Opinion: Larry Hogan’s Biggest Obstacle to Presidency? Roy McGrath

Larry Hogan currently has an on-again off-again relationship with running for President, and that might have something to do with a skeleton in his closet named Roy McGrath, who was in the news within the past couple days and you probably missed it.

For those not familiar with the case, McGrath was under investigation and about to go to trial for charges related to a severance package he received from the Maryland Environmental Service when appointed Chief of Staff for Governor Hogan. These charges included wire fraud, misconduct in office, and improper use of state funds. Not only do the accusations against McGrath throw a dark cloud over the Hogan administration during his time as Chief of Staff for the Maryland Governor, but McGrath had secret audio recordings of meetings with Governor Hogan, for which he was charged by the State of Maryland for unlawful intercept.

So what might the audio recordings contain? According to the Baltimore Banner, these secret recordings, made illegally under Maryland law, were recorded during the time of Roy McGrath’s over $200,000 severance package from the Maryland Environmental Service, as well as during Hogan’s purchase of half a million COVID-19 kits from South Korea using taxpayer dollars.

It is suspected that one of the key topics in the recordings, and the reason McGrath wanted to play the recordings at his trial, is that Hogan may have approved the severance package. While that recording would have certainly threw a wrench in the Federal Government’s plans to prosecute Roy for “engineering the payout”, it would not have allowed prosecution of Hogan because the recordings were obtained illegally. Additionally, don’t forget the book by “Ryan Cooper” who was suspected to be a pen name of McGrath, which outlines how Hogan “betrayed” McGrath, including accusations that the former Governor approved the MES payout and was even willing to use armed force against Customs and Border Patrol to ensure that COVID-19 tests purchased from South Korea were allowed into Maryland. Interestingly enough, “Ryan Cooper” is an anagram for “a con per Roy”, which may be an indication that McGrath did indeed write the book under a pen name.

A state audit in 2021 declared that the COVID-19 tests, which were defective and cost an additional $2.5 million to replace, were purchased against state rules. It is possible that McGrath’s recordings of Hogan could contain information that Hogan knew in advance that the purchase was against state procurement rules, but pushed for the purchase anyway in an effort to improve his reputation and chances of becoming President. And while any recordings would be inadmissible to bring charges against Hogan, they could very well torpedo any chance of Hogan obtaining the GOP nomination. Remember, conservatives were labeled as conspiracy theorists during the pandemic. Much of the supposed “misinformation” the government worked so hard against, such as lockdowns not having any effect to stop the spread or natural immunity being superior to vaccines, turned out to be true. Hogan has already come under intense scrutiny by many conservatives for his lockdowns during the pandemic, and these recordings would likely further hurt any Presidential campaign.

It is likely not a coincidence that Hogan is suddenly considering a run for President now that the FBI has completed their investigation of the Roy McGrath shooting. The timing of this is impeccable, and absolutely indicates that the Roy McGrath legal case and Hogan’s decision to run or not are possibly linked. At a minimum, Hogan’s recent talk of running may be so that his possible run for President becomes the focus of news cycles instead of his former Chief of Staff. After all, one of the most important strategies in politics is to control the public narrative so that the public pays attention to you, and not any negative stories which might include you.

So do the recordings of Hogan still exist? Possibly. We know that McGrath had planned to play the recordings at his Federal trial, and that law enforcement found the recordings when they raided his house. It’s possible that duplicates of the recordings exist in possession of McGrath’s attorney, or possibly even a safe deposit box somewhere. It’s also possible the recordings could have been uploaded somewhere for safe keeping, with a deadman switch to email them to the media if McGrath doesn’t regularly prevent the email from being sent. Or maybe the recordings are just sitting out there in an Amazon file bucket or DropBox, waiting to be discovered. Who knows, maybe the media already has a copy somewhere out there, just waiting for editorial approval to release.

And by the way, we still don’t know if McGrath’s shooting death was due to Federal agents, or self-inflicted.

Whatever the case may be, I suspect that we still haven’t heard the last of the McGrath story, and if Hogan does decide to run for President, further details on McGrath may come to light. If by chance you happen to have a copy of these recordings and can confirm their contents, contact us, and we will keep your identity confidential.

Opinion article by Ken Buckler, President. All opinions are his own, and do not reflect those of RFHC or its sponsors or clients. The opinions in this article are speculative based upon currently available information at the time of publication.