Andy Ogles Makes George Santos Look Respectable

I know someone who REALLY doesn’t belong—in Congress! His name is Andy Ogles, a misRepresentative who makes George Santos look respectable.

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— James Horn (@schools-matter24.bsky.social) March 10, 2026 at 12:06 PM

Trump in TERROR after SHOCK POLLS for GOP…in TENNESSEE!!

Trump Sycophant, Andy Ogles, Still Under Investigation

Investigative reporter, Phil Williams, has been digging into the sordid story of the “George Santos of the South” for a long time, now. 

Here’s the latest:

Rep. Andy Ogles, the George Santos of the South

Andy Ogles Turns Christofascist Disciple of Steve Berger

 

Secretive D.C. Influence Project Appears to Be Running a Group House for Right-Wing Lawmakers

by Justin Elliott, Joshua Kaplan and Alex Mierjeski

ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.

For a project explicitly designed to influence Congress, Steve Berger’s operation has left a scant paper trail. The archconservative evangelical pastor, who started a D.C. nonprofit a few years ago to shape national policy, does not file lobbying reports. His group does not show up in campaign finance records.

There is a simple way to glimpse his effort’s expanding reach in Washington, however: Pay attention to who is walking out the front door of his Capitol Hill townhouse. New evidence suggests Berger may be running what amounts to a group house for conservative lawmakers, with multiple members of Congress living with him at his organization’s headquarters.

The six-bedroom, $3.7 million home is owned by a multimillion-dollar Republican donor.

Rep. Andy Ogles, a Tennessee Republican who is among President Donald Trump’s most aggressive allies in Congress, has been at the house on multiple days over the past two weeks, according to people who live in the area. Video reviewed by ProPublica showed Ogles leaving the townhouse with bags on Feb. 27. As he left, he locked up the front door and pocketed the keys to the house.

As ProPublica reported last week, House Speaker Mike Johnson is living in the townhouse. And Dan Bishop, a former congressman from North Carolina now nominated for a powerful post in Trump’s White House, appears to have lived there until recently as well.

Berger has said his goal is to “disciple” members of Congress so what “they learn is then translated into policy.” He has claimed to have personally spurred legislation, saying a senator privately credited him with inspiring a bill.

Berger, Bishop and Ogles did not respond to requests for comment. A spokesperson for Johnson previously said the speaker pays fair-market rent for the part of the townhouse he occupies but didn’t answer questions about the specific rate. He said Johnson has not spoken to the pastor about “any matter of public policy.”

Ogles is in only his third year in Congress, but he’s drawn attention for his bombastic displays of fealty to Trump. He recently introduced a resolution to amend the Constitution so that Trump could serve a third term as president. He’s filed articles of impeachment against multiple judges who’ve ruled against the new administration. (Last week, Elon Musk posted a video of Ogles touting his impeachment efforts, set to the beat from the rap song “Shook Ones, Pt. II.”)

Ogles’ short tenure is also notable for the pace of scandal that’s followed it. He has faced allegations that he inflated his resume, claiming alternatively to have been an economist, a member of law enforcement and an expert on international sex trafficking, NewsChannel 5 in Nashville reported. (Ogles has acknowledged at least one mistake on his resume but said that “my body of work speaks for itself.”)

Last year, the FBI seized his phone during an investigation and obtained a search warrant to review records associated with his personal email address. Federal investigators were seeking evidence related to potential campaign finance violations, according to a court filing. The scope of the FBI investigation remains unclear.

Perhaps no one is more responsible for Ogles’ rise in politics than Lee Beaman, the Tennessee businessman who owns the Capitol Hill townhouse. When Ogles announced a short-lived Senate bid in 2017, Beaman said he planned to raise $4 million to support the run. Beaman, whose wealth derives from a large car dealership chain, then served as campaign treasurer in Ogles’ successful 2022 run for the House.

Beaman and Berger have publicly advocated together for numerous specific policy changes, in areas including foreign affairs, fuel efficiency standards and removing barriers to firing federal employees. After the 2020 election, they both signed a letter declaring that Trump was the rightful winner and calling for Congress to overturn the results. (Beaman did not respond to requests for comment. ProPublica could not determine whether he and the pastor have discussed policy issues with Ogles during his time in Congress.)

In sermons, Berger has devoted long stretches to attacking the separation of church and state, as well as COVID-19 vaccines. The pastor used violent language to describe his disdain for “LGBTQ+ Pride” parades and “drag queen story hour” during an interview for a podcast in 2022, according to unpublished footage obtained by ProPublica.

“If I was left to myself, I’d take a baseball bat and beat the hell out of every single one of them. And not feel bad about it,” Berger said. “I have to go, ‘You know what? That’s probably not the will of God, is it?’ And obviously it’s not.”

Beyond his ownership of the townhouse, Beaman’s role in the pastor’s influence project is unclear. After Beaman purchased the house in 2021, a lawyer sought to change it from a single-family dwelling to a “boarding house/rooming house,” according to Washington, D.C., property records. Around that time, Berger’s nonprofit group, Ambassador Services International, registered the home as its address.

Members of Congress are allowed to live anywhere, as long as they pay fair-market rent, experts said. Discounts on rent are generally seen as improper gifts and prohibited by House ethics rules.

Beaman has said he got to know Ogles when Ogles was the Tennessee director of Americans for Prosperity, part of the Koch brothers’ political network. Beaman and Ogles joined forces to fight a mass transit project in Nashville and reportedly worked together on a successful effort to repeal the estate tax in their home state. After leaving the Koch network, Ogles served four years as the mayor of a Middle Tennessee county with a population of roughly 100,000. He held that role until 2022, when he was elected to Congress.

Ogles’ 2022 campaign was the subject of a blistering House ethics report released this year. The nonpartisan Office of Congressional Ethics concluded that there is “substantial reason to believe” that Ogles’ campaign had accepted illegally large donations and then falsely reported that the funds had come from Ogles himself. Ogles has said he is “confident that any reporting problem was at worst an honest mistake.” (Beaman was not named in the report and has not been accused of wrongdoing.)

The report said that Ogles refused to cooperate with the investigation. It recommended that the House Ethics Committee issue a subpoena to the congressman.

Do you have any information we should know about Steve Berger, Rep. Andy Ogles or Speaker Mike Johnson? Justin Elliott can be reached by email at justin@propublica.org and by Signal or WhatsApp at 774-826-6240. Josh Kaplan can be reached by email at joshua.kaplan@propublica.org and by Signal or WhatsApp at 734-834-9383.

Andy Ogles Offers Another Example of GOP Town Hall to Avoid Constituents

Andy Ogles posted an announcemnt on Instagram, nonetheless, for a telephone town hall.  The announcement was posted the same day of the event, March 5.

Here is one response from a constituent, which was published as a Letter to the Editor of The Tennessean:

In a recent telephone town hall hosted by Congressman Andy Ogles, R-District 5 (Middle Tennessee), I found myself grappling with a profound sense of disappointment.

The format, hastily arranged and, perhaps, prompted by David Huebner's letter to the editor in The Tennessean, stifled genuine dialogue.

Constituents were unable to directly address questions, and my own submission was heavily redacted, stripping it of its meaning and allowing Ogles to deflect.

This experience raises a critical question: Are we witnessing the erosion of democratic engagement?

Ogles' unwavering allegiance to Trump and MAGA, coupled with his unresponsiveness to the needs of the 5th District, suggests a troubling trend. He appears more committed to party directives than to the voices of his constituents.

The parallels to Orwell's "1984" are striking. The elimination of facts, censorship of free thinking, and suppression of criticism of our elected officials are no longer confined to fiction.

In "1984," the Party exercises absolute control over every aspect of life, from history to thoughts, through constant surveillance, propaganda, and the suppression of dissent.

Similarly, the MAGA movement often employs slogans and rhetoric that simplify complex issues and create a polarized narrative. The redaction of my question and the deflection by Ogles can be seen as a form of propaganda, where the truth is manipulated to fit a particular narrative.

Is this the new normal? Are we content with a future where our voices are silenced and our concerns dismissed? I urge my fellow constituents to reflect on these questions and to hold our elected officials accountable. We deserve better.

Peter McDermott, Franklin 37067

Republicans Would Lock Up the Children, Rather than the AR-15s

Thom Hartmann's piece yesterday caught my eye:  "Guns Don't Kill America: Republicans Do." Indeed, Republicans are intent to keep America's mass murderers the most well-armed mass murderers in the world, of both children and adults (WE'RE # 1).  There is no close second, even though the American prison solution for offenses committed by the poor continues to maintain our world ranking for total prison population and incarceration rates (WE'RE #1).

Oh yeah, the U.S. is #1, too, in gun suicide rates for both children and adults.

So what is the Republican "pro-life" solution to the child murder problem that they created with their fraudulent Second Amendment bullshit (see retired SCOTUS Chief Justice remarks here in 1991)?  Rather than banning weapons of war or requiring gun owners be licensed or even registered, asshats like Lindsey Graham would prefer to lock up the children, rather than the guns.  These hypocritical fools would put schools on a war footing, with more armed guards, bristling weaponry, more surveillance, more mass murder drills, more fear and anxiety.

Meanwhile, here's the dope, Andy Ogles (the tall stupid-looking one on the left), who now misrepresents, in the U.S. House of Representative, the people of Nashville where three adults and three 9-year old babies were murdered this week:

 

Andy's good at owning the libs--and killing the kids.