… Every bit of this reeks of corruption — the sort of small-town corruption where the perpetrators feel the locals are far too few, or far too weak, to fight back. And it gets worse. Sherman Smith and the Kansas Reflector have been digging into whatever they’ve actually been able to obtain with public records requests. And those documents show everyone was in on it… including the supposed neutral party now performing its own investigation of the raids: the Kansas Bureau of Investigation.

Marion Police Chief Gideon Cody enlisted the support of local and state law enforcement officials in the days before he led raids on the local newspaper office, the publisher’s home and the home of a city councilwoman.

The Kansas Bureau of Investigation, Kansas Department of Revenue, Marion County Sheriff’s Office and the Office of the State Fire Marshal — along with the county attorney and a magistrate judge — were complicit in the Aug. 11 raid or knew it was imminent. But in the days that followed, they largely downplayed their involvement. …