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# Coweta Chief Clears City Hall in Data Center Deal He Was Ordered to Investigate
- URL: https://guerrilla.news/coweta-chief-clears-city-hall-in-data-center-deal-he-was-ordered-to-investigate/
- Published: 2026-06-29T20:23:16.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-01T03:27:24.000Z
- Description: A police chief investigated his own city government over a secret data center deal. He cleared them of crimes, then admitted under questioning he never looked into the one document that started it all.
- Author: Ronald E. Durbin II, J.D.
- Tags: #channel-UC_2FGy-X1_bPWd-qtSqUpIQ, Guerrilla News, Government Transparency, Open Records, Police Accountability, Civil Rights, Oklahoma, Coweta

A city manager signs a non-disclosure agreement worth billions of dollars without telling a single elected official. A police chief is ordered to investigate his own bosses. And when reporters finally corner him with the one question that matters, his answer isn't what anyone expected.

This is Coweta, Oklahoma. This is Project Mustang. And this press conference was supposed to close the book on months of allegations about secret land deals, hidden contracts, and a data center project that vanished from public view before most residents even knew it existed.

It didn't close anything.

## A Chief Ordered to Investigate His Own City Council

Let that sink in for a second. Coweta's city council handed its own police chief the job of investigating potential crimes committed by the very people who control his budget, his job, and his department. Chief Mike Bell stood at a podium and read a prepared statement clearing city leadership of nearly every allegation brought against them, including violations of Oklahoma's Open Meetings Act and Open Records Act.

But before he even finished his opening remarks, reporters in the room were already picking apart the framework of the investigation itself. Who decided what got investigated? Who decided what didn't?

The answers get uncomfortable fast.

## The Findings That Clear Everyone, Except for One Thing

Bell's report leans heavily on a single outside voice: the Oklahoma Attorney General's public access counselor, who determined the city's records requests were handled properly. Case closed, according to the chief. Except one allegation, involving a specific meeting where land negotiations were discussed, was labeled "inconclusive." Not cleared. Not substantiated. Left hanging.

When pressed on what "inconclusive" actually means for a document that bound the entire city before a single elected official ever saw it, the chief's answers start moving in circles. He didn't investigate whether the non-disclosure agreement itself needed council approval. Why not? Because, in his words, nobody specifically asked him to.

That answer alone should stop you cold.

## The City Manager's Turn at the Podium, and the Confession Nobody Was Ready For

Then the city manager steps up. And what she admits, on camera, about who actually authorized a billion-dollar non-disclosure agreement, and who did not, is the kind of moment that doesn't get resolved with a press release. She's asked directly whether she still believes she has the authority to do it again. Her answer is not the reassurance anyone in that room was expecting.

Reporters push further: was this ever discussed with the council beforehand? Was there ever a policy in place to prevent exactly this situation? The silence and hedging that follows says more than the prepared statement ever could.

## "He's an Idiot": A Chief's Unscripted Verdict on the State's Own Watchdog

In the middle of defending his own findings, Chief Bell says something about the Attorney General's public records liaison that nobody in that press conference expected to hear out loud. It's blunt, it's dismissive, and it directly undercuts the credibility of the exact source his own investigation leaned on to clear city hall.

If the man whose determination anchors your entire "no wrongdoing" conclusion isn't someone you trust, what does that say about the conclusion itself?

## What a Grand Jury Might Find That a Police Chief Didn't

By the end of the press conference, one reporter isn't just asking questions anymore. He's promising to take this to court. To a grand jury. To force answers that a city investigating itself was never going to produce on its own.

Whether that happens, what the full report buried in tomorrow night's council agenda actually says line by line, and how far this goes once the state's political landscape shifts in January, none of that gets settled in this press conference. It gets settled in what comes next.

*If you believe the public has a right to know before billion-dollar deals get signed behind closed doors, watch the full confrontation and share it before it disappears from the agenda.*