[2][3][4] In profile interviews, he reported that he was born and raised in the northwest Wichita suburb of Valley Center, by a single mother, and never knew his biological father until age 18.
However, she entered remission, and by mutual arrangement remained engaged with her son, who lived with his adoptive father, Capps, until adulthood.
(The agency's findings against Capps were reversed by the state Office of Administrative Hearings, which found them "unsubstantiated", and cited DCF procedural errors).
[2][13][14][15] Republican Speaker of the Kansas House of Representatives, Ron Ryckman Jr., asked him to withdraw from the November election race for his District 85 seat.
While HB 2025 never emerged from committee, Capps spoke frequently during the 2018 election campaign on the importance of reforming the Kansas Department of Children and Families.
[citation needed] During a contested Wichita mayoral runoff nonpartisan election to be held on November 5, 2019, in an attack on the challenging candidate, Brandon Whipple, a Democrat, a salacious video appeared on-line.
The allegation had, in fact, been copied word-for-word from an actual claim, made against an anonymous Republican state senator in a Kansas City Star article two years earlier.
[20][21][22] Elaborate covers had allegedly been implemented by the perpetrators of the smear against Whipple, in Wyoming and New Mexico, where state laws permit registered agents for mail forwarders and corporation principals to conceal the actual identities of the parties they represent.
[20] Colborn further said that Capps had nothing to do with the making of the video,[20] but that Sedgwick County Commissioner Michael O'Donnell, provided him with the intended script.
Unbeknownst to the three elected public officials, that meeting too, was secretly recorded by a fourth party—their video producer Colborn—for which evidence would emerge in late October, 2020.
[28] In February 2020—represented by the area's former U.S. Attorney, Randy Rathbun—now-Mayor Whipple brought suit against the person who produced the video, Matthew Colborn, and an obscure group calling itself "Protect Wichita Girls, LLC."
In the process, Whipple's attorney issued a subpoena for e-mails between O'Donnell and Sedgwick County Republican Party Chair Glasscock.
[29] In October 2020, through Rathbun, Whipple amended the defamation and conspiracy lawsuit to include Capps, O'Donnell (now Sedgwick County Commissioner), and Wichita City Councilman James Clendenin as defendants.
The suit alleged that the co-conspirators attempted to blame their complex, interstate conspiracy on the Sedgwick County Republican Chairman, Dalton Glasscock.
[30][31] The amended lawsuit further asserted that O'Donnell wrote the script for the false ad, Clendenin raised money for promoting it, and Capps attempted to hide their identities by creating a cover organization in New Mexico.
[46] The next day, the Sedgwick County Commission unanimously (O'Donnell abstaining) passed a resolution censuring O’Donnell and formally requesting his resignation.
[51] In December, 2020, the Wichita Eagle published an analysis of public records and other sources that purported to indicate that Capps and his business partner, Wichita City Council member Clendenin, had acquired federal, state and county government financial aid that was primarily intended to assist businesses suffering from the COVID-19 pandemic, beyond what they should have been eligible for - a total of $495,200 - possibly fraudulently.
[52] The report revealed that Capps and Clendenin had apparently acquired the funds to ostensibly pay salaries of nonexistent employees.
[52] Capps said that, following his closure of the Fourth and Long Foundation on October 19, 2020, he was attempting to return the $95,000 it had received from the U.S. Small Business Administration.
According to the United States Attorney's Office for the District of Kansas, Capps defrauded government agencies for more than $450,000, supposedly payroll for nonexistent employees.
)[57] The businesses and nonprofit organizations served to launder a dark money campaign that falsely smeared mayoral candidate Brandon Whipple, a Democrat who won that seat.
The funding for that video was provided by construction and real estate interests which supported former Wichita Mayor Jeff Longwell, a Republican.
Those donors underwrote the faked video by writing checks to the nonprofit Fourth and Long, Foundation, a 501(c)(3) supposed youth sports charity.
Mayor Whipple sued Capps plus James Clendenin and former Sedgwick County Commissioner Michael O'Donnell in state court for defamation.
[57] The jury found Capps guilty on three counts of making false statements to apply for loans through the Paycheck Protection Program and the Small Business Administration (SBA).
The prosecution also found that he had established residence in Panama, in an effort to retain the proceeds of his swindling of the Federal government and to prevent recapture of those ill-gotten gains.