Post Falls City Candidate Revealed To Be “The Biggest Cocaine Dealer Kootenai County Has Ever Seen.”
The Kootenai County Cartel Is Real
(Post Falls, Idaho) — The races for local offices around the county are red hot, and there seems to be no end to the personal attacks and mud-slinging that has become all too common in local North Idaho politics.
When they’re not harassing and attacking local Republicans, local liberals have been busy digging up 20 year old police reports about conservative Republican candidates, and alleging that the Local Republican Party is backing “criminals” for office.
Fate, it seems, is not without a sense of irony.
Meet Bobby Wilhelm
As it turns out, the Liberal Republicans’ establishment-backed, NIB-PAC Endorsed candidate for Post Falls City Council, Bobby Wilhelm, was once considered to be “the biggest cocaine dealer Kootenai County has ever seen."
An article from the Spokesman Review from June 17th 1998 chronicles Wilhelm’s dark, drug-fueled past. Interestingly, this report has been scrubbed from the internet. In fact the only articles readily available about Wilhelm are about how he has been “redeemed” from his past, and why you should buy his book.
While, of course, he may have actually found forgiveness and healing in Jesus’ endless love for us sinners, but that dosen’t mean he’s fit to be on City Council. According to the Spokesman:
A man who prosecutors say is the biggest cocaine distributor in Kootenai County began serving a life sentence Tuesday for selling marijuana, Robert . Wilhelm, 40, must spend at least 7½ years in prison before he becomes eligible for parole, Ist District Judge Gary Haman ruled Monday. The judge also ordered Wilhelm - who proclaimed that the court would not get any of his money - to pay a $50,000 fine.
Wilhelm pleaded guilty Feb. 6 to trafficking in marijuana and being a habitual offender because it was his third felony conviction. A charge of conspiracy to distribute cocaine was dismissed in exchange for Wilhelm's guilty plea.
Prosecutors say Wilhelm is one of the area's major drug dealers. His record includes a federal conviction for trying to run down a Drug Enforcement Agency agent investigating a suspected cocaine shipment at Spokane International Airport in 1984.
When authorities arrested Wilhelm in Coeur d'Alene on Aug. 29, 1995, he was on parole for a cocaine distribution conviction.
Wilhelm was carrying two duffel bags containing 75 pounds of marijuana when state and federal drug agents converged on him on Lincoln Way. He had just picked up the marijuana, which was packaged in 1-pound quantities inside plastic bags, Deputy Prosecutor Joel Hazel said.
Oh, look at that! Joel Hazel! Christa’s wife husband.
The same Joel Hazel that stole Kootenai Health away from the voters by turning it into a non-profit with an un-elected board.
B-b-b-b-b-but it’s the REEEEEEEpublicans that are the criminals — right Christa?
The Spokesman’s article continues:
Wilhelm told agents he paid Mexican drug dealers from the Tri-Cities area $I8,000 for 80 pounds of marijuana. Wilhelm said he sold 5 pounds before he was arrested and still owed his supplier $48,000 to $52,000, according to police reports.
One of Wilhelm’s relatives tipped off agents to the marijuana deal. That informant also told agents Wilhelm bought 2 to 5 kilograms of cocaine per month from October 1994 to April 1995 and instructed him to split it into 1-ounce quantities, Hazel said.
Agents said the men who sold Wilhelm the marijuana were in Tijuana, Mexico, retrieving several kilograms of cocaine when Wilhelm was arrested. He was expecting them to deliver him 5 kilograms of cocaine four days later, police reports said.
Hazel called Wilhelm "probably the biggest cocaine dealer Kootenai County has ever seen."
Wilhelm refused to tell agents where the proceeds from his drug sales went. He wants his assets to go to his children and not be seized by the court, Hazel said.
Do we need to repeat that one for the kids in the back of the room?
“The biggest cocaine dealer Kootenai County has ever seen.”
Another article by the CDA Press gives even more background on Wilhelm’s history, revealing that his grandfather was the notorious bootlegger Louis Critzer. The article reads:
"I learned some criminal behaviors from my grandfather at Stateline as a kid, and I took it to an extreme," Wilhelm said.
The crime escalated to back-and-forth drug trips to Miami and dealing with Columbians and Cubans.
"The people I dealt with would get in trouble with the dealers and I'd pay them off to get their connections, so I kept moving up," Wilhelm said. "I'd be sitting in Miami with nobody who could speak English."
Wilhelm said he would make an average of $75,000 a month.
"It was a pretty good incentive," he said.
In 1984 Wilhelm returned to Spokane from a cocaine run in Miami only to learn a drug agent discovered his 3 pounds of coke. He struck the agent with his Corvette, resulting in a high-speed police pursuit from Spokane International Airport. Eventually, Wilhelm was arrested and spent three years in federal prison for the assault.
In another bust, his methamphetamine business was flourishing until the day he was caught with 75 pounds of marijuana and was sentenced to life in prison.
Wilhelm went to prison four different times for 16 years and his longest stretch of serving at one time was eight years.
All In The Family
Indeed, Wilhelm’s criminal streak does seem to run in the family. His grandfather Louis Critzer certainly had a serious criminal streak. And, like his grandson, Critzer also had some powerful connections of his own, including former Kootenai County Sheriff John Bender.
Critzer and Bender were so close with one another, that it drew the attention of the Department of Justice, who ordered an investigation into Critzer and Bender before they would release federal funds to the state.
We’ll find out more about Bobby Wilhelm’s powerful connections in a bit.
Bobby’s Scammy Sister
Keva Wilhelm, Bobby’s sister, also seems to have caught the criminal streak of her grandfather, when it was revealed that she was using her agency called Alladdin Travel, to scam customers out of their travel money by sending them bogus plane tickets.
Keva used several different last names to conceal her criminal activity, including Wilhelm, Simonsen, Septer and Rothe.
She also had some serious help in selling her scam tickets, most of that coming from the local press, who propped her up as an “expert” for their travel section.
Of course, she wasn’t caught until after local newspapers had helped her scam the populace.
Powerful Connections Revealed
Interestingly, before the incident in 1998, Wilhelm was arrested for obstructing officers in 1995, but those charges were dropped.
Who was his lawyer at the time? Glad you asked!
It was Glenn Walker, the former elected prosecuting attorney in Kootenai County.
Another serious charge against Wilhelm was dropped in 1995, at around the same time Walker was representing Wilhelm, although no lawyer is listed.
Walker who served as the county prosecutor from 1978-1988, was intimately involved with starting the Kootenai County Task Force on Human Relations, the group responsible for the accreditation crisis at North Idaho College which we have discussed at length in previous articles.
Funnily enough, it seems that the script hasn’t changed.
The thing that people won’t tell you about Glen Walker is that he’s had his own run-ins with salacious crimes.
The charges were dropped due to “lack of probable cause,” but in 1993, Walker was charged after harboring a 12 year old girl. According to the Spokesman Review, “Walker spent two hours in jail on Aug. 3, 1993, after he tried to prevent authorities from taking a 12-year-old runaway into custody. At the time, Walker was representing the girl’s father, who was accused of having sex with her.”
Totally not suspicious at all.
Neither is the fact that former State Senator Bob Nonini, who was also involved with Cocaine Trafficking between the Pacific Northwest and Miami, stepped up to testify for Wilhelm, because in Nonini’s words “Bobby has held up on his end of the bargain…”
Immediately following his release, after serving only 8 years of a life sentence, Wilhelm was set up with a cushy sales job at Dave Smith Auto Dealers… not the kind of thing that happens to normal people when they get out of jail.
This is the kind of thing that happens to highly connected people. Made men. Not some punk from Post Falls.
ARE YOU STILL READING THIS?
This story cuts to the heart of the corruption here in Kootenai County, and in North Idaho more generally speaking.
There can be no doubt, that very well-connected political operatives, elected officials, police, lawyers, judges, real estate magnates and the local media have engaged in drug dealing, human trafficking, murder, prostitution and WORSE and have gone out of their way to cover it up.
Have you ever noticed that there are no searchable, digital archives of the Coeur d’Alene Press between 1974 & the Mid-2000’s? That’s by design.
It’s been deliberately left out of the internet so that you can’t search for this stuff. So, you not only have the hurdle of not knowing what you don’t know, but even if you knew what to look for, you can’t.
The reality is that 64.7% of Kootenai County residents were not born in Idaho.
Interestingly, 64% of this county is also registered Republican.
Liberals aren’t having kids at the rate Kootenai County’s conservative Christians are either.
This means that the battle is already won, in a way, which is why so-called “NATIVE IDAHOANS” have been screaming about the KCRCC’s rating and vetting process.
The KCRCC ALONE is the only representative, elected organization in this County that will say a very loud “NO” to crooked, establishment-backed, ex-cocaine smugglers.
Even Christa Hazel, who has a nasty habit of using her dad’s connections with the FBI to weaponize private information about conservatives, has been absolutely SILENT on Wilhelm’s candidacy.
Instead, the Official Republican Party in Kootenai County, the KCRCC, is recommending incumbent Joe Malloy, Randy Westlund, and Samantha Steigleder.
Find out more about them here, and don’t forget to vote next Tuesday!
P.S. — It doesn’t look like Mr. Wilhelm has an active account with the Idaho Secretary of State’s office for this campaign. He’s been doing a boatload of outreach online, and in this day and age it’s hard to believe that he isn’t spending money on his campaign, especially when his signs and videos say “Paid for by the committee to elect Bobby Wilhelm.”
Did they ever find out where all that drug money went?
