Mission Details
Target: Jeb Jones
Theater: Eufaula, OK
Operation: BLIND JUSTICE
Description: Investigation into protection of a judge accused of drinking and driving.
Disposition: M.I.A. — Resigned.
There is a moment in every small-town cover-up when the people doing the covering stop believing they can get away with it. For Jeb Jones, City Manager of Eufaula, Oklahoma, that moment came when Guerrilla News correspondents walked through the doors of city hall with a camera, a records request, and footage that no public official in his position could afford to ignore. Within days of that confrontation, Jones was gone. Resigned. M.I.A. But the story he left behind is still very much alive.
A Lakeside Town With a Secret
Eufaula, Oklahoma sits on the edge of one of the largest reservoirs in the state, a place where the water looks clean and the pace of life feels uncomplicated. With a population of roughly 2,800, it is the kind of town where everybody knows everybody, and where that familiarity can be either a comfort or a weapon, depending on who is wielding it. For the farmers, ranchers, and longtime residents who began raising alarms about sweetheart wind energy deals, it had become the latter.
The trouble started with wind turbines. Citizens in Eufaula began accusing City Manager Jeb Jones and City Judge Gregory Steddom of quietly pushing massive wind development projects near Lake Eufaula. Steddom, it turned out, also owned a title company, creating a financial web that residents found impossible to ignore. The community organized. They protested all the way to Oklahoma City. Eventually, the wind projects collapsed under the weight of public opposition. Most towns would have exhaled and moved on. Eufaula did not get that chance.
The Judge Who Drank Before Court
While the wind turbine fight was still fresh, a concerned citizen reached out to Guerrilla News with something far more alarming than a bad development deal. They had footage. Clear, documented, time-stamped footage of City Judge Gregory Steddom consuming multiple alcoholic beverages at a local Eufaula restaurant called Tulip and Table during his lunch break, then getting into his vehicle and driving directly to city court to preside over cases.
This was not a one-time lapse. The footage was captured on multiple occasions over the course of several days, establishing a pattern that went far beyond a single poor decision. What made the situation exponentially more serious was what Guerrilla News correspondents discovered about Steddom's dual role. He was not only the city judge for Eufaula. He was simultaneously serving as a district attorney for the county. That means every time Steddom climbed behind the wheel after lunch at Tulip and Table, he may not only have been driving impaired to render judicial decisions over citizens of Eufaula, he may have been doing the same thing on his way to prosecute cases as a district attorney. The same man drinking before court was the same man deciding who faced criminal charges in that very community.
There was one more detail in the footage that our correspondents noted, small in isolation but revealing in context. Photographs showed Steddom opening the car door for a female work colleague, despite being described by those who know him as a happily married man. It was a minor point compared to the drinking, but it painted a fuller picture of a man who believed the rules simply did not apply to him.
The Woman Who Was Pushed Out
Judge Steddom did not arrive in Eufaula's city court without displacing someone. Citizens who contacted Guerrilla News pointed to a deeply troubling question that had gone unanswered inside city hall. Judge Terresa Pratt, who had served the city of Eufaula faithfully for years, had taken a medical leave of absence. When she was ready to return, she was not allowed to come back to her position. Instead, Gregory Steddom, a man who would be caught on camera drinking before presiding over cases, stepped into the role she had built.
Why was Terresa Pratt blocked from returning to a job she had held without scandal? Who made that decision? And who benefited from her removal? Those questions pointed in one direction: Jeb Jones, the City Manager who held the administrative power to shape the court and who, as Guerrilla News would soon discover, had a very strong interest in keeping Gregory Steddom right where he was.
The Records Request That Revealed Everything
Guerrilla News correspondent Ron Durban traveled to Eufaula City Hall to invoke the Oklahoma Open Records Act and inspect documents related to Steddom's conduct and the city's official response to it. What happened next was a clinic in how small-town power structures resist accountability when they feel cornered.
Durban was met at the counter by staff who were cooperative enough, at first. He filled out his records request in person, referencing a prior email, and asked specifically to inspect a letter or document that the city had generated regarding Steddom's alcohol consumption and continued service as city judge. The letter had apparently been referenced in a city manager's update and had briefly appeared on the city's website before disappearing.
Then Jeb Jones appeared. Jones told Durban flatly that the city had ten days under the Oklahoma Open Records Act to produce the records. Durban corrected him on the spot, citing the actual statutory language: a public body must provide prompt, reasonable access to its records, and any delay is limited solely to the time required to prepare the documents. There is no ten-day provision. Jones pressed back. Durban pressed harder. The law is unambiguous, and wilful violation of it constitutes a misdemeanor under Oklahoma statute.
Jones eventually admitted that the records had already been gathered and were sitting in the city attorney's hands, ready for review. In other words, the documents existed, they were prepared, and Jones was simply refusing to produce them. When Durban asked Jones directly whether he was comfortable with a judge who regularly drank alcohol before coming to preside over the city's municipal bench, Jones went quiet. "At this point, I don't..." he said, and the sentence trailed off into nothing.
The Architecture of Protection
What Guerrilla News uncovered in Eufaula was not simply a judge with a drinking problem. It was a system designed to protect that judge from consequences. Jeb Jones was the architect of that system. He had the authority to remove Steddom from the city judge role and had declined to use it. He had apparently presided over the decision to block Terresa Pratt from returning to her former position. He had attempted to obstruct a lawful records inspection by misrepresenting the law to a correspondent's face, on camera.
Citizens were left asking not just what Steddom had done, but what Jones had allowed, and why. The wind turbine controversy had already established a pattern of city leadership pursuing its own interests over the public good. The protection of a drinking judge fit neatly into that same pattern. These were not isolated failures of judgment. They were the consistent behavior of men who had decided that their positions insulated them from the standards they were paid to uphold and enforce.
The Resignation That Answered Nothing
After Guerrilla News published its investigation, Jeb Jones resigned from his position as City Manager of Eufaula, Oklahoma. In the language of official dispositions, he is listed as M.I.A. Gone. The job vacant, the accountability incomplete.
A resignation is not an accountability. It is an exit. Jones left without a public explanation, without answering the specific questions about Terresa Pratt's removal, without clarifying the nature of his relationship with Steddom, and without addressing his false representations to our correspondent about the Oklahoma Open Records Act. The people of Eufaula deserved answers, not a vacancy.
As for Judge Gregory Steddom, a man documented on multiple occasions drinking alcohol before driving to preside over other people's legal fates, the question of what consequences he has faced remains one that Guerrilla News continues to monitor. A district attorney and city judge who believes he can drink before court is a direct threat to every person who has ever stood in front of him, whether as a defendant, a victim, or a witness.
The residents who fought the wind turbines, who protected their land and their lake, proved that organized citizens can stop bad actors when they refuse to be silent. The question now is whether the institutions responsible for judicial conduct in McIntosh County will do what Jeb Jones refused to do: hold the powerful to the same standard as everyone else.
If you have information about judicial misconduct, open records obstruction, or government corruption in Oklahoma, contact Guerrilla News. Your identity will be protected. The story will be told.
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