The Burger King
PART III — FRIEND OR FOE

The room goes quiet. Not the productive quiet of people reading folders. The quiet that follows a statement so obvious nobody needs to say it — but somebody will.

“Let me say out loud what you’re all thinking.”

“This man — the Council President of Biloxi, Mississippi — used armed police to expel a credentialed journalist from a public meeting. On camera. Seven thousand people watched the clip. The Chief of Police physically removed a citizen for saying ‘point of order.’”

“This same man was filmed on the public record telling his colleagues to ignore the law and ‘support’ a developer whose enterprise pays his salary — without placing that employment relationship on the record.”

“This same man is a named defendant in a federal antitrust lawsuit filed by Airbnb — a billion-dollar company whose lawyers documented in their complaint the exact same triple conflict of interest we documented in ours. Hotel executive. Council President. Trade association chair. Deciding vote on short-term rentals.”

“This same man deleted his own Facebook post promoting his employer’s illegal cottages after his own constituents in BPU caught him.”

“And this man — this man — posts on Facebook about false light.”

. . .

“That is the Burger King in one frame. That is the portrait of the Mummy Cartel. Incapable of taking blame. Incapable of self-reflection. Incapable of understanding that when you are caught, you are caught — and the correct response is not to threaten the people who caught you. It is to get a lawyer and prepare to answer.”

“He will not pivot. He cannot. Because to pivot would require him to admit what the record already shows: that he knew. That he always knew. That the pattern of undisclosed participation in Stewart-family matters was a choice, not an oversight. And that when the light finally hit him, his only move was to post about ‘false light’ on Facebook and hope nobody noticed.”

“The arrogance is not that he fights back. Fighting back is his right. The arrogance is that he thinks he is the victim. The man who silenced citizens thinks he is being silenced. The man who weaponized police against journalists thinks he is under attack. The man whose pattern of Council votes enriched his employer with public power — without placing the employment relationship on the record — looks at the people who documented it and says: false light.”

“No, Kenny. This is not false light. This is the floodlight.”

“He thinks this is still politics. It stopped being politics when the quo warranto petition hit the clerk’s desk.”

Same room. Same table. But there’s a new folder in the middle and nobody has spoken for a full minute. The Clerk is reading. The Mapper is already at the board, pen uncapped. Badass and Good Looking looks at you and waits until you’ve put your bag down.

“Dear Reader. Let’s lay it out.”

“Kenny Glavan is, right now, simultaneously: Ward 6 Councilman. President of the Biloxi City Council. Area Director of Hotel Operations for Lodging & Leisure Investments, the Stewart family hospitality enterprise. President of the Mississippi Hotel & Lodging Association. Four hats. Same head.”

“The Retreat sits on property owned by Brodiwells, LLC — Lori Stewart, wife of Greg Stewart, principal of Lodging & Leisure Investments, the enterprise that pays Kenny Glavan’s salary. The L&L office sits on the same property as The Retreat. Glavan drives past the construction every day to get to work.”

“The Council has voted on The Retreat. On Monarch Villas. On short-term rentals. On every zoning and ordinance matter touching the hospitality industry in Biloxi. And the Council President has been wearing the L&L badge the entire time.”

“Under Mississippi Code § 25-4-105, a public servant cannot use his official position to obtain a pecuniary benefit for a business with which he is associated. The analysis is not ‘did he recuse on this vote or that vote.’ The analysis is whether he used the Council seat to benefit the Stewart family enterprise. The filings will put every relevant vote before a court, and a court will decide.”

“What is not in dispute is the structural fact. The Council President of the City of Biloxi is employed by one of the largest hospitality operators doing business with the City — and has been, for years.”

“And now he posts about ‘false light.’”

The Mapper turns to the board. She pulls a printout from her folder and pins it beside Glavan’s photo. A Facebook post. Photos of The Retreat. Cottage exteriors. Indoor sports facility. The slogan “WORK WORK WORK / LIVE LIVE LIVE” in black block letters. Interior floor plans. An indoor swimming pool. Tagged to one other individual and three others.

“Kenny Glavan’s personal Facebook. Posted a while back. Photos of The Retreat. Linked to The Retreat Biloxi — the developer’s own Facebook page, categorized as ‘Residence’ — containing their marketing copy: ‘The Retreat is a brand-new coastal community offering upscale living unlike any other in Biloxi. A collection of detached cottage homes.’”

“The Council President — personally, on his own social media, under his own name — publicly promoting the developer’s marketing of a project built on property owned by his employer’s family, categorized on Facebook as residential, in a zoning district where residential use is prohibited.”

“BPU found it. The Biloxi Facebook group. His own constituents. They saw the post — the Council President promoting the Stewart family’s illegal cottages — and they called it. Publicly. In the group.”

“Within a short window of the BPU callout, the post was gone. Deleted. Scrubbed.”

“Screenshot preserved. Metadata intact. It’s Exhibit F in the ethics complaint.”

. . .

“Think about what that sequence tells you. He posted it because, in his own head, there was nothing wrong with it. His boss owns it. His boss’s wife holds the deed. He drives past the construction every day to get to his office. Why wouldn’t he promote it?”

“He deleted it because his own constituents, in their own Facebook group, in their own words, told him it was wrong. Not a reporter. Not a lawyer. Not an AG investigator. His own people.”

“The same man who sits on the Biloxi City Council, while employed by the Stewart family enterprise, posted the Stewart family’s marketing on his own Facebook — and deleted it when BPU caught him. The Facebook post was not politics. It was proof.”

“Friend to the developer. Foe to the ordinance. Friend to the Stewarts. Foe to his own constituents. Friend to the paperwork. Foe to the oath.”

“He’s both. Always was.”

The Clerk sets her folder down. Opens it. Removes ten smaller folders and lays them on the table in order, left to right. Each one has a cover sheet with a date: April 10, 2026. She doesn’t speak until the tenth folder is in its place. Then she looks at you for the first time all night.

“Dear Reader. This is what he is about to walk into. This is the package.”

“Ten documents. Four jurisdictions. Three branches of state government. One day.”

“Circuit court. Supreme court. Attorney general. District attorney. Ethics commission. Contractor board. Every institutional vector that can touch a Mississippi public official, closed in the same filing window.”

“Preventive. Filed before any judge has touched Case 6. Before any ruling exists. We’re not asking the Supreme Court to correct a local judge’s error. We’re asking it to prevent the local environment from ever being in a position to commit one. The Holleman firm is simultaneously defense counsel to the City and standing counsel to the Harrison County Board of Supervisors — the body that funds the courthouse itself. That is not a bias claim. That is a structural defect the trial court cannot cure on its own.”

“They’ll feel it in Jackson before they feel it in Biloxi.”

The Mapper pulls a second printout from her folder. The full Council roster. All seven names pinned to the board below Glavan’s photo.

“Seven seats on the Council. Seven votes on April 21. These are the seven whose roll call will decide whether the Biloxi City Council legislatively launders Jerry Creel’s confessed violation of the ordinance it adopted.”

“Two of the seven are already structurally conflicted on this case before a word is spoken. A third is a defendant in pending litigation.”

“Each of these seven will receive this article, by name, in writing, before they vote. None will be able to say later, in a courtroom or in a deposition, that they did not know.”

“The October 1, 2024 Lawrence warning is now legal notice to every seat on that Council. When George Lawrence stood up in that chamber and said — on the record — ‘Y’all want to get indicted or go to jail, that’s up to y’all. I’m not getting indicted for anybody. I’m not doing anything wrong or breaking any laws’ — that warning attached to the seat, not to the person who held it.”

“Wayne Gray inherited that warning. So did Anthony Marshall. So did Mike Nail, Jamie Creel, Paul Tisdale, and David Shoemaker. They sit where the man who said those words sat. They heard them through the record they swore to uphold.”

The Clerk produces two more folders — thinner than the ten on the table, but heavier. Each is a City-of-Biloxi document. Each is signed. Each says, in the City’s own handwriting, what the rest of this article has said.

“Exhibit A. February 23, 2021. Biloxi City Council resolution authorizing the City to enter into a Lodging & Attractions Package Program Agreement with the Mississippi Hotel & Lodging Association — the very trade organization Kenny Glavan serves as President. Contact Person on the fact sheet: Jerry Creel, Director of Community Development. The City is contracting directly with the association Glavan leads. Glavan’s seat is in the vote block. The record of his vote on that day is a question anyone with the Council’s minutes can answer. The document is the receipt.”

“Exhibit B. April 7, 2026. Biloxi City Council Agenda Item 4B — the retroactive LDO amendment. The ordinance that, if passed, launders ninety-two homes built under permits the Building Official has confessed on the record were issued in violation of the ordinance. Contact Person on the fact sheet, again: Jerry Creel, Director of Community Development. The official who issued the unauthorized permits is listed, in the City’s own form, as the official responsible for the legislative cure of his own conduct. The Planning Commission recommended it 13-0-0 on March 19, 2026. In the ‘Also Present’ line of that Planning Commission meeting transcript: Dr. Paul Tisdale, Councilman Ward 5, in the audience. The conflicted councilman whose brother’s signature sits on a disputed standing order physically attended the Planning Commission hearing at which his colleague’s developer’s fix was teed up.”

“Two documents. Both signed by the City. Both naming Creel as the custodian of the fix. Both placing the Council President’s trade association, or his employer’s family enterprise, on the receiving end of the City’s official action. Neither of these is a Petrini allegation. Both are the City’s own paperwork.”

The Mapper steps back from the board. The Clerk closes the tenth folder. The Insider is watching you. Badass and Good Looking is the only one still standing.

“You asked, at the end of Part II, what this conflict would look like when the light finally hit it. Now you know. A Council President posts the Stewart family’s marketing on his own Facebook, constituents in BPU catch him, and the post disappears. That is what the light does.”

“The deletion was the moment he admitted, with his own hands, that promoting the enterprise was something he knew he shouldn’t be doing in the light. The structural conflict is the slow-motion version of the same admission — documented on the record in four different official capacities, for years.”

“Friend to the Stewarts. Foe to the ordinance. Friend to the developer. Foe to the residents of Ward 6 who elected him. And now, at last, friend to the evidence.”

“Because the pattern of undisclosed votes on Stewart-family matters is, in light of the subsequent abstention, probative of awareness of the conflict — and every such undisclosed vote is, under Miss. Code § 25-4-105, a separate legal exposure.”

. . .

“Seven members. Nine days. Nine days to read what this investigation has documented. Nine days to decide whether to vote yes and join Jerry Creel in a lawsuit they didn’t have to be in — or vote no and protect the ordinance their constituents adopted.”

“The question on April 21 is not whether the Council will save Jerry Creel. The question is whether the Council will save itself.”

You stand. You didn’t plan to. But you’re standing now, and the folder on the table has your name on it again. The Clerk slides it across. You don’t ask what’s in it. You already know. You carry it out that door.