An Ohio county prosecutor’s tumultuous romantic relationship with a former employee became the center of the case against him and his chief of staff, Ohio officials said.
J.D. Tomlinson, the Lorain County prosecutor, and his chief of staff James Burge are accused of intimidation and tampering with evidence in an investigation run by the FBI and state officials, according to court documents filed on Oct 1. Tomlinson is also facing a charge of attempted bribery.
McClatchy News reached out to Tomlinson and the Lorain County Prosecutor’s Office in an attempt to reach Burge but did not immediately receive a response. No attorney information was listed for either person.
According to court documents, the former employee had been in a relationship with Tomlinson since 2021 and quit her role Aug. 16, 2023, after what court documents said was a physical altercation in the office with the prosecutor. She later filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
While the two were in the relationship, the former employee “cosigned Tomlinson’s car and credit cards, controlled his bank account, paid his bills and purchased his clothes,” according to court documents. She told deputies she also discovered he had been seeing other women.
The day before she resigned, Tomlinson “forcibly grabbed her by both shoulders, pushed her onto the couch in his office and shook her,” which left bruises on her arms, according to court documents.
At one point, the woman said Tomlinson had slapped her while they were in the office, she told police in the court documents, which had been caught on an audio recording.
Before the woman quit, Burge wrote a letter that had “false information” about the shaking altercation and asked her to type it up and sign it, according to an affidavit by Lorain County Sheriff Robert Vansant. She refused, according to documents.
The EEOC complaint also stated, according to the affidavit, that the woman was forced to leave her job because Tomlinson was “holding her employment over her head to engage in a sexual relationship.”
In October 2023, the FBI, sheriff’s office and Ohio State Auditor’s Office started to investigate a $100,000 settlement paid to the former employee Oct. 17, according to the affidavit.
Throughout the course of the investigation, Tomlinson and Burge are accused of trying to get the former employee to sign affidavits that would change the story outlined in the EEOC complaint.
“After the investigation became public, Tomlinson spent hours trying to get her to say that the allegations about Tomlinson assaulting her and holding her employment over her head to engage in a sexual relationship were not true,” according to the affidavit.
The prosecutor tried to say the employee signed a blank EEOC document and that she never wrote the complaint, the sheriff said.
At one point during the investigation, Tomlinson tried to reach the woman by sneaking through her backyard to avoid a camera in the front of her home, deputies said.
In February 2024, both Tomlinson and Burge sent her multiple texts and calls trying to convince her to sign an affidavit “taking things back,” documents said.
Tomlinson’s attempted bribery charge stems from a July 30 text message sent to the former employee where he offered her money to have dinner, according to court documents.
“$100 just to meet me for dinner!” he wrote. When she didn’t agree, according to documents, he wrote, “I’ll give you $500 if you meet me for dinner!”
The two met in Montana at the end of August 2024, the woman told deputies. They discussed the settlement, and Tomlinson said “he had to protect himself and began to try and feed her a false narrative about what happened on the day she left office,” the affidavit said.
During the argument, the woman told deputies, Tomlinson was “yelling and in her face” and was “jumping up and down and screaming at her.”
She eventually left without his knowledge, and he called her over 100 times before she boarded a plane home, deputies said.
Court documents allege that both Tomlinson and Burge knew of the FBI investigation because they had filed motions and are working on an appeal.
Tomlinson is running for reelection against Republican candidate Tony Cillo in November, according to WKYC.
Lorain County is about a 30-mile drive southwest from Cleveland.
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