![\"Obtained](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/0715_bn9_political_postcard_1.jpeg\")
<\/p>\nLARGO, Fla. \u2014\u00a0Newly released documents shed light on why Florida\u2019s chief financial officer sent armed agents to a Largo home after a resident mailed him a political postcard.<\/p>\n
Last fall, James O\u2019Gara says he mailed CFO Blaise Ingoglia a postcard with a simple message: “You lack values.”<\/p>\n
A few weeks later, armed agents showed up at O\u2019Gara\u2019s home.<\/p>\n
Spectrum Bay News 9 filed a public records request for documents surrounding the case. It took the Department of Financial Services nine months to release more than 1,200 pages of records. Though the department didn\u2019t release everything requested, the documents provide a clearer picture of why agents were sent to Largo.<\/p>\n
Emails show it took just four minutes for then-Colonel Simon Blank to decide the postcard O’Gara sent warranted a closer look.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Obtained by Florida Department of Financial Services<\/p>\n
\u201cCan you have someone look into the name and do a threat assessment,” Blank wrote in a September email.<\/p>\n
Two weeks later, two armed agents from the state’s Department of Financial Services came knocking on the O\u2019Gara\u2019s door. Their interaction was recorded and obtained by Spectrum Bay News 9.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re not in trouble. I know, it’s hard to believe with how I\u2019m dressed and all that stuff. Can I ask you a couple questions? Do you mind if I talk to you for a few?\u201d the unnamed detective asked O\u2019Gara in October 2025.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat’s this about?\u201d O\u2019Gara said.<\/p>\n
\u201cUm, there \u2014 I guess you sent a letter to the chief financial officer for the Florida Department of Financial Services,\u201d the detective said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I went out, I was really curious about, ‘What’re they doing here?’ And when I discovered it was over a postcard, it was a bit unnerving and upsetting,\u201d O\u2019Gara said earlier this month.<\/p>\n
While the agents repeatedly told O\u2019Gara they supported the First Amendment, which protects free speech, and that he wasn\u2019t in trouble, they explained why they were there.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust being how things are, polarized right now, politically, anything that’s going on with anybody disagreeing with whatever, they just, they’re having us check things and stuff like that. I looked at your postcard, there’s nothing wrong with it,\u201d said the detective.<\/p>\n
After repeated attempts to schedule an interview with Ingoglia about this with no response, Spectrum News traveled to Lake County, north of Orlando, where the CFO was speaking at an unrelated press conference to ask why his office felt it necessary to send armed agents to the home of the O\u2019Gara\u2019s.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou have to put it into context. That happened right after the Charlie Kirk assassination, so there was like a heightened awareness of what was going on, and I\u2019m not going to second-guess our investigators,\u201d Ingoglia told Spectrum Bay News 9 in July. \u201cEvery elected official, especially those who are outspoken, are, unfortunately, in this time, are targets for people that do not believe the same as you.\u201d<\/p>\n
The O\u2019Gara\u2019s say Ingoglia is right, they don\u2019t agree. But they also say they didn\u2019t threaten him, nor did they deserve what they call intimidation.<\/p>\n
Ingoglia acknowledged that fine line.<\/p>\n
\u201cI’ve always said that when it comes to elected officials and protecting them, we should always be better safe than sorry, but at the same time also protect free speech,\u201d said Ingoglia.<\/p>\n
Documents show the agents concluded there was, \u2018No credible threat directed towards the CFO in this instance.\u2019<\/p>\n
After the O\u2019Gara\u2019s shared their story publicly, hundreds of others joined in with their own form of protest.<\/p>\n
Records show at least 341 other people, from across the country and one even as far away as France, wrote postcards to Ingoglia carrying the same message: “You lack values.”<\/p>\n
\u201cI’m so grateful because, really, this is not normal in America, to send the police for someone saying something like, ‘You lack values,\u2019\u201d said Cathy O\u2019Gara, James\u2019 wife.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf people sat down and got a stamp and put it on a postcard, sent it off and put an address, that’s a significant action that says, ‘Wow, there’s people out there willing to stand up,\u2019\u201d James O\u2019Gara said.<\/p>\n
The threat assessment hasn\u2019t stopped O\u2019Gara from sending postcards, but he says he’ll always wonder whether another knock on the door could follow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LARGO, Fla. \u2014\u00a0Newly released documents shed light on why Florida\u2019s chief financial officer sent armed agents to a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":341403,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[4323,3140,274,63156,115,139,596,99,202,204,203,199,201,200,135,278,835,63157],"class_list":["post-341402","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-andy-cole","tag-app-local-state-politics","tag-app-top-stories","tag-app-watchdog-investigations","tag-news","tag-orlando","tag-pinellas-county","tag-politics","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news","tag-tampa","tag-top-stories","tag-vod","tag-watchdog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341402","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=341402"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341402\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/341403"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=341402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=341402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=341402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}