London, ON – RCMP officials have confirmed that Jamie Arbogast of Aylmer will be making a public apology this coming Tuesday at the Middlesex County Courthouse after it was deemed his multiple public claims of “things could be worse” constituted false or misleading statements detrimental to the public good. These statements were made knowingly and recklessly and with the intent of lulling the public into a false sense of security.
Crown Attorney Melissa Whitfield stated that Mr. Arbogast had agreed to make the apology and retract his statement after charges were filed against him and his own attorney, Neil Bamford, recommended he take a plea. According to an email from the attorney’s office, he suggested his client make the statement in light of the unprecedented surplus of evidence that the Crown had assembled against him.
It was a rare move to allow the statement given the case the Crown had built.
“We have some 33,000 files of evidence contradicting Mr. Arbogast’s claim, and these only date back to January of this year. And they’re only from Ontario. And they only cover the first half of the alphabet. My law clerk had to take a mental health sabbatical,” Whitfield said.
Initially, Mr Arbogast, a florist in Aylmer, claimed he made the statements as a way of “trying to cheer people up.” But multiple sources have pointed out that no one was cheered by the idea. As Celeste Faison, one of Arbogast’s neighbors and the first to lodge a complaint against him pointed out, “you don’t want to have Satan poking you in the ass with a pitchfork while telling you to thank him for not using the bigger, hotter pitchfork.”
Whitfield has also pointed to Mr. Arbogast’s long history of making similar statements that established a pattern of willful and wanton misconduct. During the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic, Arbogast is known to have said “everything happens for a reason” to several people stricken with the illness. During the housing crisis, Arbogast went so far as to suggest “time heals all wounds” and once, according to an anonymous source, claimed “it is what it is.”
Criminal charges against Arbogast will not be pursued provided his statement meets the Crown’s satisfaction. When asked why Arbogast would be allowed to walk free, Whitfield argued that being the kind of person who thinks that way is punishment enough.
