her restaurant to carry out a health inspection in the summer of 2024, Bonnie called the health department to object.
“I was like, ‘look, I don’t know what kind of agenda we’re trying to push here, but like, just let’s not do this.
“‘I don’t want anything crammed down my throat,’ she told them. ‘You can do whatever you want, (just) don’t cram anything down my throat.’ I just didn’t know at the time. I just kind of got blindsided, and I’m like, ‘Whoa!’”
Bonnie was told she had no choice but to let Burgin do her job.
“Fine,” she says. “So, Burgin goes back to his inspection, and I just start asking questions, like I would do anybody. And before Burgin left that day, I apologized to Burgin, and I think very highly of Burgin. And I will say, Burgin inspected with integrity. He was fair. He was honest, and I wasn’t used to that, and I’ve dealt with many inspectors in many counties…”
I asked Burgin – who identifies as she/her/y’all – what she remembers about their first encounter. She remembers it clearly, starting with her colleagues’ reaction when she said she was heading down to Bonnie and Clyde’s because, although Bonnie did not vote for Trump in 2024, that summer her restaurant was still MAGA central. They were full of apprehension and concern. But Burgin went anyway. She walked in to Bonnie and Clyde’s dressed in a lab coat, some slacks, nothing elaborate or ostentatious. She remembers the way in which, as she puts it, Bonnie “clocked” her and immediately got on the phone to the health department. She remembers too how, when left with no choice, and she started that inspection, Bonnie did start to ask her questions and how, at the end of that inspection, Bonnie turned to her and said, “I misjudged you.”
Bonnie would become, as Burgin describes her, “an unlikely ally.”
Not everyone had the same evolution. In the Spring of 2025, when Burgin announced that she was organizing the first Pride Festival in Madison County, some locals did not appreciate this. Not at all.
“They get on social media like a bunch of crazy hyenas,” Bonnie says, “and they’re raising Cain because how dare that, that’s not what we’re about. Blah blah blah.”
“It might not be your thing,” Bonnie says, “Just like this group of people may not be interested in going on Wednesday night to the courthouse and listen to you preach on the sidewalk, but you don’t have to entertain those folks. Those folks don’t have to entertain you.”
That’s not how it went down in this case though.
“So a lot of these churches around here, they’re not an example of what Jesus was,” Bonnie says. “It is a very hateful, bigoted, close-minded group that thinks everybody should feel like they do. Everybody should think the way they do. And if you don’t agree with them, you’re a terrible person, and you should be blasted on social media.”
In early May 2025, Burgin arrived at a private school at a local baptist church to do a health inspection. It did not go well.
“The people got very upset that Burgin walked into their church dressed in a woman’s blouse and had makeup on,” Bonnie says, “Totally just upset. And they said some pretty ugly things to Burgin, in my opinion.”
Both the county commissioners’ office and the health department were barraged with emails from offended parishioners.
About one week later, the county commissioners announced their interest in taking over the board of health, which oversees the health department.
“The timing was totally coincidental,” Matt Wechtel, who was chair of the county commissioners at that time, told me in an email.
Be that as it may, Burgin certainly felt that, even if it wasn’t her “fault,” as she puts it, she was “a catalyst.”
At a public meeting to discuss the commissioners’ intentions, the community’s opposition was clear. Burgin was there, with Bonnie by her side, holding her hand.
“I met Burgin at the commissioners’ meeting,” Bonnie says, “and it was literally so full, there was nowhere else to sit. It was standing room. We stood along the wall. It was totally packed in there, and it was basically, I would say, nine out of 10, they were there in support of the health department and Burgin.”
When the commissioners withdrew their resolution to take over the board of health the people in the room cheered.
In the end though, Burgin resigned.
“Burgin is no longer the inspector, unfortunately,” Bonnie says. “We loved Burgin and we advocated for Burgin, but you know, I said ‘Burgin, if you leave, you need to do what’s best for you, but we don’t want you to leave.’”
“I hate that it happened the way it did,” Bonnie says, “to the point Burgin felt ‘I had no other option.’ That’s not fair to Burgin.”
We get back to talking about Gaza.
“We always have money for wars,” Bonnie says, “but we never have money to feed the poor people. We never have money to keep homeless people off the streets. We never have money to help the veterans. We never have money to help our own people in our own country. We always have unlimited supply of money for war to go genocide different races of people, and if you go back to the Indian Removal Act and the Trail of Tears, you will understand that this has been going on, this genocide has been going on for a long, long, long time.”
Her friend, her neighbor who is Muslim, he has family in Gaza. She doesn’t know how they can bear it.
“For me, she says, “my nerves would be shot.”
“I’ll be like ‘you got to get out of there now,’ like ‘come here.’ War torn countries you don’t have that option. If you’re in the flood here we could always go somewhere else in the country, right? We could go to a hotel. We could go seek shelter at a friend’s house or a family member’s. They can’t do that.”
She is disgusted by Trump’s plans to turn Gaza into a beach resort: “a mass grave where you’ve went in here and bombed and killed – I don’t even know the number of innocent children, women, men. They’ve done nothing to you, and you’re going in there and you just continue – I mean, it’s still going on – you’re killing people, so you can go take their resources and their land. That’s not okay.”
I am listening to Bonnie and watching her too, as she, again with her hands is drumming on the table to emphasis her fury.
“And then when they blew up the little girls’ school in Iran,” she says.
She brings her hands to her face, presses her fingers into her temples and she looks at me, her eyes wide open in horror.
“A little girls’ school.”
And she asks the question many of us ask all the time.
“When are you going to stop killing people? When are the American people going to say we are done with war?”
It is such a good question.
“Morally speaking,” Bonnie asks, “how can you be okay and support a person that has no problem wiping out a child? And then in the same breath, they’re going, “Oh, we care about your kids. We care about your future.’ No, you don’t. If you can sit there and kill a kid and it not bother you in the least, you don’t care about anybody’s kid.”
Bonnie Whitener will not be voting this November.
Post Script: As you will see from the comments below, Bonnie will vote in November, at the local level. It’s a story I didn’t include in this piece, the story of the two democratic challengers, Connie Molland and Shannon Dowler, (both, in local parlance, “outsiders”), to the five Republican men, (most of whom, in local parlance are, “natives”), currently on the board of five county commissioners. These five Republican men may be vulnerable this year for several reasons, including their decision to try to take over the health board. Time will tell.
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The people decide the fate of Madison County and America, not the corrupt who think they can con and rule over us. Buddy Harwood has failed his office and the people of Madison County
Your vote is your right. Protected by the sacrifices of many; tomorrow,
please don’t let them down -CH