DeWine's office leading investigation against Kelly, sets grand jury for Thursday

Athens County Sheriff Pat Kelly and other local officials will testify Thursday in front of a grand jury organized by Attorney General Mike DeWine's office, local officials have said.

The subpoenas issued to Kelly and other county officials come amid ongoing accusations of Kelly's office illegally dumping county records.

Athens County Prosecutor Keller Blackburn referred the accusations against Kelly to a special prosecutor in DeWine's office because of the natural conflict of interest between Kelly's office and Blackburn's.

Blackburn, for all intents and purposes, is Kelly's attorney. One could claim that any investigation into Kelly by Blackburn's office would be biased.

He said Kelly will be asked to testify about "several" ongoing investigations, one of which could be records dumping.

"I don't have information on whether or not the sheriff will be indicted,"  Blackburn said. "I know that my files are still missing at the dump and they were sent there between May 13 and May 15."

Blackburn didn't say whether he had been subpoenaed or not.

Kelly posted a lengthy message on Facebook on May 30 that criticized local media reporting and Blackburn's allegations of wrongdoing. He said then that he has no reason to believe Blackburn's files were being dumped by the sheriff's office.

"We may find that the missing prosecutor’s files may have been inadvertently deposited at the landfill at the time his office dumped records," Kelly said in the Facebook post. "The sheriff’s office records are intact and any files that have been destroyed have been microfilmed and or scanned and there is a copy of these files. The files taken to the landfill by my office have all been microfilmed and are accounted for."

Still, Kelly will more than likely be indicted eventually, according to a source close to the investigation who spoke to The Post on the condition of anonymity Wednesday. The evidence against Kelly is so revealing that a jury would have little choice but to indict him, the source said, adding that it could take many weeks for the jury to come to that decision.

This isn't the first time Kelly's been the center of controversy.

His re-election campaign last year was filled with rumors and accusations of assault, intimidation and wasteful spending. Regardless, Kelly beat his Republican challenger Steve Kane by an even wider margin than he had in the previous election.

Kelly has not returned repeated phone calls from The Post since Blackburn first alleged in other media reports that Kelly illegally dumped county files.

Spokespersons from DeWine's office declined to comment on the grand jury and accusations against Kelly.

az346610@ohiou.edu