TULSA, Okla. — June 4, 2026 (The Oklahoma Post)
On Thursday morning, Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond and Tulsa County District Attorney Steve Kunzweiler stood behind a podium wearing the Tulsa County seal and announced 27 counts of conspiracy, embezzlement and kickbacks against three people accused of draining $779,317.91 from Tulsa Public Schools. Local television called it breaking news. The word “breaking” was doing the heavy lifting.
The facts were not breaking. They were not new either. State Auditor Cindy Byrd laid most of them out in a 64-page forensic audit released at the State Capitol on Feb. 26, 2025, in which she named former bond manager Chris Hudgins, described his private consulting firm and noted that a district vendor had paid him more than $300,000. Byrd said that day that she had turned the evidence over to the attorney general’s office. The audit existed in the first place because Gov. Kevin Stitt asked for it.
Stitt requested the TPS audit back in July 2022, after former administrator Devin Fletcher resigned and two school board members alerted him to what they called troubling information. When Byrd released the results, Stitt held his own news availability the same afternoon, predicted “gross mismanagement,” and told the attorney general to “take immediate action and bring charges wherever possible.” That was 15 months ago.
Immediate Action Took 15 Months.
This is the part worth sitting with. The governor who set the investigation in motion wanted these charges and said so on the record more than a year before they arrived. He does not control the charging power. That belongs to the attorney general and the district attorney. So the timeline reduces to a simple division of labor: Stitt wanted the case, and Drummond chose the date. The date he chose was June 4, which is to say 12 days before the June 16 Republican primary in which Drummond is running for governor. Geez.
The two men are not on the same team. The two have feuded ever since over the ClassWallet education-funds suit, the poultry pollution case and more. The feud is live right now. Two weeks before announcing the TPS charges, Drummond sued Stitt and a Stitt-aligned political action committee over what his campaign called a coordinated smear campaign of attack ads. Stitt’s office answered that Drummond was distracting from “falling polling numbers.” A candidate in that position does not stumble onto a tough-on-corruption press conference by accident.
The charges themselves are substantial, at least as alleged. Prosecutors say Hudgins, the man trusted to manage voter-approved bond and emergency projects, instead steered Allied Engineering Group to bill the district $779,317.91 for roofing work at schools where, prosecutors say, no work occurred. They allege Allied then routed more than $736,000 to Hudgins’ own consulting firm, M&G Consulting, for services that also did not happen, and that co-defendant Thomas McKenna used a second company to keep the arrangement running at additional campuses. Gayle Gwinup is the third defendant. These are allegations. The three are charged, not convicted, and are entitled to the presumption that goes with that.
There is a second layer of usefulness here. The people charged are former employees connected to past administrations. They are gone, politically inert and unable to embarrass anyone currently drawing a paycheck. Tulsa Public Schools issued a statement thanking the AG and the DA and carefully describing the wrongdoing as the work of “a former employee” under “previous administrations.” That is a convenient sentence to have circulating when you have just asked voters for new bonds, which TPS did on April 7. Charges against a departed administrator let everyone still in the building say the system worked.
It is also worth noting who else has a 2026 ballot line. Byrd, whose audit supplied the facts, was running for lieutenant governor. The audit that could lift one campaign and the prosecution that could lift another share a great deal of DNA.
None of this means the charges are wrong. A three-defendant fraud case with shell companies takes real time to build, and an audit referral is a lead, not a finished prosecution. But there is a difference between the time a case needs and the day a candidate picks to announce it. Stitt asked for accountability in 2022. Drummond delivered the press conference in June 2026, right on time for the ballot. Accountability that waits for the convenience of a primary calendar is not accountability. It is advertising with a case number attached.
Writing By: Robbie Robertson | Editing by Robbie Robertson
Editor’s Note:
Sources
Three charged in Tulsa Public Schools fraud scheme, NewsOn6, June 4, 2026: https://www.newson6.com/crime/tulsa-public-schools-executives-charged-in-fraud-scheme
AG Drummond, DA Kunzweiler to announce charges in TPS fraud case, KTUL, June 2026: https://ktul.com/news/local/ag-drummond-tulsa-county-da-kunzweiler-to-announce-charges-in-tps-fraud-case
Tulsa Public Schools audit highlights financial discrepancies, mismanagement (names Hudgins conflict, evidence turned over to AG), NonDoc, Feb. 26, 2025: https://nondoc.com/2025/02/26/tulsa-public-schools-audit-highlights-financial-discrepancies-mismanagement/
Audit shows financial mismanagement at TPS (Stitt requested audit in 2022, urged AG to act immediately), Public Radio Tulsa, Feb. 27, 2025: https://www.publicradiotulsa.org/local-regional/2025-02-27/audit-shows-financial-mismanagement-at-tps-district-pushes-back-on-diversity-complaints
Tulsa Public Schools audit released after 2 weeks (Stitt requested in July 2022, demanded charges), NewsOn6, Feb. 26, 2025: https://www.newson6.com/story/67bf47d3bee70cf546b09eb1/tulsa-public-schools-audit-released
State audit says TPS failed to provide oversight (Hudgins conflict, Byrd running for lieutenant governor), KGOU/KOSU, Feb. 26, 2025: https://www.kgou.org/education/2025-02-26/state-audit-says-tulsa-public-schools-failed-to-provide-adequate-oversight-of-finances
Oklahoma AG jumps into governor’s race (Drummond beat Stitt’s pick O’Connor in 2022, feud history), Associated Press via Yahoo: https://www.yahoo.com/news/oklahomas-republican-ag-jumps-early-193036999.html
Drummond sues Stitt-linked group over campaign ads ahead of June 16 primary, NewsOn6, 2026: https://www.newson6.com/oklahoma-politics/oklahoma-drummond-sues-stitt-campaign-ads-governor-election-2026
Oklahoma gubernatorial election 2026 (primary June 16, Drummond running), Ballotpedia: https://ballotpedia.org/Oklahoma_gubernatorial_election,_2026
Tulsa Public Schools 2026 bond issues, $609 million on April 7, 2026 ballot, BatesLine: https://www.batesline.com/archives/2026/03/tulsa-public-schools-2026-bond-i.html
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