Sean Buckner & Associates. Disbarred Attorneys, Federal Embezzlers, and Deadbeat Dads.
A Disbarred Attorney. A Federal Embezzler. A Senate Candidate With Secrets. How a Small Oklahoma Town Became the Stage for a Coalition Built on Grievance, Selective Transparency, and Questionable Judgment.
There is a phrase that every seasoned political observer knows well: you are judged by the company you keep. It speaks to something fundamental about character — that the people a man surrounds himself with, the alliances he forges, the causes he lends his name to, reveal something essential about who he is and what he values.
By that standard, William Sean Buckner of Sallisaw, Oklahoma — a man currently seeking a seat in the United States Senate — has some explaining to do.
Buckner operates a Facebook page called 'Sallisaw Transparency,' fashioned as a watchdog platform holding local officials accountable. He has a federal lawsuit against the City of Sallisaw. He has positioned himself as a crusader, a truth-teller, a man of the people who sees through the corruption others are afraid to name.
But a closer examination of his inner circle tells a different story — one in which the crusader for transparency surrounds himself with a disbarred attorney who accumulated 115 rule violations and was called out by the Oklahoma Supreme Court itself, a convicted federal embezzler who stole nearly $574,000 from a hospital serving vulnerable patients, and the awkward truth of his own record: a $15,383.62 child support judgment, a concealed pawn shop business, a New Jersey criminal conviction, and a federal lawsuit so frivolous that a court ordered him to pay over $50,000 in the opposing side's legal fees before he abandoned it entirely.
This is a story about the company Sean Buckner keeps — and what it tells us about the man himself.
THE DISBARRED ATTORNEY — RON DURBIN
To understand how Ron Durbin came into Sean Buckner's orbit, you first have to understand what Ron Durbin is.
Durbin practiced law in Oklahoma for approximately fifteen years after being licensed in 2009. He was, for a time, the self-styled king of Oklahoma's cannabis legal industry, and he cultivated a reputation as a firebrand willing to take on the powerful. But somewhere along the way, his career transformed from that of a licensed attorney into something altogether different — and far more troubling.
By the time the Oklahoma Supreme Court finished with him in October 2025, the record was extraordinary in its scope and its detail. The court's 71-page opinion, authored by Justice Edmondson for a unanimous court, found violations across eighteen of twenty counts of professional misconduct and tallied one hundred and fifteen individual rule violations. The opinion described Durbin's disciplinary case as 'almost in a class by itself' — a phrase that, in the sober language of appellate courts, speaks volumes.
The violations were not technical or narrow. They included recklessly untrue allegations about judges, opposing counsel, and public officials made in profanity-laced Facebook Live broadcasts streamed publicly for anyone to see. They included filing lawsuits the court found to be without merit, against neighbors, against his ex-wife's family — litigation that one transcript reveals him describing to a client in terms of financial attrition: 'And that's if they're lucky they're only gonna spend that much. So if this goes to jury trial, you're looking at $100,000.' They included screaming at opposing counsel in courthouse elevators, accusing judges of public drunkenness, and a general pattern of conduct the court found incompatible with the ethical obligations that membership in the bar demands.
The Oklahoma Bar Association's complaint against him, filed in July 2023, alleged violations of more than twenty separate rules of professional conduct. The OBA described his conduct as posing 'an immediate threat of substantial and irreparable public harm.' The court agreed, imposing an emergency interim suspension on April 8, 2024 — before the full disbarment proceedings were even complete. His name was ordered stricken from the Roll of Attorneys. He was assessed $22,152 in costs.
"This is due to (1) the number and nature of respondent's violations; (2) the need for protecting the public, the OBA's members, and the judiciary from respondent's misrepresentations, lies and recklessly untrue allegations as a lawyer..." — Oklahoma Supreme Court
Durbin's connection to Sallisaw — and therefore to Sean Buckner — began in June 2024, when Durbin and his social media operation, 'Guerrilla Publishing,' arrived in Sequoyah County with Buckner in tow. Their joint mission: to publicly 'indict' former Sallisaw City Manager Keith Skelton, Sallisaw Police Chief Terry Franklin, and, notably, the local newspaper, Your Times. They later expanded their targets to include the Sallisaw school system and local pastors who had, in their estimation, 'run afoul of the law.'
This was not the measured, document-driven accountability journalism that civic watchdogging is supposed to resemble. This was a road show — a performance of outrage, fueled by social media, led by a man who had already had his law license suspended for conduct the state's highest court found constituted an immediate threat to the public.
That Sean Buckner chose to ally himself with Durbin — to appear alongside him publicly, to lend his local platform and local knowledge to Durbin's crusade — is not a neutral fact. It is a choice. And choices reveal character.
THE FEDERAL EMBEZZLER — JADE TULLIS
If Ron Durbin represents the firebrand arm of Buckner's inner circle, Jade Tullis represents something quieter — and, in some ways, more troubling, because her role is less visible and therefore less subject to scrutiny.
According to sources with knowledge of the 'Sallisaw Transparency' Facebook page that Buckner operates, Jade Tullis — formerly known as Jade LaRae Obregon — is one of the page's administrators. She helps manage and curate the content published on a platform whose stated purpose is holding others accountable for their conduct.
The irony is almost too much to bear when you examine the public record of who Jade Tullis is.
In October 2016, the United States Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Oklahoma announced that Jade LaRae Obregon, then 38 years old, of Sallisaw, Oklahoma, had been sentenced to one year and one day in federal prison. The charge: theft of federal program funds, in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 1341. The restitution ordered: $574,385.94 — over half a million dollars.
The conduct underlying the conviction was neither victimless nor abstract. According to the federal indictment, from January 1, 2012 through December 31, 2013, Obregon — then an agent of Sequoyah Memorial Hospital, an organization receiving federal health care program funds in excess of $10,000 per year — embezzled, stole, obtained by fraud, and knowingly converted to unauthorized use property worth at least $5,000: specifically, diabetic test strips.
To be clear about what this means in practice: Jade Tullis, while working at a hospital that served the medical needs of a rural Oklahoma community, systematically stole diabetic test strips — medical supplies that diabetic patients depend on to manage a serious, life-threatening condition — over the course of two years. The theft was substantial enough to result in a federal indictment, a conviction, a prison sentence, and a restitution obligation of more than half a million dollars. The investigation was conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
The Honorable James H. Payne, District Judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Oklahoma, presided over the sentencing hearing. Jade Obregon was ordered to report to the Bureau of Prisons on January 15, 2017.
She stole diabetic test strips from a rural hospital — medical supplies patients depended on to manage a life-threatening condition. The federal government called it what it was: theft from a program serving the public.
That is the person who, apparently operating under the name Jade Tullis, now helps administer a Facebook page dedicated to 'transparency' in Sallisaw, Oklahoma — a page that holds local officials, school administrators, journalists, and pastors up to public scrutiny and criticism.
One might ask what qualifications Jade Tullis brings to the work of public accountability. Based on the public record, the most notable qualification she brings is a federal conviction for stealing from a public health institution, a prison sentence, and over half a million dollars owed to the people she defrauded.
That Sean Buckner would choose — knowingly or otherwise — to have such a person as an administrator on his 'transparency' platform raises serious questions. Either he did not know, which raises questions about how carefully he vets the people he empowers, or he did know, which raises questions about his judgment. There is no comfortable third option.
SEAN BUCKNER HIMSELF
It would be easy, at this point, to rest the case on Durbin and Tullis alone — to say that Buckner's associations are damning enough and leave it there. But a complete accounting of who Sean Buckner is requires looking at his own record, which is, in its own way, as instructive as the company he keeps.
Buckner filed to run for the United States Senate seat representing Oklahoma — the seat vacated by Markwayne Mullin's appointment as U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security. He is challenging Rep. Kevin Hern, the Republican frontrunner. He has fashioned himself, through his Facebook operations and his various legal campaigns, as a man who holds power accountable.
The court record tells a different story.
The Hidden Pawn Shop
Casino Pawn Shop at 2120 Alma Highway in Van Buren, Arkansas has been in operation since 1990 and incorporated since 1998. It holds a Federal Firearms License, making it a federally licensed gun dealer. According to the Better Business Bureau's accredited listing — accredited as recently as September 26, 2025 — Sean Buckner is listed as the owner in every category: Business Management, Principal Contacts, and Customer Contacts.
There is also, however, a second BBB listing for the same business — 'Casino Pawn Shop, Inc.' — at the same address, which lists no mention of Sean Buckner at all. That filing names John Lewellen as President and Randy Faldon as Manager.
The same business. The same address. Two entirely different ownership pictures.
Now consider what Buckner swore to a federal bankruptcy court in 2015. In his bankruptcy petition, Buckner listed zero business interests. He disclosed no ownership of any corporation, partnership, or business entity. He listed no income from Casino Pawn Shop. He disclosed no stock, no equity interests, no business assets of any kind. He was, according to his sworn petition, a paraglider instructor earning $492 per month. That is what he attested to under penalty of perjury.
Yet Casino Pawn Shop was incorporated in 1998 — seven years before that bankruptcy filing. If Buckner was the true owner of that business in 2015, and he failed to disclose it in his federal bankruptcy petition, the legal consequences would be severe. Concealing assets in a bankruptcy proceeding is a federal offense carrying penalties of up to a $500,000 fine or five years imprisonment — penalties spelled out on the very last page of the bankruptcy petition form that Buckner signed.
According to a formal anonymous tip, the ownership of the pawn shop is deliberately kept 'hush-hush' to avoid issues with child support enforcement, and the rumor is that the business is held through his wife's name. Buckner himself, in a Facebook post, casually wrote 'I won a pawn shop' — confirming in his own words that he considers himself the owner. The BBB's accredited listing confirms his name is on file as such. But in federal court, under oath, he disclosed no business interests whatsoever.
$15,383.62 in Unpaid Child Support
In March 2025, a Sequoyah County court entered a formal judgment against William Sean Buckner for $15,383.62 in unpaid child support. This is not a disputed figure. It is a court judgment — a legal determination that Buckner owed this sum and had not paid it.
This is the same man who, apparently operating a pawn shop across the state line in Arkansas, told a bankruptcy court in 2015 that he owned no businesses and earned $492 a month. The same man who now campaigns for the United States Senate. The same man whose Facebook page scrutinizes the conduct of Sallisaw's public servants.
Child support is not an abstraction. It is money owed to a child. The failure to pay it — while potentially concealing business income — is not a technicality. It is a moral failing that courts, understandably, take seriously.
The Frivolous Federal Lawsuit and Its Aftermath
Buckner's legal history includes a federal lawsuit against the City of Sallisaw, Sallisaw Police Lt. Houston Murray, and Police Chief Terry Franklin. The lawsuit ultimately failed. The federal court ordered Buckner to pay more than $50,000 in attorneys' fees incurred by the defendants — a sanction courts impose only when litigation is found to be without sufficient merit.
In a remarkable twist, the attorney who attempted to handle Buckner's appeal to the Tenth Circuit — James A. Conrady of Okmulgee — was not eligible to practice before that court. He had been suspended from the Tenth Circuit thirteen years earlier, in a separate disciplinary matter that arose from, according to court records, shooting up the home of his ex-girlfriend's boyfriend. The Tenth Circuit removed Conrady as counsel of record and referred him for further disciplinary proceedings. The Oklahoma Supreme Court subsequently disbarred him.
Buckner ultimately abandoned the lawsuit entirely. The court dismissed it with prejudice, and the $50,000-plus fee judgment remained in force.
Two disbarred attorneys. One convicted federal embezzler. A concealed pawn shop. A $15,383.62 child support judgment. A frivolous federal lawsuit abandoned after a court ordered him to pay his opponents' legal fees. A New Jersey criminal conviction in his past.
This is the record of the man who wants to represent Oklahoma in the United States Senate, and who runs a page called 'Sallisaw Transparency.'
THE TRANSPARENCY PARADOX
There is a particular kind of audacity involved in positioning yourself as a champion of accountability while your own record goes unexamined. It requires the assumption that no one will look closely, that the performance of outrage will substitute for the substance of virtue, that pointing at others is sufficient to deflect attention from yourself.
Sean Buckner has, for a period of time, succeeded at this performance. His Facebook platforms have audiences. His campaigns against local officials generate attention. His Senate bid is a matter of public record.
But the record itself is now available for examination. The company he keeps — a man disbarred for 115 rule violations, a woman who stole over half a million dollars from a hospital serving sick patients — tells us something about Sean Buckner's judgment. His own history — the hidden business, the unpaid child support, the abandoned lawsuit, the court-ordered fees — tells us something about his character.
Transparency, properly understood, cuts both ways. It is not only a weapon to be aimed at city managers and police chiefs and newspaper editors. It is a standard to which anyone who seeks public trust must be held — including, and perhaps especially, the people who invoke it loudest.
The voters of Oklahoma deserve to know who is asking for their vote. That information is now before them.
EDITOR'S NOTE: This report is based on publicly available court records, federal Department of Justice press releases, Oklahoma Supreme Court opinions, Better Business Bureau listings, and prior investigative reporting. All individuals named have the right to respond to the record as documented in this article. Information regarding Jade Tullis's role as a page administrator on 'Sallisaw Transparency' is based on sourced reporting and has not been independently verified by court record. All other facts cited are drawn from public documents.
