Knows Nothing About Accounting or Law According to her Sworn Depositions in Lawsuits
There is an old Chinese saying that there are three things you cannot hide for long. The sun, the moon, and the truth. And sometimes the truth is helped along by the most unlikely sources of info. A few years back in Rogers County there was quite a confrontation involving a grand jury petition aimed at the local D.A. and a bunch of other cops or other public employees. The grand jury led to no charges but it did generate a lawsuit against the local paper and one reporter/social worker/auditor/pizza parlor worker.
Meet Salesha Wilken, probably one of the most unqualified people we have ever researched for a story and she managed to be unqualified in a half dozen jobs so far in her checkered career.
And why is this useless woman of interest to us? Because she was the main “auditor” behind the political hatchet job on Epic Charter School. We now know why the entire “audit” done by Lying Cindy Byrd was such a screwed up mess of half truths and ignorance of existing state statutes.
Wilken has a high school education and some dubious “college” degrees from online institutions, diploma mills basically. Yet she became a “reporter” with the Claremore Progress, then an investigator with DHS child services,
Her reporter job got her in hot water and sued and in one of the depositions for the several lawsuits spawned from her work we can get a peek into just how little education and training is needed to become a newspaper reporter, a DHS child services investigator, and ultimately a State Auditor Office investigator. During a short stint at a community college she helped on the school newspaper so somehow that qualified her for a reporter's job. That was a part time job it seems with lots of days off unpaid.
She next moved to the DHS child services and worked as an investigator for six months. When asked what her qualifications were to be hired as a child welfare investigator she replied that it was her reporting experience. From DHS Wilken moved on to the State Auditors office, again giving her qualifications as being a reporter at the Claremore newspaper.
On page 33 near the bottom of the page the deposition transcript reveals that during an earlier federal lawsuit deposition Wilken reportedly didn't know that there was a journalism code of ethics, probably the reason that she and her employer were sued for false light and invasion of privacy. The case was settled with Wilken's victims being paid in a confidential settlement.
The transcript is worth the time it takes to read through it. Early on we learn that Wilken knows very little about accounting. When asked what assets minus liabilities equals she couldn't answer that it would be net worth. Anyone that has ever ran a business or taken the most basic of accounting or economic classes, hell most people would know the answer if they had ever taken out a loan.
But the most common thing we see in the transcript of the deposition is how slippery Wilken is as a witness. Answering the simplest question turns into three pages of dialog as the lawyer tries to pin Wilken down on the simplest of questions. But she has plenty of practice after being sued six times and having to appeal decisions where she was a defendant seven times.
Wilken doesn't seem to be motivated by a hatred of charter schools but she does appear to be a total political hack willing to do just about anything to hang onto a job for more than six months. She was the perfect person to “audit” Epic, unethical, unquestioning, slippery as an eel, and willing to follow orders.
